Category: united states

A retraction involving Sarah Palin

prqFormer U.S. vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin is no stranger to retractions, or perhaps “walk backs,” as politicians usually call them. There was her apology for comments about Pope Francis, a clarification about comments thought to be directed at Rush Limbaugh, and a walk back on her behalf from her running mate, Sen. John McCain.

Now, a paper in the academic literature that refers to her has been retracted. Here’s the notice from Political Research Quarterly: Continue reading A retraction involving Sarah Palin

Unusual: Journal withdraws Expression of Concern about child development paper

child devIn December, the journal Child Development posted an Expression of Concern about a study because of “possible inaccuracies in its data.” A few months later, however, that changed. Here’s what now appears where the Expression of Concern did: Continue reading Unusual: Journal withdraws Expression of Concern about child development paper

Shigeaki Kato up to 25 retractions

Shigeaki Kato
Shigeaki Kato

Shigeaki Kato, who resigned from the University of Tokyo in 2012 after being found to have inappropriately manipulated dozens of images, has two more retractions, both in Molecular Cell.

Here’s the notice for 2002’s “Nuclear Receptor Function Requires a TFTC-Type Histone Acetyl Transferase Complex:” Continue reading Shigeaki Kato up to 25 retractions

Retraction appears for former federal contractor who faked data

cebpIn December, we reported on the case of Timothy Sheehy, a former government contractor who was found to have faked results. ORI found that Sheehy

fabricated the quantitative and qualitative data for RNA and DNA purportedly extracted from 900 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) colorectal tissue samples presented in Table 1 of the CEBP paper and falsely reported successful methodology to simultaneously recover nucleic acids from FFPE tissue specimens, when neither the extractions nor analyses of the FFPE samples were done. Thus, the main conclusions of the CEBP paper are based on fabricated data and are false.

Sheehy agreed to ask that one of his papers be retracted. The retraction notice has appeared: Continue reading Retraction appears for former federal contractor who faked data

Chemists lose JACS silicone paper over data dispute

Journal of the American Chemical SocietyA pair of chemists at Ball State University in Indiana has lost their paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on silicone in a dispute over the provenance of the data.

The article, “Silicone Electrosynthesis from Silica Raw Materials at Room Temperature,” was written by Jeffrey E. Dick, a grad student, and Daesung Chong. It appeared in JACS in March.

As the abstract explained: Continue reading Chemists lose JACS silicone paper over data dispute

Florida leadership researcher Walumbwa notches sixth retraction

jorgbehavIn February we reported on the case of Fred Walumbwa, a leadership scholar at Florida International University who was poised to lose five papers in the Leadership Quarterly for reasons not entirely clear but which appeared to involve problems with the data.

Now we see a sixth retraction for Walumbwa, this one in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. The article, titled (ironically enough), “Authentically leading groups: The mediating role of collective psychological capital and trust,” had appeared in September 2009. Per the abstract:
 Continue reading Florida leadership researcher Walumbwa notches sixth retraction

University of Maryland researchers notch second retraction

jbc 42514Two researchers at the University of Maryland who retracted a paper earlier this year for a duplicated figure have withdrawn another, this time for unknown reasons.

The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) paper has been cited 16 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the notice, for “Hsp90 Interaction with INrf2(Keap1) Mediates Stress-induced Nrf2 Activation,” which is unfortunately a return to the JBC’s opacity: Continue reading University of Maryland researchers notch second retraction

Ethics training paper retracted because data couldn’t be shared

sci eng ethicsA group of authors at the University of Oklahoma have retracted a 2013 paper on ethics training after the university found that the data they used couldn’t be shared publicly.

Here’s the notice for “Improving Case-Based Ethics Training: How Modeling Behaviors and Forecasting Influence Effectiveness:” Continue reading Ethics training paper retracted because data couldn’t be shared

Former Mount Sinai postdoc faked gene therapy data: ORI

ori logoA former postdoc at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York faked data in four published papers, one submitted manuscript, and four NIH grant applications, according to new findings by the Office of Research Integrity.

We reported on six retractions from Savio Woo’s Mount Sinai lab in 2010, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and two each from Human Gene Therapy and Molecular Therapy. The PNAS paper, as we noted then:

claimed to have discovered a possible cure for phenylketonuria, or PKU, in mice—a finding that was cited more than 30 times and trumpeted in the media.

At the time, Mount Sinai said that two of the lab’s postdocs had been dismissed for misconduct. Now, more than three and a half years later, the ORI reports that a former postdoc in that lab, Li Chen: Continue reading Former Mount Sinai postdoc faked gene therapy data: ORI

Retractions appear in case of former Kansas water scientist rebuked for misconduct

groundwaterBack in December, the University of Kansas issued a public censure of a former water researcher who, the school says, engaged in a pattern of plagiarism and other shoddy publishing practices.

Marios Sophocleous, who’d held the position of senior scientist at the Kansas Geological Survey:

Continue reading Retractions appear in case of former Kansas water scientist rebuked for misconduct