Category: by journal

Lawsuit against publisher over retraction comes a step closer to reality

De GruyterAn author has begun the process of taking legal action against a publisher for retracting his paper.

As we reported last month, John Bishop, the CEO of an independent media company called Crocels, based in Pontypridd, Wales, argues that by taking down his paper, De Gruyter defamed him and breached a contract — their agreement to publish his paper. Now, Bishop has sent the publisher what’s known in the UK as a “letter of claim.”

In the letter, Bishop writes:

Continue reading Lawsuit against publisher over retraction comes a step closer to reality

What does “reproducibility” mean? New paper seeks to standardize the lexicon

Science Translational MedicineWhat is the difference between “reproducible” and “replicable”? And how does each relate to results that are “generalizable” and “robust”?

Researchers are using these terms interchangeably, creating confusion over what exactly is needed to confirm a scientific result, argues a new paper published today in Science Translational Medicine.

Here’s how the US National Science Foundation (NSF) defines “reproducibility,” according to the authors: Continue reading What does “reproducibility” mean? New paper seeks to standardize the lexicon

Paper reports data from PET/CT scan, years before it arrived

MedicineAuthors have retracted a study just three months after publishing it, upon realizing they made “several critical errors.”

For one, the authors didn’t actually collect the data they claim to in the title of the paper, which reported on methods to screen patients for recurrence of lung cancer. The authors included data from positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT), collected from 2003 to 2007 — but their institution didn’t have a PET/CT scanner until 2009. Instead, the authors had mistakenly reported the results of PET scans alone, which may not find tumors as effectively as PET/CT.

Here’s the retraction notice in Medicine, which explains the nature of the error in more detail. (Note: One of the authors supplied some missing text, in brackets.)

Continue reading Paper reports data from PET/CT scan, years before it arrived

Epilepsy researcher gets retraction, correction after former colleague flags work

EpilipsiaEpilepsy researcher Toni Schneider has received a retraction and a correction in quick succession, after a former colleague raised red flags about the work. 

The retraction for Schneider, based at the University of Köln in Germany, is for “unintentional inclusion of erroneous data” due to limitations of the recording system used in the paper, according to the notice. 

Marco Weiergräber, a former colleague of Schneider’s, has claimed that the authors of the paper did not use the test properly. The journal editor, however, told us he believes the original analysis is an “honest mistake,” and there is “no evidence” to suggest that the authors intentionally published incorrect analyses.

Here’s the retraction notice, issued by the journal in March 2016: Continue reading Epilepsy researcher gets retraction, correction after former colleague flags work

Neuro journal pulls article for data theft, prompts misconduct probe

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Neuroscientists have retracted a research letter less than two months after it appeared, admitting they appeared to pass off others’ data as their own.

Two of the researchers are listed as affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the incident has led to a misconduct investigation at the institution, a UCSF spokesperson told us.

The article, “DNAJC6 variants in Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” appeared in April. It was quickly followed by this notice, dated in May: Continue reading Neuro journal pulls article for data theft, prompts misconduct probe

PLOS ONE paper plagiarized from 17 articles — yes, 17

PLOSOneA PLOS ONE paper about chronic pain plagiarized from multiple sources — 17, in fact.

According to the retraction notice released by the journal last week, the paper contains “extensive verbatim use of text from other sources.”

How did this make it past the editors? The journal published the paper in 2012 — before it began screening papers for plagiarism, according to a spokesperson.

Here’s the retraction notice for “The Effect of Social Stress on Chronic Pain Perception in Female and Male Mice:”

Continue reading PLOS ONE paper plagiarized from 17 articles — yes, 17

Two math papers are too similar, both retracted

Advances in Differential EquationsA mathematician has lost two publications that overlap substantially.

In this case, it’s easy to see how editors were duped (as it were). Both journals received the papers within a few months of each other, and then published them in quick succession; both have since been retracted. The papers share a first author, Jin Li, affiliated with Jiujiang University in China.

How similar are Li’s papers? See for yourself.

Here’s the abstract for “Landesman-Lazer type condition for second-order differential equations at resonance with impulsive effects,” received by Advances in Difference Equations in June 2014 and published in September 2014: Continue reading Two math papers are too similar, both retracted

JACS corrects, removes author from previously flagged paper

JACSA paper at the center of a high-profile case of alleged misconduct in Hong Kong has earned a correction notice.

The correction replaces an expression of concern on the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) paper, which followed allegations of data manipulation. It provides some un-cropped images, and removes a co-author from the paper. However, it does not appear to address previous allegations of misconduct, nor a recent ruling from an investigation at Hong Kong University (HKU), which found that some of the data were “invalid.”

Here is the correction notice for “Molecular Imaging of Peroxynitrite with HKGreen-4 in Live Cells and Tissues:”

Continue reading JACS corrects, removes author from previously flagged paper

Economists go wild over overlooked citations in preprint on prenatal stress

The_American_Economic_Review_(cover)Citation omissions in an economics preprint have set off a wave of recrimination and speculation on a widely read economics discussion board.

Commenters accuse the authors of purposely omitting citations that would have undermined the paper’s claims to novelty and contributions to the field, leveling acrimony and personal attacks. Economists Petra Persson at Stanford and Maya Rossin-Slater at the University of California, Santa Barbara told us they hadn’t been familiar with the omitted papers at the time they first posted their preprint, but their work remains distinct from these previous studies. Nevertheless, the two quickly updated the preprint of their paper – accepted by the top-tier economics journal American Economic Review – to include additional citations. An editor at the journal said it’s not unusual for authors to request such changes before publication, and dismissed the accusations made on the discussion board, calling the site “not a legitimate source of information.”

The study, “Family Ruptures, Stress, and the Mental Health of the Next Generation,” used data from Swedish national databases to compare mental health outcomes of people born to women who lost a relative while pregnant and women who lost a relative in the first year after giving birth. Continue reading Economists go wild over overlooked citations in preprint on prenatal stress

Cancer researchers: We took data from another lab

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Authors have admitted to using material from another lab for their paper on neuroblastoma.

A spokesperson for Springer told us that the theft came to light when:

The scientists, from whom the data originated, contacted the journal.

The editor in chief of the journal investigated the case, the spokesperson told us, and then issued this retraction notice:

Continue reading Cancer researchers: We took data from another lab