Category: by country

Retraction appears for stem cell researcher found to have used funds for his company’s gain

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Gerold Feuer in 2008, via Upstate

A stem cell journal is retracting a paper by Gerold Feuer, a researcher at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse who was also found to have misused grants.

The Feuer story is complicated. Heralded in 2008 for landing $6.2 million in grants from the New York Stem Cell Board, Feuer was suspended in October 2010 while the university investigated allegations he had misused funds, specifically to funnel state dollars to HuMurine, a company he founded in 2008. In December 2010, Upstate said they had found evidence he had committed 53 acts of financial misconduct, and dismissed him.

From an August 2012 court ruling on a case Feuer brought to fight that dismissal: Continue reading Retraction appears for stem cell researcher found to have used funds for his company’s gain

Aoki notches fourth retraction for image problems

jbc1013We have a fourth retraction in the Journal of Biochemistry for Naohito Aoki, a Japanese researcher and former postdoc in a German lab, whose images have been called into question but whose retraction notices were scant. In this case, however, the journal, while not exactly overbrimming with information about the article, at least gives us some sense of what’s going on.

Aoki worked in the lab of Axel Ullrich, of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, and appeared on two retracted articles in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) with his mentor, along with a third with a co-author from Japan, Tsukasa Matsuda. Although those notices don’t say anything about the reason for the retractions — this was before the JBC started providing such information — Ulrich told us that Aoki had been manipulating images. Continue reading Aoki notches fourth retraction for image problems

Second retraction for chemist from Portugal who forged names, data

chemengjrnChemical Engineering Journal has retracted a 2011 article from a group of researchers in Portugal after determining that the scientists made up their data.

The clincher: According to the journal, the researchers did not possess the proper lab equipment to perform the study as reported.

The article, “Detoxification of high-strength liquid pollutants in an ozone bubble column reactor: Gas–liquid flow patterns, interphase mass transfer and chemical depuration,” appeared in August 2011 and was written by Rodrigo J. G. Lopes and Rosa M. Quinta-Ferreira, from the Group on Environmental, Reaction and Separation Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Coimbra. The paper has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, both times by the original authors.

Here’s what the abstract has to say about the work: Continue reading Second retraction for chemist from Portugal who forged names, data

Chemist loses two papers, one each for plagiarism and duplication

chem phys lettersA researcher at Shanxi Normal University in China has notched two retractions, once for plagiarism and one for duplication.

Here’s the most recent notice, which appeared in Chemical Physics Letters on September 25: Continue reading Chemist loses two papers, one each for plagiarism and duplication

Saudi journal retracts paper on new chemicals for being, well, not new

JSaudChemIrony alert: If you’re going to publish a paper on purportedly new molecules, please try to make sure those substances are indeed novel. Here’s case were that wasn’t quite so.

The Journal of Saudi Chemical Society has retracted a 2011 paper by a researcher who lifted the entire article from a previously published paper by someone else.

The paper in question, “Synthesis and antimicrobial activity of some new quinazolin-4(3H)-one derivatives,” came from Adnan Kadi at Kind Saud University in Riyadh. But according to the retraction notice, only a few words in that title — “some” and “quinazolin” were accurate. “New,” certainly not. (We suppose “derivatives” hits the mark, but for the wrong reason.) Continue reading Saudi journal retracts paper on new chemicals for being, well, not new

Cardiac arrestees: Questions surface about Heart paper from Italian group that faces charges

heartcoverWe don’t usually cover “pretractions” (see #5 for why), but our friend Larry Husten over at Forbes has a story today about what appears to be a dead paper walking.

The article, in Heart, comes from a group of prominent researchers in Italy who have been arrested for possibly failing to adequately consent their patients, among other potential misdeeds.

According to Husten, the 2010 article in question, “A randomised trial of target-vessel versus multi-vessel revascularisation in ST-elevation myocardial infarction: major adverse cardiac events during long-term follow-up,” by Maria Grazia Modena (a past president of the Italian Society of Cardiology) and colleagues, may have been grossly misrepresented to the journal. Continue reading Cardiac arrestees: Questions surface about Heart paper from Italian group that faces charges

Publishing in triplicate leads to polymer paper retraction

j app polymerA chemist at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia has lost a paper because it was the third time he had published some of it.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Publishing in triplicate leads to polymer paper retraction

Journal withdraws diabetes paper written by apparently bogus authors

BBRCTalk about a Trojan Horse.

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications has withdrawn a paper it published earlier this year on metabolic proteins linked to diabetes, not because the article was bogus but because the authors appear to have been. The work itself is accurate — indeed, it likely belongs to a Harvard scientist, Bruce Spiegelman, who’d presented his data on the subject several times recently and was in the process of preparing his results for publication. We’ve written about researchers trying to punk journals with faked articles, and about a researcher who apparently made up a co-author, but here’s something new!

Nature has the story. According to Nature, in July Spiegelman: Continue reading Journal withdraws diabetes paper written by apparently bogus authors

Journal of Virtual Studies retracts Second Life paper that was, um, virtually on its second life

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Nikolaos Pellas

Second Life is a virtual reality site in which you can “Experience endless surprises and unexpected delights in a world imagined and created by people like you.” Only Nikolaos Pellas, of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is now having two papers on virtual reality retracted because he apparently experienced endless surprises and unexpected delights in a world imagined and created by other people.

Here’s one notice from the Journal of Virtual Studies: Continue reading Journal of Virtual Studies retracts Second Life paper that was, um, virtually on its second life

Plant journals uproot duplicate publications that authors used as a hedge

pmbpA group of researchers in India has lost two articles in the plant literature for shenanigans with duplicate submission.

One article, “Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation and efficient regeneration of a timber yielding plant Dalbergia sissoo Roxb,” appeared online last June in the journal. The authors were from institutions in Orissa.

According to the retraction notice, the paper was a case of “thanks, but no thanks.” What’s worse, the researchers seem to be under the impression that they’ve done nothing wrong. Because they said so. Continue reading Plant journals uproot duplicate publications that authors used as a hedge