The fake peer review retraction count continues to mount.
Elsevier is retracting nine papers from five journals because fake email addresses for reviewers were provided during submission of the original manuscripts. According to a statement from the publisher: Continue reading Elsevier retracting nine papers for fake peer review
This is the third and final article in a series by John R. Thomas, Jr., a lawyer at Gentry Locke [Editor’s note, 3/26/19: He has since moved to Haley, Hafemann, Magee and Thomas] who represents whistleblowers in a variety of False Claims Act cases. His first article discussed the background of the False Claims Act (“FCA”) and how it might apply to scientific misconduct, and his second article provided advice on how to know if you have a viable FCA case. In this installment, he writes about the procedure for bringing an FCA case and how the damages and whistleblower’s share are calculated.
Suppose you are a potential whistleblower. You believe that your PI is manipulating data in publications. You suspect that a fellow lab technician is tampering with experiments. You are a PI who knows that your colleague is “double dipping” on Federal grants. What should you do? Continue reading So you want to be a whistleblower? Part III
We have discovered several errata for a New York City urologist, including in one paper that previously inspired one of our favorite headlines.
The latest development is pretty straightforward: Ashutosh K. Tewari has issued errata to multiple papers in two journals that note changes to some data points. But the backstory has some twists and turns, so you may need to read this one carefully.
We’ll start with the paper that might be familiar to eagle-eyed readers, on incontinence after surgery: “Effect of a Risk- Grade of Nerve-sparing Technique on Early Return of Continence After Robot-assisted Laparoscopic Radical Prostatectomy.” It was published in European Urology in 2012, and has been cited 21 times, according Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the correction note (paywalled — tsk, tsk):
Continue reading Urologist makes what he calls “clarifications” to multiple articles
A scientist who uses imaging to study the eye and brain has lost a major grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
In June, the NIH revised the award for Timothy Duong at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio from $332,500 per year to $0, and included this statement: Continue reading NIH rescinds grant to Texas eye researcher
The BMJ has issued two “clarifications” to an investigation it published last week that questioned whether the new U.S. dietary guidelines were evidence-based.
The article criticized several aspects of the new dietary guidelines, such as “deleting meat from the list of foods recommended as part of its healthy diets” — without, according to author Nina Teicholz, reviewing the scientific literature on meat. However, according to the clarification, that sentence should have specified “lean” meats.
After The BMJ‘s article appeared, an analysis on The Verge questioned whether Teicholz was guided by her own opinions. She’s the author of a book The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee also posted a lengthy “rapid response” — The BMJ‘s refined version of a comment section — to Teicholz’s article, saying it “strongly disagrees with many of the statements represented as facts.”
This afternoon, Rebecca Coombes, head of investigations and features at The BMJ, posted a response: Continue reading Following criticism, BMJ “clarifies” dietary guidelines investigation
The last of four papers containing data falsified by University of Oregon neuroscience student David Anderson has been retracted.
When the Office of Research Integrity report flagging the papers came out in July, Anderson told us he “made an error in judgment,” and took “full responsibility” for the misconduct.
The newly retracted paper, “A common discrete resource for visual working memory and visual search,” published in Psychological Science, has been cited 28 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the abstract, it demonstrates a possible link between working memory and the ability to “rapidly identify targets hidden among distractors.”
But according to the retraction note, Anderson produced “results that conformed to predictions” by “removing outlier values and replacing outliers with mean values” in some of the data.
Here’s the retraction note in full:
Continue reading 4th ORI-flagged paper by Oregon student is retracted
PLOS Genetics has upgraded a notice on a paper to an expression of concern, raising the count for author chemist Ariel Fernandez to one retracted paper, and three expressions of concern.
The journal published “Protein Under-Wrapping Causes Dosage Sensitivity and Decreases Gene Duplicability” in 2008. In 2013, Fernandez corrected it, claiming that the work was not actually funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, as the original paper had said. The paper has been cited 33 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Here’s the expression of concern in full, which was published on September 14:
Continue reading PLOS Genetics updates flagged paper with expression of concern
Additional lab tests, creating a clinical trial patient registry, and rewards for honesty are among the advice doled out in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine for researchers to help avoid the major issue of participants lying to get into clinical trials.
In the Perspective, David B. Resnik and David J. McCann, both based at the National Institutes of Health, address concerns raised by a 2013 survey of clinical trial participants that revealed “high rates” of “deceptive behavior.” Specifically: Continue reading Here’s how to keep clinical trial participants honest (and why that’s a big deal)
Data issues continue to plague pulmonary papers co-authored by Duke University professor William Foster and former Duke researcher Erin Potts-Kant. Yesterday, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine posted an Expression of Concern for two articles from the pair while the findings are “under review.”
The notice was published after the paper’s corresponding author, John Hollingsworth (also at Duke), told the journal that “some of the data published in these articles may be unreliable,” a term that we’ve gotten used to seeing from previous retractions.
Another Expression of Concern from the journal published earlier this year for another paper co-authored by Foster and Potts-Kant turned into a retraction months later. Hollingsworth was a co-author on that paper and another paper retracted from Environmental Health Perspectives in July.
Continue reading Duke researcher with 7 retractions earns two Expressions of Concern
Should it be a crime for editors to cite work in their own journal?
Last year, the Journal of Criminal Justice became the top-ranked journal in the field of criminology, but critics say that its meteoric rise is due in part to the editor’s penchant for self-citation.
As Thomas Baker of the University of Central Florida, writes in the September/October issue of the The Criminologist, a newsletter of the American Society of Criminology: Continue reading Crime journal’s meteoric rise due to questionable self-citation: analysis