Jens Förster, a social scientist accused of research misconduct, has turned down a highly coveted — and well-endowed — professorship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Foster explained his decision to decline the 5 million Euro award in a post on his personal website: Continue reading Beleaguered Förster turns down prestigious professorship, citing personal toll
A 2014 Cancer Cell paper became the subject of an erratum in January 2015, shortly after PubPeer members began criticizing the data. However, many issues brought up by commenters weren’t addressed in the correction notice, including a figure that might be two experiments spliced together to look like one.
The paper, led by Guido Franzoso at Imperial College London, claims that a new cancer drug called DTP3 kills myeloma cells “without causing any toxic side effects,” according to a press release from the school. Guido Franzoso is the founder of Kesios Therapeutics, a drug company which is set to begin clinical trials on DTP3.
The correction indicates that Western blots were cropped badly, which omitted several panels discussed in the text, while an “extra time point” was included accidentally. An antibody was also omitted from the description of the procedure.
PubPeer commenters have noticed additional issues, such as a criticism of figure 3D, which were not included or changed in this correction.
Here’s the correction for “Cancer-Selective Targeting of the NF-κB Survival Pathway with GADD45β/MKK7 Inhibitors”: Continue reading Cancer Cell issues big correction over “incorrectly cropped” figures, other issues
The Free University of Amsterdam found Peter Nijkamp, one of the nation’s leading economists who has lost several papers for self-plagiarism, has been found guilty of “questionable research practices,” according to the newly released results of an investigation.
Nijkamp has published a strongly worded criticism of the report (at least according to Google Translate, since his writing is in Dutch).
According to independent student publication Ad Valvas, the commission, led by Jaap Zwemmer, a professor emeritus at the University of Amsterdam, found Nijkamp was guilty of “questionable research practices.” University rector Frank van der Duyn Schouten, on the other hand, said in an official statement that there was “insufficient basis” to claim questionable research practices for each article.
Continue reading University finds Dutch economist guilty of misconduct; he responds
Henk Buck, a Dutch chemist who once claimed he could cure AIDS, is back, publishing a long explanation of why he was right all along in a journal by what Jeffrey Beall calls a possible predatory publisher.
Buck spent a few months in 1990 as a hero. In April of that year, he and his team published a paper in Science that claimed they could prevent HIV from infecting human cells. Buck went on a press blitz, appearing on TV and the radio claiming that there would be a treatment for AIDS “in a few years,” according to an 1991 comment published in Science.
Like many things that sound too good to be true, the AIDS cure was a fraud. Continue reading After 25 years, AIDS fraud comes back swinging
A group in the Netherlands has retracted a case study on the diarrheal pathogen Campylobacter jejuni, commonly found in animal feces, after repeated tests showed the bacteria was actually C. fetus, which also causes spontaneous abortion in cows and sheep.
The 46-year-old man who had previously had an aortic valve replacement came to the doctors with endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart. Initial tests showed that it was due to a C. jejuni infection, which often lives in chickens, wombats, kangaroos, and sheep.
Only a few cases of endocarditis caused by C. jejuni had ever been reported. Unfortunately, a thorough followup made it clear that a different pathogen was at play. Let’s consider this retraction a model for all others in its clarity and thoroughness.
Take it away, notice for “Aortic Homograft Endocarditis Caused by Campylobacter jejuni“: Continue reading Authors issue a model retraction for mistaken bacterial identity
Retired Dutch anthropologist Mart Bax made a career out of making up papers, many of them on the Bosnian genocide.
He retired from the Free University in Amsterdam in 2002. It wasn’t until 2013 that the university published a report indicating that Bax never published 61 of the papers he listed on his CV, and many of the real articles were based on fabricated data.
Publisher Taylor and Francis retracted one of Bax’s papers from Ethnic and Racial Studies in April. Now they’re retracting a second, from Ethnos, using almost identical language.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Second retraction appears for Mart Bax
Most of the authors of two Molecular Cell papers have retracted them after becoming aware of inappropriate image manipulation by the first author of both — who refused to sign the notices.
One of the papers, “Role of the SEL1L:LC3-I Complex as an ERAD Tuning Receptor in the Mammalian ER,” earned first author Riccardo Bernasconi, who successfully defended his PhD in 2010, the STSBC-Roche Diagnostics award in 2012. Here’s the notice for that paper: Continue reading Researchers retract paper for which first author won an award — but won’t sign notice
Fuel, an Elsevier title, has pulled an article on coal pollution because the authors took much of the work from an earlier paper of theirs in another journal.
The article, “Co-firing of coal and biomass: Development of a conceptual model for ash formation prediction,” was published in September by a group from Australia and The Netherlands.
According to the notice: Continue reading Non-renewable resource: Fuel yanks paper for duplication
A retraction has appeared for Jens Förster, the former University of Amsterdam social psychologist whose work has come under serious scrutiny by two official committees.
Here’s the notice for 2012’s “Sense Creative! The Impact of Global and Local Vision, Hearing, Touching, Tasting and Smelling on Creative and Analytic Thought,” a paper which first appeared in Social Psychological and Personality Science:
Continue reading Retraction appears for social psychologist Jens Förster
Diederik Stapel, the Dutch social psychologist and admitted data fabricator — and owner of 54 retraction notices — is now teaching at a college in the town of Tilburg.
According to Omroep Brabant, Stapel was offered the job as a kind of adjunct at Fontys Academy for Creative Industries to teach social philosophy. The site quotes a Nick Welman explaining the rationale for hiring Stapel (per Google Translate): Continue reading Curtain up on second act for Dutch fraudster Stapel: College teacher