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Caught Our Notice: 1,376 words of overlap in paper by food researcher Brian Wansink

Via Wikimedia

Title: Change Their Choice! Changing Behavior Using the CAN Approach and Activism Research

What Caught Our Attention: Food researcher Brian Wansink has had a rough time lately. After researchers began scrutinizing his work, he has racked up five retractions and multiple corrections. (We’re counting one retracted paper twice, as Wansink first retracted and replaced it with a new version, then retracted the replacement.)

These notices haven’t gone unnoticed, either by us or other media outlets — BuzzFeed reported on his most recent retraction this weekend, a paper a critic discussed with us, as well. Yesterday, BuzzFeed also reported that Cornell is investigating. (It wouldn’t be the first time — in April, Cornell announced that it had found evidence of mistakes, not misconduct, in Wansink’s papers.)  Below, we present his 13th correction, for duplicated text — 1,376 words of duplicated text, to be exact.

Continue reading Caught Our Notice: 1,376 words of overlap in paper by food researcher Brian Wansink

Where’s the data? Authors can’t support figures in 2017 kidney paper

Researchers have retracted a 2017 paper exploring a novel approach to treat kidney injury, because three images were “constructed inappropriately.”

That’s about as much as we know: The retraction notice provides few details about the nature of the issue, only that the authors—most of whom work at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey—could not provide the original data for the recently published figures.

The paper, published in American Journal of Physiology – Renal Physiology, was retracted October 1, just over four months after appearing online in mid-May. Continue reading Where’s the data? Authors can’t support figures in 2017 kidney paper

Caught Our Notice: To know if someone’s been vaccinated, just asking isn’t enough

Via Wikimedia

Title: Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Preconception Period Among Women of Reproductive Age in Rural China – A Nationwide Study

What Caught Our Attention: When researchers set out to study hepatitis B among women in rural China, and they wanted to know if the women had been vaccinated against the virus, they simply asked them. While that can sometimes be useful, apparently it was a mistake in this case, as the reliance on patient memory injected too much doubt into these findings.  Continue reading Caught Our Notice: To know if someone’s been vaccinated, just asking isn’t enough

US court issues injunction against OMICS to stop “deceptive practices”

A US government agency has won an initial court ruling against OMICS, which the government says will help stop the academic publisher’s deceptive business practices.

Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it won a preliminary injunction in September in its lawsuit against Srinubabu Gedela, CEO of OMICS Group and other companies.

The lawsuit, filed in August 2016, accused the defendants — which include Gedela and OMICS Group, iMedPub, and Conference Series — of deceptive business practices related to journal publishing and scientific conferences. The FTC alleged the defendants used the names of prominent researchers to draw conference attendees, even though the researchers had not agreed to participate; misled readers about whether articles had been peer reviewed; failed to provide authors with transparent information about publishing fees prior to submission; and presented misleading “impact factors” for journals.

On Sept. 29, Judge Gloria Navarro of the US District Court for the District of Nevada, wrote that evidence submitted by the FTC “is sufficient to support a preliminary conclusion that Defendants made misrepresentations regarding their journal publishing” and conferences, and: Continue reading US court issues injunction against OMICS to stop “deceptive practices”

Publisher issues first retractions for fake peer review, starts new checking policy

The publisher Frontiers has retracted four papers in three of its journals after discovering they had been accepted with fake peer reviews.

The problem of fake reviews has been on the research community’s radar since at least 2014, and several major publishers—including Springer, SAGE and BioMed Central—have retracted hundreds of papers accepted via fake peer reviews. But Gearóid Ó Faoleán, the ethics and integrity manager at Frontiers, told us this is the first time Frontiers had had to issue retractions for this reason.

The papers, published between 2015 and 2017, are from researchers based at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR)–National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST) in Thiruvananthapuram, India. S. Nishanth Kumar is the only author in common to all four paper and a corresponding on two of them; Dileep Kumar, a scientist at CSIR, is a corresponding author on three of the papers.

Ó Faoleán told us: Continue reading Publisher issues first retractions for fake peer review, starts new checking policy

Director of U.S. HHS Office of Research Integrity temporarily removed from post

Kathy Partin

After a tumultuous two years, Kathy Partin is temporarily stepping away from her position as the director of the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

According to an internal personnel announcement forwarded to us, on December 4, Partin will begin a 90-day stint at the Office of the Vice President for Research at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, which trains health professionals to support the U.S. military.

Partin declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), of which the Office of Research Integrity is a part, told us the agency cannot comment on personnel issues.

Linda Schutjer, a former colleague of Partin’s at Colorado State University, told us Partin was asked to leave:

Continue reading Director of U.S. HHS Office of Research Integrity temporarily removed from post

After losing two video game-violence papers, co-author’s weapons paper is flagged

Can seeing a weapon increase aggressive thoughts and behaviors?

A meta-analysis on the so-called “weapons effect” has been flagged with an expression of concern by a SAGE journal, after the researchers discovered errors affecting at least one of the main conclusions.

The paper found that the presence of weapons increased people’s aggressiveness, but not feelings of anger. However, the corresponding author, Arlin James Benjamin, who works at University of Arkansas–Fort Smith, told us:

we would urge considerably more caution in interpreting the impact of weapons on behavioral outcomes based on those initial re-analyses.

Last author Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at the Ohio State University (OSU), was the corresponding author on two now-retracted papers linking video games and violence. Continue reading After losing two video game-violence papers, co-author’s weapons paper is flagged

PLOS ONE retracts two papers one year after author says he okayed the move

PLOS ONE has retracted two 2014 papers from a group of researchers, after an institutional investigation confirmed image duplication. Although the authors initially asked to correct the figures in the two papers, they ultimately agreed with the decision to retract.

Mrinal K. Maiti—an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur and corresponding author on the two now-retracted PLOS ONE papers—also corrected a 2016 paper published in PLOS ONE over figure-related errors. Maiti is the only author in common to all papers.

A spokesperson for the journal told us:
 Continue reading PLOS ONE retracts two papers one year after author says he okayed the move

A physics journal agreed to retract a paper several months ago. It’s still not retracted.

A physics journal says it has planned for several months to retract a 2006 paper by a prominent researcher with multiple retractions, after a concerned reader notified the editor about extensive duplication.

But, more than seven months after receiving the complaint, the journal Thin Solid Films has not yet taken action.

So what’s taking so long?

According to the editor, Joseph Greene, the delay occurred because “the publication team missed the request.”

Duplication allegations have followed the paper’s corresponding author Naba K. Sahoo for the past few years. Sahoo, a top physicist in India, has already had seven papers retracted for duplication—five earlier this year (1, 2), and two last year.

Although we did not hear back from the journal or the publisher, Elsevier, forwarded email correspondence provide insights about the Thin Solid Films paper. Continue reading A physics journal agreed to retract a paper several months ago. It’s still not retracted.

Journal replaces anti-vaccine paper it retracted for missing conflicts, “number of errors”

A journal retracted a paper about how conflicts of interest might be influencing research into the link between vaccines and autism because — wait for it — the authors failed to disclose conflicts of interest.

According to the retraction notice, the editors retracted the paper without the authors’ agreement, because the authors had a host of personal and professional interests in the field they didn’t declare, such as being associated with organizations involved in autism and vaccine safety. What’s more, the article also contained “a number of errors, and mistakes of various types that raise concerns about the validity of the conclusion.”

But now, Science and Engineering Ethics has published a new version of the article that draws similar conclusions to the retracted one, albeit with an updated conflict of interest statement, among other changes. From the abstract of the revised version: Continue reading Journal replaces anti-vaccine paper it retracted for missing conflicts, “number of errors”