Dirk Smeesters, the former Erasmus University psychology researcher found to have committed misconduct, is up to half a dozen retractions.
Both notices, in the Journal of Consumer Research, where Smeesters has already had one retraction, are paywalled. Here’s one, for a paper cited seven times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading “Blameworthy inaccuracies:” Dirk Smeesters up to six retractions
A researcher in Germany has lost a paper on determining the sex of panthers after a now-former colleague objected to his use of data.
Here’s the notice for “A method to assign sex to leopard Panthera pardus specimens using quantitative cranial data:” Continue reading Assignations without permission? Leopard sex paper retracted after conflict between researchers
The authors of a 2012 paper in the Journal of Neuroimmunology have retracted the paper after some of the researchers were unable to verify the findings in follow-up work.
The article, “Association of transforming growth factor beta-1 (TGFB1) regulatory region polymorphisms with myasthenia gravis-related ophthalmoparesis,” came from a lab at Groote Schuur Hospital and the University of Cape Town, in South Africa.
According to the abstract: Continue reading Nothing to see here: Unreplicable eye paper ends in retraction
If we had a Retraction Watch headquarters (other than the diner where we occasionally meet for breakfast), we would have had to have closed up early today, because we both swooned when we saw a retraction notice from the Journal of Polish CIMAC this morning.
The notice, signed by the journal’s editor-in-chief Jerzy Girtler, of Gdansk University of Technology, reads:
Continue reading Miłość at first sight: A retraction notice worth emulating from Poland
The British Journal of Nutrition has retracted a 2013 paper by a group of researchers from Taiwan after learning that the authors had studied the wrong strain of microbe.
The article was titled “Oral Lactobacillus reuteri GMN-32 treatment reduces blood glucose concentrations and promotes cardiac function in rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes mellitus.”
According to the abstract: Continue reading Lactobacillus intolerance: Bacterium mixup forces retraction
Karel Bezouška, who tried tampering with an investigation into his work by breaking into a lab refrigerator, has had a seventh paper retracted.
Here’s the notice for “Carboxylated calixarenes bind strongly to CD69 and protect CD69+ killer cells from suicidal cell death induced by tumor cell surface ligands,” which was first published in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry in 2010: Continue reading Seventh retraction appears for author who tampered with investigation
It’s not unusual for us to hear allegations that journals have caved to corporate demands that they retract papers. And companies have certainly objected to the publication of results that painted their products in an unflattering light.
Continue reading Stunner: Researchers retract paper because company complains it’s hurting profits
A group of bird researchers in China has lost their article in Wetlands Ecology and Management on the migratory habits of shorebirds after the editors of the journal learned that they’d cobbled the paper together from their own previously published work.
The article by Song et. al., “Ecological stability of the shorebird stopover site in the Yalu River Estuary Wetlands, China,” had appeared online in February.
Here’s the abstract: Continue reading Birds of a feather: Duplication grounds migration paper
Last month, we wrote about the launch of a new site, Stand Up 2 Science Bullies, whose co-founders said that they had been
covertly and cyber bullied by one scientist for nine years.
One of the questions we often get — but are careful to answer with some version of “we don’t know because we don’t have a denominator” — is how retraction rates vary by scientific field and country. We’ve noticed that the reasons for retraction seem to vary among countries, but didn’t really have the data. A new paper in the Journal of the Medical Library Association by Kathleen Amos takes a good step toward figuring the country part out.
Amos looked at PubMed-indexed retractions from 2008 to 2012. Here’s what she found: Continue reading Which countries have the most retractions, for which reasons?