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Nobel Prize winners correct the literature, too

Paul Nurse

If you’re ever cringing at the thought of having to correct a paper, here’s a story that may help you work through that pain.

Paul Nurse shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 2001. While holding posts at Oxford University, the Rockefeller Institute and elsewhere, and now as director of the Francis Crick Institute, he has continued doing research. And earlier this month, he corrected a 2017 paper in the Journal of Cell Science, “Screening and purification of natural products from actinomycetes that affect the cell shape of fission yeast.”

Here’s the correction notice: Continue reading Nobel Prize winners correct the literature, too

Former VA postdoc committed misconduct, banned from agency research for four years

A former postdoc at the U.S. VA Health Care System in Albuquerque, N.M., committed misconduct in three papers, the agency announced today.

Alba Chavez-Dozal, who studied the basic science underpinnings of infectious diseases, had three papers retracted between 2015 and 2016. In findings dated July 18, 2018, but released today, the VA said that Chavez-Dozal, “a post-doctoral research fellow who formerly held a VA without compensation appointment, engaged in research misconduct by intentionally and/or knowingly:” Continue reading Former VA postdoc committed misconduct, banned from agency research for four years

Court orders journal to retract a paper after supplement seller sues

An Italian court has ordered a journal to retract a paper. But it hasn’t just yet.

Instead, the Journal of Ovarian Research has published an expression of concern about the 2012 paper, replete with obfuscating legal language.

Here’s the text:

Continue reading Court orders journal to retract a paper after supplement seller sues

Medical ethicist: “I now understand that I should not have been re-using material”

Ezio Di Nucci

A researcher in medical ethics has retracted two papers within the last two years after admitting to reusing material from previous publications.

Ezio Di Nucci, based at the University of Copenhagen, claims he “had misunderstood the relevant practices.”

The first retraction, issued in 2017 by the Journal of Value Inquiry, notes the paper “constituted the third verbatim publication of the same text.” The paper “Strategic Bombing, Causal Beliefs, and Double Effect” has only been cited once since it was published in 2016, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

After that retraction, Di Nucci told us he requested the retraction of a second 2016 article, published by Minds and Machines. The retraction notice for “Habits, Priming and the Explanation of Mindless Action” — which has not yet been indexed — states that “the author misunderstood the practice of re-using one’s own material and apologizes for any inconvenience caused.”

Di Nucci told us:

Continue reading Medical ethicist: “I now understand that I should not have been re-using material”

Over authors’ objections, PLOS ONE retracts paper claiming Shroud of Turin showed evidence of trauma

A year ago, PLOS ONE published a study claiming that there was strong evidence that a person wrapped in the Shroud of Turin — according to lore, the burial shroud of Jesus Christ — had suffered “strong polytrauma.”

Today, they retracted it.

According to the retraction notice for “Atomic resolution studies detect new biologic evidences on the Turin Shroud,” Continue reading Over authors’ objections, PLOS ONE retracts paper claiming Shroud of Turin showed evidence of trauma

Are non-breadwinners more likely to cheat? 2015 study said yes; newly corrected version says “maybe”

A few years ago, you may remember some news headlines discussing a study that suggested people — especially men — are more likely to cheat if their spouses earn more money. Well, it turns out those findings are less convincing than they initially appeared. But they’re not getting retracted.

In a six-page correction notice, author Christin Munsch at the University of Connecticut explains that she made “several errors related to the coding of missing data,” which weakened most of her conclusions in the original paper.

The paper earned some attention from mainstream news outlets. For example, in 2015, The Washington Post wrote:

Continue reading Are non-breadwinners more likely to cheat? 2015 study said yes; newly corrected version says “maybe”

A university is revoking a student’s PhD — but not because of misconduct

Earlier this month, Tokushima University in Japan announced it was revoking a student’s PhD degree — but for a somewhat unusual reason.

The student didn’t appear to commit misconduct. Rather, the authors discovered a series of errors that invalidated the paper’s central conclusion.

The case has us wondering about how universities should respond when they discover some of a PhD student’s research is no longer valid — especially when there is no suspicion of misconduct.

Based on our Google translation of the more detailed description of what happened, the university concluded the problem was the result of the authors’ “simple mistakes:”

Continue reading A university is revoking a student’s PhD — but not because of misconduct

Study claiming “abortion reversal” is safe and effective temporarily withdrawn for ethical issues

A journal has temporarily removed a study by a researcher who has long championed a highly controversial “abortion reversal” method over concerns about its ethical approval.

The study, “A Case Series Detailing the Successful Reversal of the Effects of Mifepristone Using Progesterone,” appeared in Issues In Law And Medicine in April. Its first author, George Delgado, is the medical director of Culture of Life Family Services, which operates a ‘‘crisis pregnancy center,’ according to a 2017 New York Times Magazine article about “abortion-pill reversal.”

Medical abortion consists of two pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, taken some time apart. In order to see if its effects could be undone, here’s what the authors of the withdrawn study say they did: Continue reading Study claiming “abortion reversal” is safe and effective temporarily withdrawn for ethical issues

UK House of Commons committee wants to make sure “university investigations into research misconduct are handled appropriately”

As Retraction Watch readers may recall, the UK’s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has been holding an inquiry into scientific misconduct for well over a year. During that inquiry, we submitted written evidence including some statistics about how the UK’s retraction rate compared to other countries, and our Ivan Oransky gave oral testimony late last year.

Today, the committee released a report of its findings, along with several recommendations. Among them are for all UK universities to “establish a national Research Integrity Committee to provide a means of verifying that university investigations into research misconduct are handled appropriately.”

Norman Lamb, chair of the committee, said in a statement:

While most universities publish an annual report on research integrity, six years from signing a Concordat which recommends doing so it is not yet consistent across the sector. It’s not a good look for the research community to be dragging its heels on this, particularly given research fraud can quite literally become a matter of life and death.

We asked C. K. Gunsalus, who serves as director of the National Center for Professional & Research Ethics and who has studied institutional integrity for decades, for her take on the report.

C. K. Gunsalus

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s Research Integrity: Sixth Report of Session 2017-19 Report is both good news and bad news. The good news is that the report crisply lays out the importance of a number of important challenges to research integrity, not only in the UK, but for all research communities internationally: Continue reading UK House of Commons committee wants to make sure “university investigations into research misconduct are handled appropriately”

University of Liverpool reverses course, names researcher guilty of misconduct

Daniel Antoine

A few weeks ago, we received a press release that gave us pause: The University of Liverpool said it had found one of its researchers guilty of research misconduct — but did not say who, nor which papers might be involved.

Now, less than one month later, the university is naming the researcher, and identifying a paper that it has asked the journal to retract.

After we covered the opaque release, we received some tips that the scientist might be Daniel Antoine, who studies liver damage. Last week, Liverpool confirmed that Antoine is the researcher in question.

After he left Liverpool, Antoine took a position at the University of Edinburgh. However, the faculty page is now blank, and a spokesperson told Retraction Watch he is “no longer employed by the University”:

Continue reading University of Liverpool reverses course, names researcher guilty of misconduct