Last month, we reported on a 2012 paper in Interface whose authors had the journal issue an expression of concern about it because of “some of the data and methods.” At the time, The Royal Veterinary College at the University of London was conducting an investigation into the research.
Today, that expression of concern was upgraded to a retraction. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Elephant femur paper subject to expression of concern retracted following investigation
The Canadian Center of Science and Education has put out a truly useless retraction for a paper published in June 2010 in their journal English Language Teaching.
Here’s the notice for “A Solution to Plato’s Problem: Faculty of Language as A Complex Non-Linear System”:
The editorial board announced this article has been retracted on August 18, 2010.
If you have any further question, please contact us at: [email protected]
So we tried that email. We had a very odd back and forth with editorial assistant Gavin Yu, who responded to a request for more details with the following: Continue reading Linguistics retraction fails to speak clearly
Organ donation in China, particularly the practice of using organs from executed prisoners, which the government pledged to stop by the middle of this year, has been a controversial subject. For a group of authors in that country and the U.S, a letter criticizing their work that introduced “the political situation of organ donation in China” was cause to retract their own paper.
Here’s the notice in question from Transplantation, for a study published three months ago: Continue reading Hmm: Authors retract paper rather than allow discussion of politics of organ donation in China
An article on youth development programs in Hong Kong has been retracted for its similarity to another article on youth development programs by the same authors.
The paper, “Process Evaluation of a Positive Youth Development Program in Hong Kong Based on Different Cohorts,” appeared in 2012 in The Scientific World Journal, and was written by a pair of researchers with appointments in Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, and the United States. It has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
According to the abstract: Continue reading I know you are but what am I? School program paper pulled for duplication
Tardigrades, the most hardy animals on or off planet Earth, can survive boiling, freezing, and even the ravages of outer space.
Unfortunately, some data on water bears’ memories proved to be less long-lasting, earning a retraction for a George Mason University researcher who also published the paper without alerting her co-workers ahead of time.
Here’s the notice for “Suspended animation: effects on short-term and long-term positive associative memory in Hypsibius dujardini,” which first appeared in Invertebrate Neuroscience: Continue reading Bearly believable: Water bear paper retracted for missing lab notebooks
Here’s a physics retraction whose use of an exclamation point — the only one we’ve ever seen in a retraction notice! — makes the editors’ exasperation palpable.
It’s also the the fourth retraction for R. K. Singhal, of the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India. Behold the notice for “Magnetic behavior of functionally modified spinel Ni0.4Ca0.6Fe2O4 nanoferrite,” in the International Journal of Modern Physics B: Continue reading Enthusiastic retraction and retracted correction mark loss of researcher’s fourth and fifth papers
A paper on delirium in older adults has been withdrawn by a geriatric journal, after the clinical hospital notified the journal of problems in the data.
Here’s the notice for “Issues Associated with Delirium Severity Among Older Patients,” which first appeared in BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care: Continue reading “Irregularities” lead to retraction of paper on delirium
A pair of researchers at the University of Maryland have retracted a third paper.
Here’s the unhelpful Journal of Biological Chemistry notice for “Inhibitor of Nrf2 (INrf2 or Keap1) protein degrades Bcl-xL via phosphoglycerate mutase 5 and controls cellular apoptosis,” by Suryakant Niture and Anil Jaiswal: Continue reading University of Maryland duo notches third retraction
It’s always amusing to see how far a journal will bend over backward to avoid coming out and calling something “plagiarism.”
We’ve got two notices for you that exemplify the phenomenon, which we discussed in our Lab Times column last year.
The first, an article about apartheid, was presented at a student conference and published in the Polyvocia: The SOAS Journal of Graduate Research. It was later retracted because the author “should have used quotation marks around material written verbatim from that source.”
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Mistaken punctuation, misreferencing, and other euphemisms for plagiarism
Sometimes plagiarism can be tricky to catch when an article has to be translated before publication.
That seems to be the case for two papers out of a hospital in Canakkale, Turkey, that discussed results of two different kinds of heart surgery.
Here’s the retraction notice for “The effects of 21 and 23 milimeter aortic valve prosthesis on hemodynamic performance and functional capacity in young adults,” in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences: Continue reading The tell-tale heart: Cardiovascular surgeons notch two retractions for plagiarism
