Drug journal jumps the gun on publishing response to comment

annals of pharmThis one’s a little circular: The Annals of Pharmacotherapy, a SAGE journal, has retracted an author’s response to a letter to the editor that was never published. The original paper, “Intravenous sodium bicarbonate therapy in severely acidotic diabetic ketoacidosis,” is unaffected by the retraction.

According to the notice: Continue reading Drug journal jumps the gun on publishing response to comment

Terrorism journal retracts paper on Boko Haram for plagiarism

conflictterrorStudies in Conflict & Terrorism has retracted a 2013 article about Boko Haram, the Nigerian extremist group accused of massacres and, recently, the kidnapping of approximately 276 schoolgirls in that country.

Here’s the notice, which pretty much says it all: Continue reading Terrorism journal retracts paper on Boko Haram for plagiarism

Former University of Utah researchers, one guilty of “reckless disregard,” have another paper retracted

cell metabolismA pair of University of Utah researchers who both left their posts last year following an investigation into problems with their work have had another paper retracted from Cell Metabolism.

The investigation found “reckless disregard” in papers in which Ivana De Domenico was first author. She left the university at the end of June 2013, and and her lab head, Jerry Kaplan, retired at the same time.

Here’s the notice for 2008’s “The Hepcidin-Binding Site on Ferroportin Is Evolutionarily Conserved:” Continue reading Former University of Utah researchers, one guilty of “reckless disregard,” have another paper retracted

JCI retracts 10-year-old cancer study because figures were “intentionally mislabeled”

jci june 14The Journal of Clinical Investigation is retracting a 2004 paper by a cancer researchers from Italy because of “evident misrepresentation of data and image duplication.”

Here’s the notice for “The IL-12Rβ2 gene functions as a tumor suppressor in human B cell malignancies:” Continue reading JCI retracts 10-year-old cancer study because figures were “intentionally mislabeled”

Plagiarism spells demise of complementary medicine paper

JEBCAMThe Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary Medicine (JEBCAM) has retracted a 2013 review on probiotics by an author from Turkey who patched the paper together from a variety of other sources — and then appears to have reused his own work elsewhere without attribution.

The article was written by Öner Özdemir, a pediatric allergy specialist at İstanbul Medeniyet University. According to the abstract: Continue reading Plagiarism spells demise of complementary medicine paper

Duck, duck, gone: Duplication plucks bird flu paper

zoonoses and public healthIf it looks like a duck flu study, and quacks like a duck flu study, and it’s word-for-word the same as a duck flu study…

Zoonoses and Public Health has retracted a 2013 paper on bird flu in Myanmar because the authors had published the article previously in a different journal.

The article, “Risks of Avian Influenza (H5) in Duck Farms in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta Region, Myanmar,” was written by a group led by Alongkorn Amonsin, of the Department of Veterinary Public Health at Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok, Thailand.

Per the abstract: Continue reading Duck, duck, gone: Duplication plucks bird flu paper

Editor in chief steps down after being found plagiarizing in her own journal

diab met syndImagine you were a cop, sitting in your squad car at the side of the road with a radar gun, when you clock someone speeding. You turn on your lights, pull the speedster over to the side of the road, and walk to her driver’s side window.

Just as you say “Driver’s license and registration, please,” you realize the driver is your squad captain. Oops.

That must have been something like what it was like — with plagiarism detection software sitting in for the radar gun — for the co-editor-in-chief of Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome when he realized that Marilia de Brito Gomes, the other co-editor-in-chief, had published two papers in their journal that contained plagiarized passages.

Here’s the notice for “Historical facts of screening and diagnosing diabetes in pregnancy:” Continue reading Editor in chief steps down after being found plagiarizing in her own journal

Journal retracts letter accusing physicist of using fake names to criticize papers

jasistFrom the world of physics, we have a retraction involving rivalry and alleged sock puppetry. The Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology has removed a letter from its website after a scientist complained that it was making unproven allegations against him.

It’s a head-scratching case. The letter, from Lorenzo Iorio, first appeared in the journal on April 28. Here’s how Neuroskeptic describes the background: Continue reading Journal retracts letter accusing physicist of using fake names to criticize papers

Cancer researcher who threatened to sue Retraction Watch corrects another paper

aggarwalBharat Aggarwal, the MD Anderson researcher who has threatened to sue Retraction Watch for writing about issues in his papers, has corrected another study.

Here’s the notice for “Induction of Cell Cycle Arrest and Apoptosis by the Proteasome Inhibitor PS-341 in Hodgkin Disease Cell Lines Is Independent of Inhibitor of Nuclear Factor-κB Mutations or Activation of the CD30, CD40, and RANK Receptors:” Continue reading Cancer researcher who threatened to sue Retraction Watch corrects another paper

Förster on defense again, this time weighing in on timeline controversy

forster-j-aScience reported last week that Jens Förster, the former University of Amsterdam social psychologist embroiled in data fabrication controversy, may have stumbled in his defense by muddling the timeline of his disputed studies in public statements.

According to a piece by Frank van Kolfschooten (which is behind a paywall, and to which we linked in Saturday’s Weekend Reads):

The real challenge to Förster’s timeline may lie in e-mails between him and Pieter Verhoeven, his research assistant at UvA from September 2008 to June 2009, who made the correspondence available to Förster’s accuser. In it, the two discuss how to conduct what are evidently the same experiments Förster’s blog declares were completed much earlier in Bremen. For instance, among the stimuli used are three unintelligible audio recordings, which the 2011 paper says were described to the subjects as “Moldavian” poems. In an 18 May 2009 e-mail, Verhoeven comes up with the idea to describe the poem that way, rather than as Malaysian, because the reader of the poem has a German accent.

But in a yet another lengthy open letter to colleagues and friends, Förster insists that he conducted the studies in Germany before coming to the University of Amsterdam. And he hints darkly at the end that those seeking to cast doubt on his research may be doing so for personal gain: Continue reading Förster on defense again, this time weighing in on timeline controversy