If you know Prairie Home Companion, you that that in fictional Lake Wobegon, “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
That’s a bit like what Harvard’s Nir Eyal found when he was asked to review a paper for Dove Medical Press. Here’s what he saw when he looked at Dove’s peer reviewer form:
Continue reading No more scientific Lake Wobegon: After criticism, publisher adds a “reject” option for peer reviewers
Blood has retracted two 2013 illustrations of red cells by researchers from South Africa and the United States because, somewhat confusingly, they didn’t conform to the journal’s criteria for publishing such material.
Here’s the notice for one of the images, “Red blood cell and platelet interactions in healthy females during early and late pregnancy, as well as postpartum”: Continue reading Blood retracts two red cell illustrations that “could have misled” readers
A team of physicists has lost their 2013 paper in the Journal of Optics after the publisher learned that the article had already appeared in print twice before.
The article, “Inscription of narrow bandwidth Bragg gratings in polymer optical fibers,” came from researchers at the Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, in Portugal, and the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, in Birmingham, England. Per the abstract: Continue reading Seeing triple: Optics paper proves to be one of three, retracted
Does anyone know how to say “thrown under the bus” in Italian?
A group of researchers in Italy has retracted a paper after it became clear that they had duplicated some of their previous work. Or, as one of the senior authors put it, as a “young coworker” had reused their material.
Here’s the notice from Biologics: Targets and Therapy: Continue reading Author blames “young coworker” for duplication as paper is retracted
Shigeaki Kato, the former University of Tokyo endocrinology researcher found to have manipulated images in dozens of papers, has six more retractions, bringing his total to 23.
Five of them appear in Molecular and Cellular Biology: Continue reading Shigeaki Kato up to 23 retractions
Retraction Watch has learned that The Leadership Quarterly, a management journal published by Elsevier, plans to retract five papers by a Florida researcher poised to “rock” the field — but probably not quite in the way a press release intended — whose findings in the articles were questioned by readers.
The scholar, Fred O. Walumbwa, had a “stellar history of excellence and achievement,” according to this August 2013 press release from Florida International University announcing his move from Arizona State: Continue reading Leadership journal to retract five papers from FIU scholar
In December, we reported on the case of Dong-Pyou Han, who was found by the Office of Research Integrity to have spiked rabbit blood samples to make it look as though a vaccine for HIV was working.
At the time, Han’s former institution, Iowa State, told us that “one oral presentation and some abstracts will be removed from the web.”
One of those retractions has occurred, in Retrovirology, of “Eliciting broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV-1 that target gp41 MPER.” Here’s the notice: Continue reading Faked HIV vaccine research presentation retracted
Sometimes, an Expression of Concern says a heck of a lot without — as befits the genre — coming to a particular conclusion. Take this (paywalled)* example describing a paper from a group at Huazhong Science and Technology University, Wuhan, China: Continue reading Expression of Concern reveals journal editors bending over backward to give authors benefit of the doubt
Here’s a stinky retraction.
The authors of a 2006 article in the Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences have yanked the paper — without an explanation.
The article, titled “Effectiveness of Lactobacillus plantarum strain KJ-10311 to remove characteristic Malodorous gases in piggery slurry,” came from J. D. Kim and K. M. Park. Kim appears to be a member of the journal’s editorial board, which perhaps explains why the authors were able to get away with this retraction notice: Continue reading This retraction stinks: Authors pull paper on pig gas
Neuroskeptic featured an interesting situation over the weekend, involving a case report published in an anesthesiology journal.
The case report in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care — about a six-year-old boy with a rare neurological condition who died following administration of anesthesia — caused the boy’s parents great distress when it appeared in November.