Category: united states

Whole schooling paper retracted after discovering that it was largely lifted

The International Journal of Whole Schooling has retracted a 2007 article for what it calls “substantial” plagiarism.

The article, titled “The relations between parenting and adolescent motivation,” was written by Theiienhuong N. Hoang,  an education researcher at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. The aim of the paper:

Parenting practices that influence or teach adaptive motivational and achievement outcomes are an aspect of a student’s success that are in need of consideration. This study will examine motivational outcomes, as predicted by parenting practices that may influence student behavior.

The purpose of this study is to expand upon the existing research on the relation between parenting practices and motivation.

By expand, it seems she meant restate.

According to the June 16 notice: Continue reading Whole schooling paper retracted after discovering that it was largely lifted

The way science should work: A swift, clearly worded retraction in G&D, after legitimate questions by another group

A retraction appeared online last week in Genes & Development (G&D) that neatly brings together a few recent Retraction Watch threads: Whether retraction is appropriate for a failure to replicate, and whether retraction notices should give enough detail for readers to know what actually happened.

The retraction notice, for “Alternative splicing produces high levels of noncoding isoforms of bHLH transcription factors during development,” by Rahul N. Kanadia and Constance L. Cepko, reads: Continue reading The way science should work: A swift, clearly worded retraction in G&D, after legitimate questions by another group

Anil Potti resurfaces at South Carolina cancer center

courtesy Duke

Anil Potti, the oncologist who has been forced to retract four papers because of results that could not be reproduced, and resigned last fall from Duke, has a new job. He’s joined the Coastal Cancer Center, an oncology practice with four offices in South Carolina and one in North Carolina.

The Duke Fact Checker was apparently the first to report the news. The Cancer Letter, which has been out front on the Potti story for a year, first reported the news.*

It’s not surprising that Potti’s Coastal Center bio leaves out any mention of his troubled research and the fact that he faked a Rhodes scholarship on a grant application. Investigations into what happened at Duke are ongoing. Continue reading Anil Potti resurfaces at South Carolina cancer center

Geology retraction unearths a dead co-author and plagiarized image of “Himalayan” rock actually from Norway

The journal Geology has retracted a paper that, when it was published in May 2010, was hailed as a major step forward in understanding what happened when the Indian and Asian land masses collided millions of years ago. As The Hindu reported when the paper was first published:

Dr. [Anju] Pandey and her colleagues used sophisticated analytical techniques to demonstrate the occurrence of relict majorite, a variety of mineral garnet, in rocks collected from the Himalayas. Majorite is stable only under ultra-high pressure conditions, meaning that it must have been formed very deep down in the Earth’s crust, before surfacing millions of years later.

“Our findings are significant because researchers have disagreed about the depth of subduction of the Indian plate beneath Asia,” said Dr. Pandey.

In fact, the previous depth estimates conflicted with estimates based on computer models. The new results suggest that the leading edge of the Indian plate sank to a depth around double that of previous estimates.

“Our results are backed up by computer modelling and will radically improve our understanding of the subduction of the Indian continental crust beneath the Himalayas,” said Pandey, according to an NOC release.

It turns out, however, that as best as anyone can tell, the key data are from Norway, not the Himalayas, and were published in 1998 by another group. According to the retraction notice, which appears in the May 2011 issue (link to 1998 paper added): Continue reading Geology retraction unearths a dead co-author and plagiarized image of “Himalayan” rock actually from Norway

Elsevier apologizes for Applied Mathematics Letters retraction, pays author’s legal fees

Elsevier, the publisher of Applied Mathematics Letters, which retracted a paper questioning the second law of thermodynamics earlier this year, will issue an apology and pay $10,000 in legal fees.

According to John West at the Discovery Institute’s blog, which broke the story: Continue reading Elsevier apologizes for Applied Mathematics Letters retraction, pays author’s legal fees

On second thought: PNAS retracts two papers after results fail replication

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) ran two retractions this week.

One of those papers was “Properdin homeostasis requires turnover of the alternative complement pathway,” which first appeared online in October of last year. The researchers were looking at the interaction between complement — a sort of primitive immune system — and a protein called properdin.

From the notice: Continue reading On second thought: PNAS retracts two papers after results fail replication

No confidence vote on sepsis paper data leads to Blood retraction

The journal Blood has retracted an article after the authors determined that they could not longer trust in the validity of the data.

The paper has been cited 22 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. From the retraction notice:

Niessen F, Furlan-Freguia C, Fernández JA, Mosnier LO, Castellino FJ, Weiler H, Rosen H, Griffin JH, Ruf W. Endogenous EPCR/aPC-PAR1 signaling prevents inflammation-induced vascular leakage and lethality.

Blood. 2009;113(12):2859-2866.

The authors retract the 19 March 2009, paper cited above. Recently, the authors discovered that some primary data presented in this paper could not be independently reproduced. All coauthors concur with the retraction of the paper and apologize to the readers, reviewers, and editors of Blood for publishing these invalid data.

The nature of the data problem isn’t clear from that passage. But Blood editor Cynthia Dunbar told us that her journal Continue reading No confidence vote on sepsis paper data leads to Blood retraction

Science asks authors to retract XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome paper; when they refuse, issue Expression of Concern

It’s Expression of Concern Day here at Retraction Watch. Earlier, we reported on two such notices regarding the complicated case of Milena Penkowa. And now we learn that a 2009 Science paper linking XMRV, or xenotropic murine leukemia-related virus, to chronic fatigue syndrome  (CFS) that has been dogged by questions from the start, is the subject of another Expression of Concern. Such expressions, as we’ve noted, often, but do not always, precede retractions.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts and executive editor Monica Bradford asked the authors of the paper to retract it last week, after two studies scheduled to published in this week’s Science threw even more doubt onto the findings. But “study co-author Judy A. Mikovits of the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease said “it is premature to retract our paper,” leading Alberts to issue the Expression of Concern, which begins: Continue reading Science asks authors to retract XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome paper; when they refuse, issue Expression of Concern

Controversial paper critiquing climate change science set to be retracted because of plagiarism

A controversial study of how relationships between climate change scientists may affect the field, and that has been dogged by charges of plagiarism, will be retracted, USA Today reports.

The abstract of the 2008 paper in Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, by Edward Wegman and colleagues, concluded:

We conjecture that certain styles of co-authorship lead to the possibility of group-think, reduced creativity, and the possibility of less rigorous reviewing processes.

According to USA Today: Continue reading Controversial paper critiquing climate change science set to be retracted because of plagiarism

Blood retracts two, including a disputed paper from the Karolinska Institute

The journal Blood has two retractions this month, one of which seems particularly interesting. So let’s deal with the other one first.

The paper, “MicroRNAs 15a/16-1 function as tumor suppressor genes in multiple myeloma,” appeared online in October 2010. But according to the retraction notice, the authors

have recently discovered that the cell lines used in their paper were inadvertently misidentified. The cell lines utilized in the paper have now been found to contain the bcr/abl translocation and most likely represent the K562 CML cell line, instead of MMS1 and RPM1 myeloma cell lines. Due to this issue, the relevance of the findings to myeloma and thus, the conclusions of the paper, are not supported by the data. The authors apologize to the readers, reviewers, and editors of Blood for publishing these erroneous data.

That seems straightforward enough, and we couldn’t find any evidence that this problem affected other publications.

The second paper, however, could be more significant. Continue reading Blood retracts two, including a disputed paper from the Karolinska Institute