The editors of the journal Micron — an Elsevier title — have retracted its first paper ever, and in an editorial marking the occasion, take on a number of issues in scientific publishing misconduct.
The beginning of the editorial (which is paywalled): Continue reading Not-so-tiny ethics issues as Micron retracts first-ever paper, and authors apologize for five duplicates
A co-author of two papers claiming to have shown how to create stem cells simply and easily has requested their retraction, the Wall Street Journal is reporting: Continue reading Co-author of controversial acid STAP stem cell papers in Nature requests retraction: report
In response to “an extraordinary outpouring of discussions on open data and its place in scientific publishing” following a February 24 announcement about a new data policy at PLOS, the publisher has apologized and corrected the record.
The new policy — which was actually first announced on January 23, as we noted here — had led to criticism at the DrugMonkey blog, and a February 26 clarification seemed to do little to convince another critic. (Not all disagreed with the policy, however.)
In particular, there were objections to a section that began with Continue reading Following criticism, PLOS apologizes, clarifies new data policy
A group of authors in Korea has lost their 2013 paper on treating vision loss after one of the two cases they’d reported turned out to have been fatally flawed.
The paper, “Isolated central retinal artery occlusion as an initial presentation of paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria and successful long-term prevention of systemic thrombosis with eculizumab,” had appeared in the Japanese Journal of Ophthalmology.
According to the abstract: Continue reading “Critical data” errors force retraction of vision paper
The authors of a 2011 paper on sex workers in India have lost the article in a dispute over the provenance of the data.
The article, “Health of Home-Based Sex Workers and their Children in Rural Andhra Pradesh, India,” appeared in Asian Population Studies and was written by Monique M. Hennink and Solveig A. Cunningham, both of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta.
Here’s the abstract: Continue reading Sex worker paper falls in data dispute
Here’s a lesson for would-be authors of papers on power supplies:
Energy = Renewable; Journal articles = Not renewable
Too late for a group of engineers in Iran who borrowed too liberally from previously published work in their 2013 article in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
The paper, “A review of energy storage systems in microgrids with wind turbines,” reported that: Continue reading Plagiarism makes renewable energy paper unsustainable
A pair of mathematicians from Egypt has lost their 2012 article in the Journal of the Egyptian Mathematical Society because they reused some of the material from a previous publication.
The article, with the Nabokovian title, “On Humbert matrix functions,” was written by A. Shehata and M. Abul-Dahab. According to the introduction: Continue reading Humbert, Humbert: Duplication topples matrix function paper
We have an update on the complicated story of Milena Penkowa and Bente Klarlund Pedersen.
Two papers coauthored by the pair — who have both been found guilty of scientific dishonesty by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty — have been retracted by the FASEB Journal.
Here’s one notice (both are unfortunately behind a paywall): Continue reading Penkowa-Pedersen paper retracted nearly three years after being subjected to Notice of Concern
Back in August we — and others — wrote about a paper in Organometallics for which one member of the study team appeared to have instructed a co-author to pad the article with artificial results. From the supplemental information (SI) of that paper:
Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis…
Now comes a correction statement from the group that can only be described as “mega.” First reported last month by Chemical & Engineering News, the lengthy notice begins: Continue reading Authors of “just make up an…analysis” Organometallics paper issue mega-correction
Here’s a nice case of a journal taking pains to clear the name of an author.
Last summer we wrote about a case of plagiarism involving two authors from India who’d published a paper on biometrics in the Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences.
Now — seven months later, we’ll note — one of those authors has gotten a reprieve. A notice in the journal states that the researcher had nothing to do with the misconduct.
At the time, the notice for the paper, “Multiple facial soft biometrics for person identification system,” read: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Journal clears unknowing author of plagiarism