“Totally crappy:” Library magazine adds quotes from vendor without authors’ consent

Screen Shot 2016-01-13 at 12.43.15 PMTwo librarians who wrote a feature story for the magazine American Libraries say that editors added quotes from an educational company without their consent.

The feature, “Special Report: Digital Humanities in Libraries,” was included in the Jan/Feb 2016 issue of the magazine, published by the American Libraries Association. It includes some data from a survey conducted by the ALA and Gale — a company that sells digital resources, such as a collection of British newspapers beginning in the 1600s. According to the survey, an “overwhelming 97% of libraries agree” that digital resources like those archives should be available in library collections.

The authors aren’t objecting to that statistic. What they are objecting to, they say, is the journal’s decision to include some general quotes from a Gale representative, without checking with them first. The authors — Stewart Varner, a Digital Scholarship Librarian at the University of North Carolina, and Patricia Hswe, who co-heads the department of Publishing and Curation Services at Penn State  —  say they first learned of the quotes when they got the magazine in the mail.

On his blog, Varner calls it a “totally crappy” situation, and explains “the article was edited after we thought we had turned in the final version:” Continue reading “Totally crappy:” Library magazine adds quotes from vendor without authors’ consent

Second of 3 retractions appears for biologist, the result of “a substantial number of falsifications”

Screen Shot 2016-01-13 at 10.19.01 AMA cell biologist who falsifed Western blots has notched a second retraction, with one more expected after a investigation at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

First author Sudarsanareddy Lokireddy, now apparently a research fellow at Harvard, did not agree to the retraction, the result of “a substantial number of falsifications.”

In December, we covered the results of the NTU investigation, where Lokireddy used to work. During that investigation, he admitted to falsifying data, Research Integrity Officer Tony Mayer told us. The end result: three retractions.

One of those papers was retracted by Cell Metabolism in December. The second paper, published in Molecular Endocrinology, has been cited 52 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The retraction note explains which figures were falsified:

Continue reading Second of 3 retractions appears for biologist, the result of “a substantial number of falsifications”

Court denies appeal of HIV fraudster’s 57-month prison sentence

court caseAn appeals court has affirmed the stiff prison sentence for Dong-Pyou Han, the former Iowa State University researcher who faked the results of an HIV vaccine experiment in rabbits. Continue reading Court denies appeal of HIV fraudster’s 57-month prison sentence

Data dispute forces journal to pull paper about rare bird on valuable land

coverThe authors of a paper about the density of an endangered bird on valuable Texas lands are disputing the journal’s decision to pull the paper after other scientists objected to some of its contents.

The paper, published online in August by the Journal of Field Ornithology, compared different models for estimating the number of golden-cheeked warblers that nest in Texas. According to the Austin American-Statesman, some of that land includes highly sought-after woodlands. Developers had used estimates from recent years, which suggested that the bird population was in relatively good health, to petition to open that land for real estate development. But the new paper concluded that those estimates were too high.

After some scientists who produced the more rosy estimates claimed that the some of their data had been included in the newest paper without permission, the editor in chief decided to retract it.

That was in November. There’s no retraction note for “Density influences accuracy of model-based estimates for a forest songbird.” We contacted the editor in chief, Gary Ritchison, to ask why. He told us,

Continue reading Data dispute forces journal to pull paper about rare bird on valuable land

Science retracting paper by chemists cut off from NSF funding

Bruce Eaton
Bruce Eaton
feldheim
Daniel Feldheim

The National Science Foundation will no longer fund a pair of chemists who “recklessly falsified data,” according to a report from the NSF’s Office of Inspector General, unless they “take specific actions to address issues” in a 2004 Science paper.

That paper is going to be retracted as soon as possible, Science told us. The co-authors that the NSF reprimanded are Bruce Eaton and Dan Feldheim, now at the University of Colorado at Boulder; they have been under scrutiny since 2008, when an investigation at North Carolina State University, their former employer, found that the Science paper contained falsified data.

The paper, “RNA-Mediated Metal-Metal Bond Formation in the Synthesis of Hexagonal Palladium Nanoparticles,” has been cited 138 times.

