Category: by journal

Dipping into history: An 87-year-old retraction in a statistics journal

jamstatsocWe came across a rather long-toothed retraction in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, which represents a case of doing the right thing (similar to that involving the apparent first-ever English language retraction from 1756, about which we wrote in 2012).

The 1927 notice came in the form of a letter by C. H. Whelden Jr., who was for a time the chief statistician for the American National Red Cross, referencing his 1926 article in the JASA,”The Trend-Seasonal Normal in Time Series:”

Continue reading Dipping into history: An 87-year-old retraction in a statistics journal

Misconduct prompts retraction of prostatectomy paper

jsrcoverA group of urologists in China has lost their 2012 paper in the Journal of Surgical Research because one of the authors was evidently rather naughty.

The article, “Is the impact of the extent of lymphadenectomy in radical prostatectomy related to the disease risk? A single center prospective study,” purported to show that: Continue reading Misconduct prompts retraction of prostatectomy paper

Three PLOS ONE papers retracted for totally made-up data

This one comes to us from Twitter, where Willem van Schaik went to express his frustration that a PLOS ONE paper he’d edited had been retracted for fake data.

Two other papers from the same group at the Institute of Microbial Technology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Chandigarh, India, were retracted simultaneously.

We sent van Schaik an email to get a clearer picture of the situation. He responded: Continue reading Three PLOS ONE papers retracted for totally made-up data

Author steps in to clarify vague tuberculosis retraction

You’ve got to love when an author is willing to detail the specifics of an unhelpful retraction notice.

This May, a paper came out in Journal of Thoracic Diseases about drug-resistant tuberculosis. It was retracted in June, for “some misconduct in the manuscript.”

Here’s the notice:

The article “Application status of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry in the identification and drug resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis” (doi: 10.3978/j.issn.2072-1439.2014.02.19) that appeared on page 512-516 of the May 2014 issue of the Journal of Thoracic Disease needs to be withdrawn due to some misconduct in the manuscript. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Since that’s pretty vague and unhelpful, we reached out to corresponding author Jiayun Liu, who gave us a thorough rundown:

Continue reading Author steps in to clarify vague tuberculosis retraction

If only more retractions could be like this: Authors of cardiac stem cell paper show the way

Researchers at Qingdao University have fully retracted a paper originally published in Molecular Medicine Reports with a clear, detailed outline of what went wrong and how they discovered the error.

Here’s the notice for “Generation of induced pluripotent stem cells using skin fibroblasts from patients with myocardial infarction under feeder-free conditions:”

Continue reading If only more retractions could be like this: Authors of cardiac stem cell paper show the way

SAGE Publications busts “peer review and citation ring,” 60 papers retracted

This one deserves a “wjvcow.”

SAGE Publishers is retracting 60 articles from the Journal of Vibration and Control after an investigation revealed a “peer review and citation ring” involving a professor in Taiwan.

[Please see an update on this post.]

Here’s the beginning of a statement from SAGE: Continue reading SAGE Publications busts “peer review and citation ring,” 60 papers retracted

Mystery box sinks immunology paper

Screen Shot 2014-06-30 at 12.30.32 PMBiochemical Journal has pulled a 2006 paper for an undisclosed “background subtraction box” in an image – which, if you take a not-particularly-close look at the figure to the right, means somebody added a black rectangle over the control lane.

Here’s the notice: for “Phosphorylation of Ser158 regulates inflammatory redox-dependent hepatocyte nuclear factor-4a transcriptional activity”: Continue reading Mystery box sinks immunology paper

Education researchers retract paper for differences in “positionality”

Screen Shot 2014-06-27 at 4.03.27 PMHere’s an odd one from the University of Western Australia’s education journal, Education Research and Perspectives: A paper was retracted at the request of the authors, both UWA professors, because the participants “may have differed significantly from others in terms of their positionality,” whatever that means.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Education researchers retract paper for differences in “positionality”

Serbian journal lands in hot water after challenge on 24 hour peer review that cost 1785 euros

naslovna1This story began as a report of a one-off case of potential predatory practice last month, and has escalated to an official call to disband an entire international editorial board, and an accusation against the editor of mass-scale nepotism and other publishing misconduct.

The journal, Archives of Biological Sciences (ABS) is the official publication of the Serbian Biological Society, co-published by ten organisations in Serbia and Bosnia. It was accused (on June 12) on the Scholarly Open Access blog of accepting a paper in 24 hours with no peer review, and demanding 1785 euros for publishing it. Continue reading Serbian journal lands in hot water after challenge on 24 hour peer review that cost 1785 euros

Botany journal retracts paper for “at least” one error

The South African Journal of Botany has retracted a 2012 paper that claimed a variety of herbal extracts have antioxidant and anti-fungal properties, due to errors in “at least” one figure.

Here’s the notice for “Contribution of herbal principles towards cytoprotective, antioxidant and anti-Rhizopus activities:”

Continue reading Botany journal retracts paper for “at least” one error