Category: united states

A former endowed professor at the University of Kentucky has resigned from the faculty days before a committee at the institution was scheduled to vote on whether to fire him for misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned. 

In 2018, the university began investigating Xianglin Shi, a toxicologist and cancer biologist who that year, as we reported then, lost three papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry for image manipulation. At the time, Shi was the principal investigator of a 5-year, $7.4 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to establish the UK Center for Appalachian Research in Environmental Sciences (UK-CARES).

In the wake of the retractions, Shi was stripped of his title as the William A. Marquard Chair in Cancer Research and his role as associate dean for research integration in the UK College of Medicine. 

Continue reading Kentucky professor resigns ahead of vote that could have stripped him of tenure

A publisher retracted a book last year after the home institution of one of the editors, the University of Hawai’i, “identified research protocol violations by two of the editors, which constitute Serious Non-Compliance.”

The 2019 book, Voices of Social Justice and Diversity in a Hawai‘i Context, was edited by Amarjit Singh and Mike Devine, of Memorial University in Newfoundland, and M. Luafata Simanu-Klutz of the University of Hawai’i.

According to the book’s description, it:

Continue reading “Serious non-compliance” prompts retraction of book on social justice in Hawai’i

Carlo Croce, the prolific cancer researcher at The Ohio State University (OSU) with a penchant for hiring — and then losing — lawyers to sue those who displease him, has lost an 10th paper to retraction.

Croce, who in addition to the 10 retractions also has three expressions of concern and 18 corrections for his work, unsuccessfully sued the New York Times for defamation after the newspaper reported on misconduct allegations against him. He has also sued OSU — also unsuccessfully — to force them to restore him as chair of the Department of Cancer Biology and Genetics. 

Apparently, Croce and his co-author thought that a correction to the newly retracted article was necessary because of “improper reuse of text from previous articles.” The journal, however, felt differently.

Continue reading Litigious OSU cancer researcher earns his 10th retraction

The Journal of Virology has retracted three papers, and corrected two others, by a group led by a researcher at the University of Maryland, for problematic images. 

The articles, published in 2008 and 2014, describe experiments to assess the immune response to Newcastle disease virus in various animal species.  The studies were led by Siba K. Samal, a molecular biologist at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Maryland, in College Park.

The retractions make four for Samal, who also lost a 2015 paper in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, “Glycoprotein-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for serodiagnosis of infectious laryngotracheitis,” and whose work has been scrutinized on PubPeer for more than four years. The notice for that paper reads: 

Continue reading Four retractions follow misconduct inquiry at U Maryland

The other day, we reported on the retraction this month of a paper that was laid low by reuse of experimental materials — cheese cloth, to be exact — when fresh were required. 

At the time, we asked the senior author, Donghai Wang, of Kansas State University, whether any other articles from his group had similar problems. Wang’s response was no — but it turns out the group already had five other retractions in December, and has requested another.

All are from the same journal, Bioresource Technology.

These retractions include the August 2019 paper titled “A study on the association between biomass types and magnesium oxide pretreatment.” According to the notice: 

Continue reading Group that reused cheese cloth in different experiments up to six retractions

To the list of best practices in experimental research, here’s another item to add: Always use fresh cheesecloth when separating biomasses. 

We’ll explain.

Continue reading Two retractions prove fresh is best

A criminology professor at Florida State University whose work has been under the microscope for six months will have four papers retracted, Retraction Watch has learned.

We first reported on the case of Eric Stewart, the FSU professor, in July, after Justin Pickett, one of the co-authors on one of the papers, posted a 27-page explanation of why he thought the article should be retracted. That followed a May 5 letter from a “John Smith” outlining problems with five papers by Stewart. Four of those papers are being retracted.

The paper Pickett co-authored, which was first published in 2011, is now being retracted by Criminology. The notice will read:

Continue reading Criminologist to have four papers retracted following months of scrutiny