On November 25, 2014, a journal published an article on mass spectrometry. Then on December 18th they published it again — twice.
Yes: “Mass analysis by Ar-GCIB-dynamic SIMS for organic materials” was mistakenly published a total of three times.
Over a year later, the journal pulled the two redundant publications. Here’s the retraction notice for one of them:
Continue reading Oops — journal published same paper three times
Editors have published a notice to let readers know why they’re not retracting a couple of papers.
One paper examined whether the results of CT scans could be used to stage patients with uterine carcinoma; the other considered whether CT scans could be used to predict overall survival in uterine carcinoma. Both papers — by researchers at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center — used data from the same 193 women. After they appeared in in different journals, the editors considered whether they were redundant — a quality that can spell retraction for a paper.
The editors explain why they decided the papers were unique in a brief commentary — a non-retraction notice, if you will — published in a third journal, Abdominal Radiology:
Continue reading Non-retraction notice: Editors explain why two similar papers aren’t redundant
Metals and Materials International has retracted three papers from one author, due to suspicions of plagiarism and authorship issues.
The three papers have one thing in common — the same lead author, Reza Haghayeghi from the Islamic Azad University in Tehran, Iran.
The retraction notices — all released in March, 2016 — lead with the following:
Continue reading Materials journal breaks three papers from the same author
A pair of researchers affiliated with the University of Galati in Romania were suspended after duplicating work in their papers on materials used to build ships, earning them four retractions last year, and one the year before.
According to Romanian newspaper Impact Est, in December an ethics committee found that co-authors Ionel Chirica and Elena-Felicia Beznea committed “a number of breaches of ethics,” including self-plagiarism. Both received two-year suspensions from holding certain research positions.
These aren’t the only problems Chirica has faced: In 2013, he resigned from his position as the director of the Doctoral School of Engineering, according to Impact Est, for reasons that are unclear. In 2012, he also lost two additional papers on which he is the sole author.
Last fall, Computational Materials Science retracted four papers by Chirica and Beznea, publishing almost identical notices. We’ll start with the one for “Response of ship hull laminated plates to close proximity blast loads:”
Continue reading Authors suspended as duplications sink papers on ship building
A former postdoc at the University of Pittsburgh has admitted to committing research misconduct in published papers and in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant applications.
The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) said on Friday that Kenneth Walker, who was studying the development of the urinary tract, Continue reading Former Pitt postdoc admits to faking data
A journal has added expressions of concern (EOCs) to four papers about diabetes, including one co-authored by an author who previously sued a different journal when it took a similar action on his papers.
The Journal of Physiology flagged the papers after an investigation “could not rule out the possibility” that they contained duplicated Western blots. Though the three other papers do not include Mario Saad on their author list, he plays a role: The papers include blots duplicated from other papers of Saad’s. And they reveal that Saad may have published those blots multiple times in his own work.
The EOCs all start out with the same statement: Continue reading Researcher who unsuccessfully sued journal to stop retractions earns another expression of concern
We recently discovered a relatively old retraction notice — from 2014 — of a study on pregnant women with HIV.
The paper was retracted two years ago when BMC Research Notes discovered the authors falsely claimed they had obtained ethics approval from an institution in Kenya.
The study looked at the effectiveness of an antiretroviral therapy in 50 women who were receiving care at a center in Nairobi, Kenya. But the authors did not have permission from the center to use data from the women, nor the necessary ethics approval from Moi University to carry out the work.
Here’s the retraction note for “Effectiveness of option B highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) in pregnant HIV women:”
Continue reading Study on pregnant women with HIV lied about having ethics approval
We’ve unearthed four more retractions for Khalid Zaman, an economist who lost 16 papers in 2014 for orchestrating fake peer review.
That brings Zaman’s total to 20, and ties him at the #18 spot on our leaderboard.
One of the more recently discovered retractions is for fake peer review, attributed to Zaman; one is for plagiarism, and two other papers were withdrawn while in press, for reasons that are unclear. (Note bene: These retractions are all at least one year old.)
First, the retraction notice for peer review issues, published in April 2015 for “Environmental Indicators and Energy Outcomes: Evidence from World Bank’s Classification Countries:”
Continue reading Peer review scam leader now up to 20 retractions
An author is preparing to sue a publisher for retracting his paper.
John Bishop, the CEO of an independent media company called Crocels, argues that by taking down his paper, De Gruyter is breaching a contract — their agreement to publish his work.
Perhaps appropriately, the paper suggests ways to combat negative online comments — including litigation.
Bishop told us he learned that his paper was pulled when he was alerted to the brief retraction notice, published in April. The notice, published in the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, says:
Continue reading Author: I’ll sue if publisher doesn’t retract my retraction
Data manipulation in a Cell Reports paper blew the importance of a kind of bacteria out of proportion.
Retracted this month — less than three months after it was published — the paper showed, according to a summary on the cover page:
B. subtilis is a symbiont that resides in the gut of C. elegans and generates nitric oxide that is essential for the host. Xiao et al. demonstrate that nitric oxide promotes defense against pathogenic bacteria by activating p38 MAPK, demonstrating the importance of commensal bacteria in host immunity.
But B. subtilis — a member of the Bacillaceae family — aren’t actually as plentiful as they appeared, explains the retraction notice for “Gut-Colonizing Bacteria Promote C. elegans Innate Immunity by Producing Nitric Oxide:”
Continue reading Data manipulation flushes paper on gut bacteria