We have an update on the complicated story of Milena Penkowa and Bente Klarlund Pedersen.
Two papers coauthored by the pair — who have both been found guilty of scientific dishonesty by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty — have been retracted by the FASEB Journal.
Here’s one notice (both are unfortunately behind a paywall): Continue reading Penkowa-Pedersen paper retracted nearly three years after being subjected to Notice of Concern
Back in August we — and others — wrote about a paper in Organometallics for which one member of the study team appeared to have instructed a co-author to pad the article with artificial results. From the supplemental information (SI) of that paper:
Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis…
Now comes a correction statement from the group that can only be described as “mega.” First reported last month by Chemical & Engineering News, the lengthy notice begins: Continue reading Authors of “just make up an…analysis” Organometallics paper issue mega-correction
Here’s a nice case of a journal taking pains to clear the name of an author.
Last summer we wrote about a case of plagiarism involving two authors from India who’d published a paper on biometrics in the Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences.
Now — seven months later, we’ll note — one of those authors has gotten a reprieve. A notice in the journal states that the researcher had nothing to do with the misconduct.
At the time, the notice for the paper, “Multiple facial soft biometrics for person identification system,” read: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Journal clears unknowing author of plagiarism
A suggestion: When you title your paper “Joined at the hip?”, better make sure it’s not too close for comfort to someone else’s work.
Alas, an Idaho anthropologist failed to heed that lesson when she published “Joined at the hip? A paleoepidemiological study of developmental dysplasia of the hip and its relation to swaddling practices among indigenous peoples of North America,” in the American Journal of Human Biology last October.
The article, by Samantha Blatt, of Boise State University, found that: Continue reading Hip disjoint: Dysplasia paper lacks proper attribution, earns retraction
A group of bird researchers in Korea has lost their 2006 paper on DNA barcoding of that country’s avian species because they feathered the article with material from others.
The paper, “DNA barcoding Korean birds,” appeared in Molecules and Cells, published by Springer for the Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology and has been cited 88 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the abstract: Continue reading Clone call for bird gene bar-coding paper
An international team of researchers from the NIH, Harvard, the University of Michigan, and two Chinese universities — Fourth Military Medical University and China Medical University — has retracted their 2012 paper in Nature after they — and a number of other groups — were unable to reproduce the key results.
The original abstract for “The NAD-dependent deacetylase SIRT2 is required for programmed necrosis” said that the findings
implicate SIRT2 as an important regulator of programmed necrosis and indicate that inhibitors of this deacetylase may constitute a novel approach to protect against necrotic injuries, including ischaemic stroke and myocardial infarction.
But here’s the notice, by corresponding author Toren Finkel and colleagues: Continue reading Nature paper retracted following multiple failures to reproduce results
A group of cancer researchers in China has lost their 2013 paper in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Pathology after someone tipped off the journal that the data were copied.
The article, “Importance of spondin 1 and cellular retinoic acid binding protein 1 in the clinical diagnosis of ovarian cancer,” came from Ting-Ting Jiao, Ye-Min Zhang, Lin Yao, Yuan Gao, Jian Sun, Dong-Fang Zou, Guo-Ping Wu, Dan Wang, Jun Ou, Ning Hui, who work at various Shanghai hospitals.
Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading “Knowledgeable informant” topples ovarian cancer paper
We have an update on the case of Pankaj Dhonukshe, a scientist about whom we reported in November. Utrecht University has found that Dhonukshe, a former researcher at the Dutch university, committed “a violation of academic integrity” in work that led to a number of papers, including one published in Nature and once since retracted from Cell.
Here’s the university’s statement: Continue reading Utrecht University finds “violation of academic integrity” by former researcher
A 2013 article in Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Journal of Microbiology has been retracted for a few reasons.
Here’s the notice for “The effects of each beta-glucosidase gene deletion on cellulase gene regulation in Neurospora crassa:” Continue reading “Inconsistent errors” and unknowing authors force retraction of microbiology paper
A leading chemist at the University of Washington, Larry Dalton, has retracted a 2004 study in Inorganica Chimica Acta, marking his second retraction in the journal in 47 years.
Here’s the new notice: Continue reading Leading chemist notches two retractions in one journal, separated by 47 years