Category: ACS App Mat Interfaces

Two retracted papers were published behind bosses’ backs

Researchers have retracted two 2016 papers from the same journal which were published without the permission of the supervising scientists.

According to the retraction notices, the two Applied Materials & Interfaces articles were “published without the full knowledge or consent of the principal investigators” who guided the research, but are not named in the notices.

The papers share the same three authors, listed in the same order. Last author Fangqiong Tang and middle author Laifeng Li are principal investigators in different labs at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. First author Nanjing Hao was formerly in Tang’s research group, but is now at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

Here’s the retraction notice for “Fabrication of Carbohydrate-Conjugated Fingerprintlike Mesoporous Silica Net for the Targeted Capture of Bacteria,” which was retracted only months after it was published in November 2016: Continue reading Two retracted papers were published behind bosses’ backs

Data irregularities force author to retract three solar cell papers

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An engineer has retracted three papers on a method for making nanoscale materials that are useful in solar cells.

The papers, all published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, contain irregularities in data, and one includes images “which have been published elsewhere and identified with different samples,” according to the note.

The first author on all three papers is Khalid Mahmood, who — according to the bio from a talk he gave last year on efficient solar cells — is currently a postdoc at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. He did the work in the retracted papers while a student at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, where, according to the bio, he completed his PhD in two years.

Here’s the retraction note for the first paper (which also contains a typo in the title — “electrospay”)

Continue reading Data irregularities force author to retract three solar cell papers

Wound healing paper injured beyond repair

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Errors in the interpretation of some of the data — the result of “procedural flaws” —  are to blame for the retraction of a paper on a way to help skin grow back after injury.

The paper explores a method involving nanofibers. According to the abstract:

In this study, tilapia skin collagen sponge and electrospun nanofibers were developed for wound dressing…the collagen nanofibers stimulated the skin regeneration rapidly and effectively in vivo.

The paper was published January 19, 2015 by ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, then retracted eight months later, in August. It has not been cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the retraction note:

Continue reading Wound healing paper injured beyond repair

SK Sahoo notches sixth retraction

am&IChemist Sanjeeb Kumar Sahoo, of the Institute of Life Sciences in Bhubaneswar, India, has earned his sixth retraction for image shennanigans, this time in Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Sahoo, as we reported last year, had lost five articles in Acta Biomaterialia  for what the journal called “highly unethical practices.”

The latest retraction involves an article titled “Composite Polymeric Magnetic Nanoparticles for Codelivery of Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Anticancer Drugs and MRI Imaging for Cancer Therapy,” which first appeared online in 2011 in AM&I, a publication of the American Chemical Society.

The paper has been cited 40 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the abstract: Continue reading SK Sahoo notches sixth retraction

Our bad! Researchers take colleagues’ data, lose paper

aamick_v005i012.inddA pair of chemists from China who published their colleagues’ data without knowledge or permission have lost the article to retraction. They also have another retraction on a similar topic, which we covered before.

The article, which appeared in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces in 2012,  was titled “Nanoporous PtCo Surface Alloy Architecture with Enhanced Properties for Methanol Electrooxidation.” The authors, Huajun Qiu and Feixue Zou, are listed as being with the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Shandong University, in Jinan, China.

As the retraction notice states: Continue reading Our bad! Researchers take colleagues’ data, lose paper