Category: by country

Hey authors, “Renewable Energy” doesn’t mean you can recycle words

renewableenergycoverRenewable Energy may cover conservation, but that doesn’t mean it expects its authors to recycle their own words. The Elsevier journal is retracting a biodiesel paper it published in February 2012 by a group of Chinese researchers who published much the same work in another title a month later. That periodical, the Journal of the American Oil Chemists Society, from Springer, has retracted its version as well.

Here’s the notice in Renewable Energy: Continue reading Hey authors, “Renewable Energy” doesn’t mean you can recycle words

The 39 retractions: Stapel’s count rises again

stapel_npcIt’s getting hard to keep up. A day ago, we noted that Diederik Stapel’s retraction count had risen to 38. But later in the day, we heard about number 39, from the European Journal of Social Psychology.

Here’s the notice for “Making sense of war: Using the interpretation comparison model to understand the Iraq conflict”: Continue reading The 39 retractions: Stapel’s count rises again

Clare Francis scores a bullseye: Journal of Cell Biology paper retracted for image manipulation

jcbIf you’re a journal editor or publisher, there’s a good chance your email inbox has seen its share of emails from “Clare Francis,” who has been crusading against text and image duplication in papers for some years now. Some editors have grown quite weary of those emails, sometimes because they don’t want to deal with anonymous whistleblowers, and sometimes because they have found Clare’s claims to be without merit.

But the Journal of Cellular Biology is one journal that has apparently continued to take them seriously. Today, they retract “Follistatin induction by nitric oxide through cyclic GMP: a tightly regulated signaling pathway that controls myoblast fusion,” a 2006 paper about which Francis first raised concerns in early November. Here’s the notice, one of those wonderfully detailed ones that make us squeal like schoolgirls meeting the Beatles: Continue reading Clare Francis scores a bullseye: Journal of Cell Biology paper retracted for image manipulation

Plague paper partially retracted

iandi213coverPartial retractions — as opposed corrections or the full monty —  are unusual events in scientific publishing. But they appear to come in twos.

The journal Infection and Immunity, the work of whose editor, Ferric Fang, is much admired by this blog, has a fascinating example of the breed in its February issue.

The article in question, by a group from the University of Kentucky in Lexington led by Susan Straley, appeared online in 2007. It was titled “yadBC of Yersinia pestis, a New Virulence Determinant for Bubonic Plague,” and, as the words suggest, involved a gene marker for the virulence of plague. Or so it initially seemed.

But according to the partial retraction, the researchers are walking back one of their main claims. Consider: Continue reading Plague paper partially retracted

Stapel retraction count rises to 38

stapel_npcDiederik Stapel’s 35th through 38th retractions have appeared, all in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Two of the notices — for “The self salience model of other-to-self effects: Integrating principles of self-enhancement, complementarity, and imitation” (cited 31 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge) and “Distinguishing stereotype threat from priming effects: On the role of the social self and threat-based concerns” (cited 20 times) — read as follows: Continue reading Stapel retraction count rises to 38

Retraction six appears for Jesús Angel Lemus

royal lettersJesús A. Lemus, he of the likely ghost author and questionable data, has earned his sixth retraction, this one in Biology Letters.

Here’s the notice for “Stress associated with group living in a long-lived bird:” Continue reading Retraction six appears for Jesús Angel Lemus

Lance Armstrong in the scientific literature: Questions abound

lanceinlab
Lance Armstrong in a UT lab

We’ve had plenty of big stories here at Retraction Watch this week, but even we must admit that the world’s biggest retractions — by press attention, anyway — have been in sports: Lance Armstrong (thanks, Oprah!) and Manti Te’o (thanks, Deadspin!).

We don’t have anything to add to the Te’o story, but a reader reminded us that there was a 2005 paper about Armstrong in the Journal of Applied Physiology that was vigorously questioned in the years following. Here’s the abstract of “Improved muscular efficiency displayed as Tour de France champion matures:” Continue reading Lance Armstrong in the scientific literature: Questions abound

Look ma, no guidelines! Paper on unpublished fetal surgery recommendations retracted

clinperinatcoverClinics in Perinatology has a rather intriguing retraction.

The paper in question was a June 2012 review by a group of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco’s division of pediatric surgery, titled “Maternal-Fetal Surgery:  History and General Considerations.”

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Look ma, no guidelines! Paper on unpublished fetal surgery recommendations retracted

Duplication leads to retraction of 1997 paper on heart disease genes

crit rev clin lab sciA top cardiology researcher, Robert Hegele, of the Robarts Research Institute at the University of Western Ontario, has retracted a 15-year-old review after editors were made aware that it was “very similar” to another of his reviews.

Here’s the December 2012 notice for the paper, which has been cited 23 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Duplication leads to retraction of 1997 paper on heart disease genes

Neuroscientists retract Cell autism model paper for “improperly assembled” figures

cell 1-17-13A group of authors have retracted a Cell paper describing a mouse model of autism because of image problems.

The senior author on the paper — there were 22 altogether — is Paul Worley of Johns Hopkins. Here’s the notice for “Enhanced Polyubiquitination of Shank3 and NMDA Receptor in a Mouse Model of Autism:” Continue reading Neuroscientists retract Cell autism model paper for “improperly assembled” figures