The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry has retracted three papers by Dipak Das, the resveratrol researcher found to have committed more than 100 counts of fraud by the University of Connecticut.
Journal editor James Seiber writes: Continue reading Hold the broccoli, garlic, and wine: Three Dipak Das retractions appear in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
The journal Breast Cancer: Targets and Therapy, a Dove Medical Press title, has retracted four articles from a group of Indian researchers over what it said were “unacceptable levels” of duplication with other published work. (Such a construction leaves us wondering what might constitute “acceptable levels” of duplication, but that’s for a different post.)
The articles were submitted by Rajeev Singhai, who is listed as being with Grant Medical College and the Sir J J Group of Hospitals, in Mumbai. According to his After College page, Singhai received his PhD in 2011 and is now a research fellow.
As the notice states: Continue reading Journal pulls four breast cancer papers for duplication
The Spanish press has picked up on the story of a prominent veterinary scientist in that country who has been accused of research misconduct.
According to El Pais, the researcher, Jesús Ángel Lemus, whose areas of interest include the effects of toxins on birds, ran into trouble in December when colleagues complained to the Ethics Committee of the Higher Council for Scientific Research about the reproducibility of his results and other problems. That triggered an inquiry by the CSIC into Lemus’ body of work, an investigation that, evidently, could not find a body.
Per El Pais (courtesy of Google Translate): Continue reading Spanish veterinary researcher under suspicion of creating “ghost” author, fabricating data
The American Heart Association, which publishes a number of journals, has issued an Expression of Concern about five papers in three of their publications, following allegations of image manipulation. All of the papers include Hiroaki Matsubara, of Kyoto Prefectural University, as a co-author.
The notice begins:
It has come to the attention of the American Heart Association (AHA), in a public manner, that there are questions concerning a number of figures in several AHA journals’ articles…
The “public manner” was three posts last year on the Abnormal Science blog, available here, here and here, alleging that images were manipulated in the manuscripts, and that histology slides were reused.
The notice continues: Continue reading Five papers by prominent cardiologist Hiroaki Matsubara subject to Expression of Concern
There’s a bit more this afternoon on the story of Yoshitaka Fujii, the Japanese anesthesiologist accused of fraud and other misconduct that we reported on yesterday.
The British journal Anaesthesia, which has been looking into Fujii’s research record, has posted four articles and editorials about the case and related issues on its website. One in particular is remarkable for its conclusions. Written by a UK anesthesiologist named John Carlisle, the article claims to have analyzed 169 randomized controlled trials that Fujii conducted between 1991 and 2011.
According to the abstract (which we formatted for readability, and which should be online shortly, we’re told): Continue reading Update on Fujii: Anesthesia journal finds overwhelming statistical evidence of data fabrication
An ecology researcher in the Congo has found himself at the center of a plagiarism scandal that has felled seven of his papers.
As Science reports today, Serge Valentin Pangou’s work began unraveling in August 2011 after Wageningen University ecologist Patrick Jansen thought a paper he’d been asked to review for the International Journal of Biodiversity and Conservation seemed familiar — because he’d written many of the same words in a 2007 paper in Conservation Biology. He ran the manuscript through the plagiarism detection software Turnitin, and sure enough, it was about 90% identical.
Unfortunately for Pangou, Jansen’s co-author on the Conservation Biology paper was Pierre-Michel Forget, whose father, as Science notes, “was a well-known private detective in France.” Forget and Jansen took a careful look at a number of Pangou’s papers, Continue reading Plagiarism leads to seven retractions (and counting) in the conservation literature
Blood Cells, Molecules, and Diseases (that’s one title) has retracted a 2011 paper, “Comparative proteomics reveals deficiency of NHE-1 (Slc9a1) in RBCs from the beta-adducin knockout mouse model of hemolytic anemia,” after learning from a reader that the data it contained were previously published by a competing publication.
As the notice explains: Continue reading Journal yanks anemia paper over duplicate data
We have learned that a widely published Japanese anesthesiologist is under investigation by his university over concerns that he engaged in repeated fraud for decades that has tainted roughly 180 articles—many of which may be retracted as a result.
In a related move, the journal Clinical Therapeutics is retracting papers by the researcher, Yoshitaka Fujii, most recently of Toho University, in Tokyo. Judy Pachella, managing editor of the journal, confirmed the retractions but would not state how many papers were affected. Clinical Therapeutics published 17 articles by Fujii, between 2003 and 2010.
If that headline has you scratching your, well, head, we don’t blame you. After all, case studies are, by definition, unique — but not this one.
Neurological Sciences, the official journal of the Italian Society of Neurology, has retracted a 2009 article by a Korean scientist after learning that the manuscript contained elements of a 2007 publication in a different publication.
According to the notice: Continue reading Neuro journal retracts case study with redundant data
Bharat B. Aggarwal, the MD Anderson researcher under investigation at his institution over concerns of image manipulation, has withdrawn a second paper, although you’d never know why from the statement.
The notice for the article, “Evidence for the critical roles of NF-κB p65 and specificity proteins in the apoptosis-inducing activity of proteasome inhibitors in leukemia cells,” is pretty minimal: Continue reading Another withdrawal by MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, again for unclear reasons