Category: by country

Quantum physicists learn about Heisenberg’s (publishing) uncertainty principle the hard way

tsfcoverAs Werner Heisenberg famously conjectured, you can’t measure an atomic particle’s momentum and position at the same time. But perhaps the principle named for the German physicist and godfather of quantum mechanics should be applied to another important scientific truth: you can’t publish the same article in two different but competing journals.

Just ask a group led by Ted Sargent, a prominent physicist at the University of Toronto. He and his colleagues recently lost a paper in Thin Solid Films — which sounds like it ought to be the name of an indie movie company, dibs! — on quantum dot solar cells. (If those sound familiar to readers of this blog, there’s a good reason. We wrote about the retraction of another quantum dot paper, this one in Nature Photonics, in October of this year.)

Sargent’s article, “Advances in colloidal quantum dot solar cells: The depleted-heterojunction device,” which he wrote with colleagues in Spain and Switzerland, appeared in August 2011. According to the notice: Continue reading Quantum physicists learn about Heisenberg’s (publishing) uncertainty principle the hard way

Elsevier editorial system hacked, reviews faked, 11 retractions follow

elsevierFor several months now, we’ve been reporting on variations on a theme: Authors submitting fake email addresses for potential peer reviewers, to ensure positive reviews. In August, for example, we broke the story of a Hyung-In Moon, who has now retracted 24 papers published by Informa because he managed to do his own peer review.

Now, Retraction Watch has learned that the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) was hacked sometime last month, leading to faked peer reviews and retractions — although the submitting authors don’t seem to have been at fault. As of now, eleven papers by authors in China, India, Iran, and Turkey have been retracted from three journals.

Here’s one of two identical notices that have just run in Optics & Laser Technology, for two unconnected papers: Continue reading Elsevier editorial system hacked, reviews faked, 11 retractions follow

Failure at System — systems failure? — leads to duplicate publication, retraction

systemcoverThe journal System evidently needs a new one — at least when it comes to production.

The publication has been forced to retract an article that it published twice — in the same issue.

Here’s what happened: Continue reading Failure at System — systems failure? — leads to duplicate publication, retraction

Two patch-clamping retractions in PNAS and the JCI after first author admits image manipulation

jci1212A group of cardiology researchers formerly of the University of Cologne has retracted two papers, after investigations into allegations of misconduct led to an admission of guilt by one of the lab’s junior members.

Here’s the first retraction, for “Connexin 43 acts as a cytoprotective mediator of signal transduction by stimulating mitochondrial KATP channels in mouse cardiomyocytes,” published last week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation: Continue reading Two patch-clamping retractions in PNAS and the JCI after first author admits image manipulation

Environmental engineer loses paper after co-authors say he didn’t have permission to publish it

j chem tech biotechAn environmental engineer at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University has been forced to retract a paper amid an ethics committee investigation into whether he had the right to publish it.

The Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology retracted a study from the Vitaly Gitis lab just months after its publication: Continue reading Environmental engineer loses paper after co-authors say he didn’t have permission to publish it

Math paper retracted because some of it makes “no sense mathematically”

appmathlett

What do you do when a math paper that contains some “constructions and arguments [that] make no sense mathematically” gets published?

If you’re Applied Mathematics Letters, you retract the paper, “For the origin of new geometry.” Here’s the notice: Continue reading Math paper retracted because some of it makes “no sense mathematically”

“Additionally, the authors were unable to identify” co-author: Another retraction for Lemus

env microWe’ve been following the case of Jesús A. Lemus, the Spanish veterinary researcher with five retractions and two expressions of concern under his belt so far for suspected data fabrication and including a fake author on his papers.

Yes, a fake author. When this story first broke, El Pais called Javier Grande a ” ghost with a good academic background with at least six scientific publications in international journals.”

Grande’s — and Lemus’s — publication count declined by one more yesterday, as Environmental Microbiology retracted a 2007 paper: Continue reading “Additionally, the authors were unable to identify” co-author: Another retraction for Lemus

A new record: A retraction, 27 years later

jsbmbIn October, we noted the apparent record holder for longest time between publication and retraction: 25 years, for “Retention of the 4-pro-R hydrogen atom of mevalonate at C-2,2′ of bacterioruberin in Halobacterium halobium,” published in the Biochemical Journal in 1980 and retracted in 2005. (Although an author requested that another 52-year-old paper be retracted, it remains untouched in the literature.)

That record has now been broken. Congratulations to the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the authors of a December 1985 paper, “Increasing the response rate to cytotoxic chemotherapy by endocrine means.” Here’s the notice, which appears in the January 2013 issue of the journal, making 27 years — and a month, if you’re counting: Continue reading A new record: A retraction, 27 years later

“This publication should be ignored”: Authorship issues, flawed data fell neuro-oncology paper

Neon 2009 regular volume.inddThe Journal of Neuro-Oncology wants you to ignore the following paper: “A single chain (scFv425):sTRAIL fusion protein with specificity for the EGF receptor is effective in vitro but not in an in vivo brain tumor animal model.”

The 2007 article, from a group in The Netherlands, suffered from two fatal problems. According to the retraction notice: Continue reading “This publication should be ignored”: Authorship issues, flawed data fell neuro-oncology paper

Which came first? Plagiarism flap forces retraction of chicken nugget paper

food chem coverIt never pays to take a closer look at the inside of a chicken nugget.

The journal Food Chemistry has retracted a 2010 article by Iranian researchers who claimed to have used spectroscopy to examine the inner workings of breaded-fried chicken nuggets. Trouble was, someone else had already done the work.

Issues with the paper first surfaced in March, in the form of a correction that should have given the editors serious indigestion: Continue reading Which came first? Plagiarism flap forces retraction of chicken nugget paper