Category: united states

Science hasn’t retracted paper that university, NSF investigators wanted withdrawn

Stefan Franzen, via NCSU
Stefan Franzen, via NCSU

On Saturday, we highlighted a great two-part series by Joseph Neff of the News & Observer diving into the story of “Stefan Franzen, a chemistry professor at North Carolina State University who has been trying unsuccessfully to correct the scientific record.” Today, that series became a three-part series, with a new story revealing that an investigation by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) had found “reckless” falsification in the work in question.

One of the key papers in the controversy was published by Lina A. Gugliotti, Daniel L. Feldheim, and Bruce E. Eaton in Science in 2004 and cited 125 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. (Eaton is now at the University of Colorado at Boulder.) In 2011, Nature reported on the situation: Continue reading Science hasn’t retracted paper that university, NSF investigators wanted withdrawn

Neurology expresses concern over dementia study after authors report error in analysis

neurologyNeurology has issued an expression of concern over a 2013 article by a group of scientists in The Netherlands and the United States who found a potentially devastating error in their analysis.

The article, “Structural and functional brain connectivity in presymptomatic familial frontotemporal dementia,” came from the lab of John C. van Swieten, of Erasmus University in The Netherlands. According to the abstract of the article:  Continue reading Neurology expresses concern over dementia study after authors report error in analysis

Remedial math lesson: When does one reference equal an entire paper?

ImageA higher-ed journal has retracted a recent paper by a New Jersey scholar who failed to adequately cite one of her sources.

Trouble is, the researcher did reference the article more than once — raising the question of whether a retraction, rather than a correction, was the right move.

The paper was written by Lynne Kowski, a professor of mathematics at Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey,  and it appeared online in November 2013 in the Community College Journal of Research and Practice.

Here’s the abstract of the article, “Mathematics Remediation’s Connection to Community College Success:” Continue reading Remedial math lesson: When does one reference equal an entire paper?

Journal reveals real reason for retraction of paper by author who threatened to sue Retraction Watch

cureusLast week, we reported on the retraction of a paper by Benjamin Jacob Hayempour, a researcher who had threatened to sue us last month for even reporting on another of his retractions.

The journal, Cureus, told us at the time that the retraction — in which the article disappeared, without a notice — didn’t have anything to do with fraud or plagiarism. Hayempour said that “In the pursuit of excellent science, I personally withdrew the article temporarily in order to add an extra section which will make the paper more clinically relevant.”

But we now have the whole story, which reads a bit differently. According to a comment left on our post by journal editor-in-chief John Adler, it was intellectual property issues that forced the retraction: Continue reading Journal reveals real reason for retraction of paper by author who threatened to sue Retraction Watch

Spreadsheet error forces loss of Appetite paper on obesity and parenting styles

appetiteThe journal Appetite has retracted a recent paper that purported to show that children whose parents kept a tight fist on the grub were less likely to become obese than those whose parents were more laissez-faire with the feed bag.

The article, “Relation of parenting styles, feeding styles and feeding practices to child overweight and obesity. Direct and moderated effects,” appeared last year. The senior author was Laura Hubbs-Tait, of Oklahoma State University.  Continue reading Spreadsheet error forces loss of Appetite paper on obesity and parenting styles

Weekend reads: Fraudster calls himself a “foolish coward,” and COPE’s top cases

booksHere’s some of what crossed our desks this week:

Author who threatened to sue Retraction Watch has another paper withdrawn

cureusBenjamin Jacob Hayempour, the researcher who threatened to sue us for asking questions about a retraction for plagiarism, has had another paper withdrawn.

The paper, published online in the journal Cureus, was titled “Novel Determinants of Tumour Radiosensitivity Post-Large-Scale Compound Library Screening” and had been available at http://www.cureus.com/articles/2394-novel-determinants-of-tumour-radiosensitivity-post-large-scale-compound-library-screening since January 13, but that URL now redirects to Cureus’s homepage.

We asked Cureus editor-in-chief John Adler for details, and he responded: Continue reading Author who threatened to sue Retraction Watch has another paper withdrawn

Psychology researcher explains how retraction-causing errors led to change in her lab

jperssocpsychLast month, we brought you the story of two retractions by Yale’s Laurie Santos because the team discovered errors in the way the first author had coded the data. That first author, Neha Mahajan, took full responsibility for the coding problems, according to the retraction notices, and a university investigation cleared her of any “intentional, knowing, reckless, or grossly negligent action.”

But a few of our readers noted that the papers refer to a second coder on some of the experiments, and have questioned whether that’s compatible with Mahajan being solely responsible for the errors.

We asked Santos earlier this week to explain the apparent discrepancy, which she did along with a description of how her lab has made changes to prevent such errors in the future: Continue reading Psychology researcher explains how retraction-causing errors led to change in her lab

Federal court rebuffs request to discredit article that malpractice lawyers want retracted

AJOGWe’re a bit late to this, but a Federal court in Massachusetts last fall heard a medical malpractice case with fascinating implications for journals.

The case involved allegations by the plaintiffs — two children who had suffered permanent birth defects and their mothers — that they had lost previous malpractice suits because a fraudulent case report was being used to bolster the defense.

The case targeted two ob-gyns, Henry Lerner, of Harvard, and Eva Salamon, of the Bond Clinic, in Winter Haven, Fla., who had published the case study in question. It also named the clinic itself and the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, which published the article in early 2008.

The article, titled “Permanent brachial plexus injury following vaginal delivery without physician traction or shoulder dystocia,” purported to show:

Continue reading Federal court rebuffs request to discredit article that malpractice lawyers want retracted

St. Louis Krokodil paper reappears

ajmedEarlier this month, we reported on the unexplained withdrawal of a case report from the American Journal of Medicine whose authors said they had treated a man in St. Louis who used krokodil, a homemade mixture of prescription painkillers heroin and flammable contaminants that has proven deadly in Russia.

At the time, all the journal’s publisher, Elsevier, would say about why the article was removed was that there was “a permission problem that the originating institution is working to resolve.”

The paper has now reappeared. And contrary to the notice that appeared on the withdrawal Continue reading St. Louis Krokodil paper reappears