A University of Minnesota social scientist who studies health disparities has retracted a study that apparently lacked ethical approval.
Here’s the notice for “Deservingness to state health services for South – South migrants: A preliminary study of Costa Rican providers’ views,” a paper in Social Science & Medicine by Kate Goldade and a colleague: Continue reading Social sciences paper retracted for lack of ethical approval
A frequent co-author of Ulrich Lichtenthaler — the management professor who has retracted at least eight papers — has now withdrawn one of his own from Research Policy.
The original paper, “How to create commercial value from patents: The role of patent management,” by Holger Ernst and colleagues, went online on May 21, 2012. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Lichtenthaler co-author Ernst retracts paper that didn’t include Lichtenthaler
As a first-year medical student at the University of California, San Diego, Jessica Tang already has an impressive CV. Her name has appeared on ten papers in the medical literature, including three in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine. On one of these she was the sole author.
Except that one doesn’t exist anymore. But the reason for the retraction does not appear to involve shoddy work by the researcher. Rather, Tang failed to appreciate the politics of the lab in which she worked — and it cost her.
Continue reading Med student loses paper when former boss claims right to data
In late December, we reported on the retraction of a 2010 research letter in Emerging Infectious Diseases looking at the genetics of swine flu.
The notice in the journal, a CDC publication, indicated that the conclusions were in error, although it didn’t really say much more:
To the Editor: We would like to retract the letter entitled “Triple Reassortant Swine Influenza A (H3N2) Virus in Waterfowl,” which was published the April 2010 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases (1). The nucleoprotein gene sequences from the viruses reported in that letter are very closely related to those from the earliest detected triple reassortant swine influenza viruses [CY095676 A/sw/Texas/4199–2/1998(H3N2)]. Although these viruses could have acquired a swine-origin segment, the branch lengths are quite short for 9 years of evolution. Therefore, we have withdrawn these 4 isolates from GenBank and subsequently retract this letter.
As it happens, there was more to the story.
The authors of a study published last year looking at the effects of cell phone exposure on mice in utero have corrected a figure after it was questioned. New experiments, they write, confirm the original conclusions they drew from the figure.
Here’s the corrected figure from the paper in Scientific Reports, published by Nature Publishing Group: Continue reading Paper linking cell phones during pregnancy to behavior problems in mice corrected
Call it uncreative non-destruction. 
A team from China and, it appears, Mississippi, has lost a paper in Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation for duplicate publication.
Here’s the notice (a PDF): Continue reading Duplication leads to collapse in Nondestructive Testing
A rising star at MIT has retracted a paper after an investigation found that her former postdoc had “falsified or fabricated figures.”
Alice Ting, winner of an NIH Directors Pioneer Award and named one of Technology Review’s “Innovators Under 35,” published the paper, “Imaging Activity-Dependent Regulation of Neurexin-Neuroligin Interactions Using trans-Synaptic Enzymatic Biotinylation,” in Cell in 2010 along with Amar Thyagarajan.
The notice is refreshingly detailed given the circumstances: Continue reading MIT lab retracts Cell synapse tagging paper for falsification or fabrication
Today brings two journal editorials about misconduct and retractions. They take, if we may, a bit of an optimistic and perhaps even blindered approach.
In an editorial titled “Scientific misconduct occurs, but is rare,” Boston University’s Richard Primack, editor of Biological Conservation, highlights a Corrigendum of a paper by Jesus Angel Lemus, the veterinary researcher who has retracted seven papers: Continue reading Not in my journal: Two editors take stock of misconduct in their fields — and don’t find much
Late last year, we covered a paper wondering why there were so few retractions in business and economics journals. That post was on our minds as we read a fantastic piece of reporting by reporters at the Scarlet & Black, the Grinnell College student paper.
The story concerns Brian Swart, a Grinnell economics professor who “abruptly resigned in the middle of last semester,” reporters Peter Sullivan and Hayes Gardner note. As is unfortunately often the case, the university wouldn’t say why Swart was leaving. But Sullivan and Gardner didn’t leave it there. They talked to “professors from other institutions involved in the situation” and got the food of investigative reporters everywhere: Documents. Those interviews and documents showed that: Continue reading One plagiarized economics paper that won’t need to be retracted
The FASEB Journal has retracted a 2012 paper by a group from the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB), looking at the role of a tumor-suppressing micro-RNA in pulmonary fibrosis. The retraction suggests the provenance of the data are in question, and we learned details of what went wrong.
Here’s the notice, which, sadly, is behind a $12-per-day paywall: Continue reading Author retracts FASEB Journal paper for data reuse