We have an update on two papers about lung cancer screening by Claudia Henschke and colleagues that were subject to an Expression of Concern early last year.
The original Expression of Concern in Cancer read, in part: Continue reading ORI, OHRP find “some human subject issues” in Henschke lung cancer studies, but no evidence of misconduct
Last August, we reported on an Expression of Concern in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine for a paper on HIV and lung injury. The notice said that the University of Nebraska, home to several of the paper’s authors, had begun an inquiry.
Today, the university issued a statement on the case, clearing the researchers of misconduct: Continue reading University of Nebraska clears HIV researchers of misconduct
Plant Physiology, the official journal of the American Society of Plant Biologists, has retracted a 2004 article by a team of ag industry researchers, including a former husband-wife duo, for what could be misconduct by the husband.
The retraction notice is vague enough, however, that we’re not entirely sure what went wrong, and no one wants to help us confirm — or even attempt to disprove — our inferences. Continue reading Spud dud, as agricultural industry potato paper gets pulled a decade after publication
Markets undergo flash crashes — when stocks or bonds rapidly nosedive in value and then just as rapidly recover — every day. On May 6, 2010, for example, the entire equity market flamed out and then nearly recovered its value all in the matter of hours.
Economic papers can do the same, apparently. Take the recent withdrawal of an paper from the Journal of Financial Markets: Continue reading Markets crash, and so does a paper explaining why
A case of alleged misconduct at the University of Washington in Seattle may finally be over. The Office of Research Integrity released its findings following an investigation into the work of Andrew Aprikyan, a former hematology researcher at the university.
The Aprikyan case has dragged on for a decade. In 2010, the university fired the scientist after a court denied his appeals based on allegations that they had denied him due process. As the Seattle Times reported at the time: Continue reading ORI rules in longstanding University of Washington misconduct case
Whose business are the reasons behind a retraction?
Our readers will no doubt know by now that we think they’re basically everyone’s — at least if journals want us to believe that they’re interested in maintaining the integrity of the scientific record. But not all editors seem to agree. Hank Edmunds, for example, didn’t in early 2011, telling us, “It’s none of your damn business.” A chemistry journal editor said, in a similar vein, “the purpose of keeping these retraction notices slim is not to produce too much detail.”
Now, a psychology journal editor joins those ranks. Here’s the notice in question: Continue reading Editor on retraction details: “I do not think this is the business of anyone but our journal, please”
A paper suggesting that scientists may want to rethink what levels of benzene are carcinogenic has led to a sharp exchange in the journal that originally published it.
In 2006, Stephen Rappaport, of UNC-Chapel Hill, and colleagues, published a paper that began by saying that benzene
is an important industrial chemical that is also emitted into the air from gasoline, engine exhausts and combustion of organic materials (including cigarette smoke) (1,2). Occupational exposures to benzene at air levels greater than ∼10 p.p.m., have long been linked to hematotoxicity and to acute myelogenous leukemia (3–5). A recent report of hematotoxic effects in workers exposed to benzene <1 p.p.m. (6) has raised additional concerns regarding the health consequences of low exposures to this contaminant.
The authors conclude: Continue reading Environmental scientists call for retraction of oil industry-funded paper on benzene exposure
A University of Wisconsin scientist who was found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have faked data in two papers, has had a second study retracted.
Here’s the notice: for “Secretory phospholipase A2 IIA is up-regulated by TNF-α and IL-1α/β after transient focal cerebral ischemia in rat,” by Rao Adibhatla and colleagues and originally published in Brain Research in February 2007: Continue reading Second retraction appears for University of Wisconsin neuroscientist who faked images
Colin Purrington has developed something of a niche in the research world. While teaching evolutionary biology at Swarthmore College, Purrington began developing a how-to manual for putting together poster presentations for meetings — a pursuit that has earned him a little money and some attention.
The result is a website, Designing conference posters, that, by his reckoning, has received some 2 million hits over the years (actually, there was a previous iteration of the site called “Advice on designing scientific posters”).
Not surprisingly, Purrington, who has copyrighted the material on his site, likes to protect his intellectual property. According to Purrington‘s site:
Continue reading Plagiarism spat over scientific poster prep advice escalates to legal threats
Laurence Cole, an obstetrics researcher at the University of New Mexico, made an appearance on this blog in November 2011 after the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology published a remarkably heavy-handed retraction of one of his papers.
Shortly after, we learned that the retraction was preceded by a strongly-worded letter from an attorney representing a company that had been miffed by the content of Cole’s article (the issue involved the effectiveness of commercially-available pregnancy tests, and Cole’s failure to adequately disclose a past relationship with the aggrieved company’s competitor). That letter read, in part: Continue reading New Mexico obstetrics researcher violated research subject protocols: Retraction notice