Category: elsevier

Astrophysics retraction trail includes paper that plagiarized another already retracted for…plagiarism

Sometimes, the full story of scientific misdeeds isn’t clear until several retraction notices appear. Take the case of a group of Vietnamese astrophysicists led by Thong Duc Le.

If you were to read a Physics Letters B retraction notice about one of the group’s papers, “Search for cosmological time variation of the fine-structure constant using low-redshifts of quasar,” you wouldn’t have any idea why the paper was retracted, nor that the move was related to any other retractions: Continue reading Astrophysics retraction trail includes paper that plagiarized another already retracted for…plagiarism

Author retracts weight loss surgery paper after admitting most, if not all, of the subjects were made up

If you had read “Aerobic endurance training improves weight loss, body composition, and co-morbidities in patients after laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass,” a 2010 paper in Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, you might have been convinced by the title and findings that exercise was a good idea for people who’d had stomach stapling.

After all, the authors had operated on “60 consecutive morbidly obese patients” and then randomized them into “a low-exercise group (aerobic physical exercise 1 time for 1 hr/wk) or a multiple-exercise group (APE 2 times for 1 hr/wk)” so they could collect data on “age, gender, length of hospital stay, operative details, co-morbidities, postoperative complications, initial body weight and height, postoperative weight, and body composition.” When they did that, they found that “The multiple exercise group had a significantly more rapid reduction of body mass index, excess weight loss, and fat mass compared with the low-exercise group.”

Except that at best they had only operated on about a third the number of patients they said they had. Continue reading Author retracts weight loss surgery paper after admitting most, if not all, of the subjects were made up

Authors’ public dispute over retraction notice in Cytokine ends in a draw, bruises journal

Cytokine had an interesting retraction notice this year that points up the pitfalls — perhaps necessary, perhaps not — that journals can step in when they give authors the benefit of the doubt.

Here’s the story: A doctoral student named Varun Kesherwani was working in the lab of Ajit Sodhi, a U.S.-trained and well-published cell biologist at Banaras Hindu University. Kesherwani’s Linkedin page lists him as a postdoc at the University of Nebraska.

The two were co-authors on a 2007 paper in Cytokine, “Quantitative role of p42/44 and p38 in the production and regulation of cytokines TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-12 by murine peritoneal macrophages in vitro by Concanavalin A.” (That paper has been cited nine times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, including by the retraction notice.)

But it seems Kesherwani, who was listed as the paper’s corresponding author despite his junior status, did not have his mentor’s blessing when he submitted the manuscript. Continue reading Authors’ public dispute over retraction notice in Cytokine ends in a draw, bruises journal

The HeLa problem: What a retraction says about whether cancer researchers can trust their cell lines

Retraction Watch readers who’ve read Rebecca Skloot’s bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks may remember that decades ago, scientists began realizing that Lacks’s cells, now known as the HeLa cell line and used in labs around the world, were so good at proliferating that they had taken over many other cell lines researchers use to study human disease.

Such readers would have been nodding their heads at a front-page Wall Street Journal on Saturday. As Amy Dockser Marcus (no relation to Adam) reports: Continue reading The HeLa problem: What a retraction says about whether cancer researchers can trust their cell lines

Math paper retracted because it “contains no scientific content”

Have a seat, this one’s a howler.

According to a retraction notice for “Computer application in mathematics,” published in Computers & Mathematics with Applications: Continue reading Math paper retracted because it “contains no scientific content”

Back in the saddle: After more than 30 retractions, Naoki Mori publishing again

Naoki Mori

Perhaps it’s appropriate given the Easter season, but we have learned that Naoki Mori, the Japanese cancer researcher who received a 10-year publishing ban from the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) for imagine manipulation, has published a new paper.

Mori, who was fired and then rehired by the University of the Ryukyus over the scandal, is listed as the senior author on the paper, “Honokiol induces cell cycle arrest and apoptosis via inhibition of survival signals in adult T-cell leukemia,” which appears in the March issue of Biochimica et Biophysica Acta. The journal, an Elsevier title, is an umbrella for nine publications in the biosciences.

Two of Mori’s retracted articles appeared in the Elsevier journals Leukemia Research and Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. Continue reading Back in the saddle: After more than 30 retractions, Naoki Mori publishing again

Three more retractions for resveratrol researcher Dipak Das, in free radical journals

Das, via UConn

The retraction count for Dipak Das, the resveratrol researcher whom the University of Connecticut found to have committed 145 counts of fabrication and falsification of data, has risen to eight with withdrawals by Free Radical Biology & Medicine and Free Radical Research.

The two Free Radical Biology & Medicine retractions, for “Expression of the longevity proteins by both red and white wines and their cardioprotective components, resveratrol, tyrosol, and hydroxytyrosol” (cited 38 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge) and “Redox regulation of resveratrol-mediated switching of death signal into survival signal” (cited 32 times), are carefully detailed and read the same way: Continue reading Three more retractions for resveratrol researcher Dipak Das, in free radical journals

Cell paper, once plagiarized, pulled for dodgy figures

A while back (last June, to be precise), we wrote about a group of Japanese endocrinologists who found a creative way to up their citation counts using duplicate publication. At the time, the researchers were docked a 2004 paper in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry & Molecular Biology that had self-plagiarized extensively from a 2003 article in Cell.

Well, skeptics of this new math take heart: The group’s publication total has fallen yet again. Turns out that 2003 paper — which has been cited 160 times, up from 144 when we checked last year, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge — wasn’t quite up to snuff, either.

According to the retraction notice for the article, “The Chromatin-Remodeling Complex WINAC Targets a Nuclear Receptor to Promoters and Is Impaired in Williams Syndrome:” Continue reading Cell paper, once plagiarized, pulled for dodgy figures

Society error leads to published — then retracted — Alzheimer’s abstract from top group

Alzheimer’s & Dementia has retracted a meeting abstract the journal published without the OK of the researchers, a top group from Harvard, who submitted it but withdrew the work before the conference.

That, as they say, might require some unpacking. Maybe this will make things clearer.

Raj Hooli, a graduate student in the lab of Rudolph Tanzi, a leading neuroscientist at Harvard — where he holds the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy endowed chair of neurology — had submitted the abstract, “Genome-wide assessment of copy number variations in early-onset Alzheimer’s disease,” for consideration at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease (ICAD).

As Tanzi explains: Continue reading Society error leads to published — then retracted — Alzheimer’s abstract from top group

Journal yanks anemia paper over duplicate data

Blood Cells, Molecules, and Diseases (that’s one title) has retracted a 2011 paper, “Comparative proteomics reveals deficiency of NHE-1 (Slc9a1) in RBCs from the beta-adducin knockout mouse model of hemolytic anemia,” after learning from a reader that the data it contained were previously published by a competing publication.

As the notice explains: Continue reading Journal yanks anemia paper over duplicate data