The decision was made by the journal’s editor-in-chief, the publisher Wiley and co-author Jesse Roman (a co-author on Han’s other retracted papers). According to the notice, Han didn’t respond “to requests by the journal or the co-author.”
In 2011, Han was the target of an investigation by his former employer, the University of Louisville in Kentucky. Papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biologyand American Journal of Physiology: Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiologyhave been retracted.
Here’s the full retraction notice for the latest retraction:
The authors of a paper on parasitic nematodes have retracted the article because they misidentified the organism in question, so “the possibility of misleading readers was high.”
The paper, “Histopathological features of Capillaria hepatica infection in laboratory rabbits,” appeared in Toxicologic Pathology in 2009 and came from a lab at Huntingdon Life Sciences, in Cambridgeshire, England.
A group of authors is retracting a paper from Structure following a Brandeis University investigation that found the first author had fabricated a key result.
Retractions have been published for four papers authored by former Wayne State University professor, Teresita L. Briones, after an April ORI report found evidence of misconduct in the articles.
Investigators found that Briones had “intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly engaged in research misconduct by falsifying and/or fabricating data.” They flagged five papers and three grant applications that contained false data.
As a result of their findings, four out of the five papers have been retracted, and the editors of the remaining journal say they are looking into the last paper.
Authors of a widely covered study that documented traces of plague and anthrax on surfaces across New York City have revised the paper after public health officials challenged their interpretations of the data.
A paper on how abnormal stem cells can cause benign bone tumors has been retracted by Cell Stem Cell after an inquiry into image duplications also uncovered “multiple instances of inappropriate western blot image adjustment.”
The first two authors “declined” to sign the retraction, according to the notice.
Besides confirming initial suspicions that images had been duplicated, the editors also found “multiple instances of inappropriate western blot image adjustment, such as uneven compression of images and removal of background elements:”
The journal announced plans to retract the paper last year following allegations that the paper contained ethical mis-steps, such as not getting informed consent from the parents of children eating the rice, and faking ethics approval documents.
According to the ASN, on July 17, a Massachusetts Superior Court “cleared the way” for the publisher to retract the paper. So they have, as of July 29. Here’s more from the retraction notice:
We present a guest post from Tracy Tullis, author of a recent story in the New York Times that — as we reported — the editors said afterwards they “would not have assigned” to her if they’d known about her “involvement in a cause related to news coverage.” This is her side of the story.
Last month I wrote a story for The New York Times called “The Loneliest Elephant,” about an elephant named Happy who has been kept alone at the Bronx Zoo for the past nine years. Animal welfare groups say she should be released to a wildlife sanctuary where she could have the companionship of other elephants; the Bronx Zoo says she’s fine where she is.
The day after the article was published in the Sunday paper, The Times learned I had signed an online petition in support of sending the elephant to a sanctuary (I signed it last April, three weeks before I pitched the article). As Retraction Watch has reported, The Times added an editor’s note to the online version of the article, explaining that signing the petition was “at odds with The Times’s journalistic standards.”
The New York Times Ethical Journalism handbook, which I received six months ago when I wrote my first freelance article for The Times, warns that writers should do nothing that “might reasonably raise doubts about their ability or The Times’s ability to function as neutral observers in covering the news”: no donations to political candidates, no marches or rallies, no buttons or bumper stickers. The handbook doesn’t mention petitions, physical or digital (it was published in 2004, before clickable appeals became commonplace), but it makes sense that signing them would likewise be considered a violation.
There’s a backstory, though, as I suppose there always is. When Retraction Watch asked if I would be interested in telling it, however, I hesitated. My inclination was to curse my mistake, apologize privately to my editor (which I have done), and put it all behind me. But I think the incident raises pertinent questions about how media organizations handle issues of neutrality—and about what happens when the institutions they cover critically accuse writers of bias. And so I agreed to write this. Continue reading NYT journalist: I am not a neutral observer–can I still be a fair reporter?
A lung cancer paper in the International Journal of Cancer has been retracted because of “serious errors related to image duplication.” This marks the eighth retraction for first author, ShouWei Han.
