Nature is retracting a 2010 paper by a team from Princeton and Drexel on the workings of Plasmodium falciparum, which causes malaria in people. How that came about seems to have been a winding road.
The article — a research letter — titled “Branched tricarboxylic acid metabolism in Plasmodium falciparum,” came from the Princeton lab of Manuel Llinás. It purported to find that:
Continue reading Authors retract already-corrected Nature malaria paper
A former researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis has won back the right to apply for Federal research funding despite a 2011 finding against him by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
Philippe Bois, a cancer researcher now working at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida, argued that the alleged misconduct in the ORI findings — which led to a three-year ban on applying for funding — was actually honest error. As Bois’s attorneys explained last year: Continue reading Researcher found by ORI to have committed misconduct earns back right to apply for Federal grants
BMC Genomics has issued an expression of concern for a 2011 paper by a prominent Argentine chemist, Ariel Fernandez, whose work covers several disciplines — “His research spans representation theory in algebra, physical chemistry, molecular biophysics, and more recently, molecular evolution and drug discovery” — and institutions. And therein lies the tale.
Fernandez appeared as the first author of the article, titled “Subfunctionalization reduces the fitness cost of gene duplication in humans by buffering dosage imbalances,” along with a pair of researchers from Taiwan. Fernandez’s affiliations were listed as being with the Instituto Argentino de Matemática “Alberto P. Calderón”, CONICET (National Research Council of Argentina), in Buenos Aires, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, and the Morgridge Institute for Research, in Madison, Wisc.
According to the abstract:
Continue reading “Conflicting investigations” prompt expression of concern in BMC Genomics
We’ve already reported on the retraction of a paper in a business ethics journal for plagiarism. Yes, plagiarism in an ethics journal. But it turns out there’s at least one more case of exactly the same thing, albeit in a different business ethics journal.
Here’s the notice from the Journal of Business Ethics: Continue reading University of Virginia doctoral candidate plagiarizes in business ethics journal, but remains in program
Scientific experiments are like recipes: With the right components and the proper steps, the end result can be a thing of beauty. But if you start with a cup of salt instead of a cup of flour, well, even the neighbor’s schnauzer won’t touch that batch of sugar cookies.
That’s a little like the situation we have in “Controls on topographic dependence and temporal instability in catchment-scale soil moisture patterns,” a paper published in February in Water Resources Research by Michael Coleman and Jeffrey Niemann of Colorado State University.
According to the notice:
Continue reading Calibration error sends moisture paper down the drain
Bryan William Doreian, who was found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have falsified data in his Case Western dissertation, has retracted a 2009 paper in Molecular Biology of the Cell also cited by the ORI.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Retraction appears for former Case Western dermatology researcher found by ORI to have falsified data
Coding errors in a database maintained by Pfizer have led authors to retract two heart biomarker papers in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The two notices, for “Prediction of cardiovascular events in statin-treated patients by lipid and non-lipid biomarkers” and “Plasma PCSK9 levels and clinical outcomes in the TNT (Treating to New Targets) Trial,” are highly detailed and say the same thing: Continue reading Pfizer database errors cause two voluminous retractions for JACC statin-biomarker papers
Eric Smart, the former University of Kentucky researcher found by the Office of Research Integrity to have faked images in ten papers, has two more retractions, both in the American Journal of Physiology — Cell Physiology.
Here’s one, for a paper cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Two more Eric Smart retractions appear
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