Category: by country

Irony? Paper by author whose attorneys sent cease-and-desist letter to Science Fraud retracted

j lipid researchA Brazilian author whose attorneys were the first to send the now-shuttered Science Fraud site a cease-and-desist letter has now had a paper retracted.

As Retraction Watch readers may know, Science Fraud shut down earlier this week in response to legal threats. Those threats were preceded by a cease-and-desist letter last month from attorneys for Rui Curi, of the University of Sao Paulo.

Curi’s work had been scrutinized by Science Fraud in a number of posts, with allegations of duplicated bands and re-used Western blots. With a gnawing suspicion that some of our more erudite readers will take issue with our use of “irony” here, Continue reading Irony? Paper by author whose attorneys sent cease-and-desist letter to Science Fraud retracted

Paper on “evidence for environmental racism” in EPA polluter fines retracted for coding error

nat resources coverA coding switcharoo caused a paper Society & Natural Resources to be retracted. But the authors say that not all is lost, since correcting the data gave them a better understanding of how the the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fines companies that pollute in poor and minority neighborhoods.

The retraction notice reads: Continue reading Paper on “evidence for environmental racism” in EPA polluter fines retracted for coding error

Publisher error leads to retraction, then reinstatement, in agriculture journal

icpcoverHere’s an odd good news/bad news tale from the pages of Industrial Crops and Products. The journal is reinstating a 2011 paper it mistakenly retracted. But, it’s retracting another article from the same author, who tried to grow two peas in the same pod (or something like that).

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Publisher error leads to retraction, then reinstatement, in agriculture journal

Seeing double in Pattern Recognition Letters leads to retraction

patterrecletcoverYou’d think this sort of thing would be, well, obvious to the editors of a journal called Pattern Recognition Letters — could a fox get away with publishing in Henhouse News? — but a group of Lithuanian researchers managed to get a duplicate article into the pages of PRL.

The paper, titled “Application of Bayes linear discriminant functions in image classification,” appeared in the February 2011 issue of PRL. But a very similar version already had been published in a special meeting issue of another journal, Procedia Environmental Sciences. Both are Elsevier titles.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Seeing double in Pattern Recognition Letters leads to retraction

Former Harvard dental school researcher committed misconduct: ORI

Martin Biosse-Duplan
Martin Biosse-Duplan

Last week was a busy one at the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI), at least judging by how many cases they posted. There were sanctions against researchers at Ohio State, Texas Tech, and the Gladstone Institutes, as we reported. And it turns out there was another case closed, of a former Harvard dental school research fellow, The Scientist reports.

According to the ORI, Martin Biosse-Duplan “engaged in research misconduct in research supported by National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant R01 AR054450.”

The misconduct involved a lab presentation and two published abstracts: Continue reading Former Harvard dental school researcher committed misconduct: ORI

Retraction three for Milena Penkowa, for diabetes-exercise study

diabetesMilena Penkowa, the former University of Copenhagen scientist found by her university to have embezzled grant funds and to have possibly committed misconduct in 15 papers, has another retraction.

An international panel released its findings in July, as Nature reported then: Continue reading Retraction three for Milena Penkowa, for diabetes-exercise study

Retractions three and four for Hopkins cancer biomarker group

ccrA group of cancer researchers formerly centered at Johns Hopkins have retracted two more studies. The previous two retracted papers — one of which was the focus of a lawsuit — were about prostate cancer, while the new retractions are of papers about colon cancer.

Here’s the notice for one paper: Continue reading Retractions three and four for Hopkins cancer biomarker group

Neuroscientist made up data in NIH grant applications, says ORI

muchowskip111
Paul Muchowski, via Gladstone Institute

Paul Muchowski, a neuroscience researcher at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease in San Francisco, faked data in multiple grant applications, according to findings released today by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

In a funded NIH grant, R01 NS054753-06A1, and two submitted grant applications, R01 NS054753-06 and R01 NS047237-06, ORI says that Muchowski “knowingly and intentionally” committed “research misconduct by falsifying and fabricating data” as follows:

ORI sanctions former Texas Tech postdoc for falsification, fabrication, plagiarism

biomed chromatographyThe Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has sanctioned a former Texas Tech postdoc for using data that had actually been generated before he joined the lab in a paper as if it were new.

Shuang-Qing Zhang, according to today’s announcement by the ORI, “engaged in research misconduct by the falsification and fabrication of plagiarized data” in a paper he claimed to have written with his supervisor, Reza Mehvar, “Determination of dextra-methylprednisolone conjugate with glycine linker in rat plasma and liver by high-performance liquid chromatography and its application in pharmacokinetics,” first published online in Biomedical Chromatography in 2009. [see update at end of post]

The work was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant R01 GM069869. The ORI found that Zhang had: Continue reading ORI sanctions former Texas Tech postdoc for falsification, fabrication, plagiarism

Paper on how swine flu might spread to birds retracted for error

eidcoverEmerging Infectious Diseases, a CDC journal, is retracting a 2010 paper about swine flu by a group of Minnesota researchers who acknowledged misinterpreting their results.

The study, a letter titled “Triple Reassortant Swine Influenza A (H3N2) Virus in Waterfowl,” claimed to shed new light on how flu viruses might jump between species: Continue reading Paper on how swine flu might spread to birds retracted for error