Science Editor in Chief  Marcia McNutt told us today that a retraction is in the works:

Continue reading Science retracting paper by chemists cut off from NSF funding

Misidentified DNA leads authors to retract zebrafish cholesterol paper

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Authors are retracting a 2012 paper on cholesterol metabolism in zebrafish after realizing it included a case of mistaken identity in a DNA sequence crucial to some aspects of the experiment.  

A postdoc misidentified the plasmid in question after failing to fully sequence it before including it in the experiment. A technician in the lab found the mistake, last author Steven Farber, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Maryland, explained:

When the omitted region was correctly sequenced we discovered it had an error.

He told us in a phone interview what that felt like:

We were like, holy crap.

Next came months of back and forth with the journal, discussing whether to correct or retract the paper. Farber tells us the mistake, which affects two figures,

was unfortunate. Most of the paper is in fact correct.

The paper, “Visualization of Lipid Metabolism in the Zebrafish Intestine Reveals a Relationship between NPC1L1-Mediated Cholesterol Uptake and Dietary Fatty Acid,” published in Chemistry & Biology, has been cited 21 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the detailed retraction noteContinue reading Misidentified DNA leads authors to retract zebrafish cholesterol paper

Suspicions of data manipulation lead to correction of testicular cancer paper

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The corresponding author of a paper on testicular cancer is telling readers to discount a figure after she learned it may have been manipulated.

Although that one figure in the 2005 paper in the British Journal of Cancer may be problematic, the authors found data to support the other figures, and its conclusions.

This isn’t the first time first author Kerry Manton has faced questions over her data — in 2012, one of her papers was retracted following an investigation by her institution, the Queensland University of Technology. And in 2014, QUT repaid a $275,000 grant after finding Manton

failed to fulfill (her) responsibilities in relation to the responsible dissemination of research findings and that this, coupled with a failure to correct the errors, constituted research misconduct.

Here’s the corrigendum for “Hypermethylation of the 5′ CpG island of the gene encoding the serine protease Testisin promotes its loss in testicular tumorigenesis:”

Continue reading Suspicions of data manipulation lead to correction of testicular cancer paper

Prostate cancer paper retracted after investigation can’t review original image

1.coverAn article about how a COX-2 inhibitor (celecoxib) inhibits growth of prostate cancer in rats is being retracted after the authors were unable to provide an investigation committee at New York University with the backup they were asking for.

When the paper was published in 2003, first author Bhagavathi Narayanan worked at the Institute for Cancer Prevention in New York (also known as the American Health Foundation). But when the institute went broke the next year — thanks partly to lavish salaries and offices, as the New York Post reported —  the authors claim they could no longer obtain back up for an image in the paper, once it was questioned years later by NYU, where Narayanan is now based.

Here’s the retraction note, published in Clinical Cancer Research:

Continue reading Prostate cancer paper retracted after investigation can’t review original image

Inventors have a dust up over air sampling device

graphic_amt_cover_homepageTo climate scientist Pieter Tans, a “novel” air sampling device in a recent paper looked a little too familiar. Specifically, like a device that he had invented — the AirCore, which he calls a “tape recorder” for air.

The journal editors came up with a unique solution to the disagreement that followed, which the editor in chief called “rather unclear:” The journal ran an editorial in which both Tans and the authors of the paper contend that their device is unique.

The paper in question, “A novel Whole Air Sample Profiler (WASP) for the quantification of volatile organic compounds in the boundary layer,” was published in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. It has not been cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

It now bears a note, in bold and red: “Please read the Editorial Note before accessing the paper.” 

Here’s how the editorial laid out the case:

Continue reading Inventors have a dust up over air sampling device

The Big (Retraction) Short: Securitized loans paper may get change of venue

J financeA paper on the securitized loan industry’s pricing practices was pulled from the Journal of Finance, but may be appearing in another journal.

The Journal of Finance issued a notice of withdrawal, for “Who Facilitated Misreporting in Securitized Loans?” by John M. Griffin and Gonzalo Maturana, but does not say why it was taken out.  Griffin’s web site notes that the paper is to be published in the Review of Financial Studies.

Here’s the note, dated Sept. 23: Continue reading The Big (Retraction) Short: Securitized loans paper may get change of venue