Category: by journal

“Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction

grondelle
Rienk van Grondelle, via VU

More than two years ago, we wrote about a retraction for duplication in Biophysical Journal prompted by an email from pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis. That post generated a robust discussion, including one comment from someone calling himself or herself “Double Dutch.”

This past weekend, the last author of that paper, Rienk van Grondelle, left a lengthy response to that comment in which he explained how the duplication happened. We’ve confirmed that it was van Grondelle who left the comment, which we reproduce here in full (we’ve added paragraph breaks for readability): Continue reading “Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction

Fraud topples second neuroscience word processing paper

neuroimageWe have a second retraction from a group of neuroscience researchers in Belgium who discovered fatal errors in their work on how the brain sets about the task of reading written language. Spoiler alert: Turns out those errors weren’t errors after all.

As we reported back in May, the group, from the University of Leuven, was unable to replicate certain fMRI findings in a November 2012 article in Neuroscience. At the time, Hans P. Op de Beeck, who led the group, told us: Continue reading Fraud topples second neuroscience word processing paper

A retracted retraction: Backsies for an anti-terrorism paper

Nasrullah Memon
Nasrullah Memon

The other day, we wrote about a puzzling situation that appeared to involve the ninth retraction for an anti-terrorism researcher. A book chapter by Nasrullah Memon, of the University of Southern Denmark, was marked “Retracted,” both in the abstract’s title and on the PDF. But Memon forwarded us an email from Springer, the book’s publisher, saying that they had decided to publish an erratum rather than retract.

And indeed, sometime after we published our post, the retraction was changed to an erratum, with the following notice: Continue reading A retracted retraction: Backsies for an anti-terrorism paper

Karel Bezouška, who broke into lab to tamper with investigation, has JACS paper retracted

jacsat_v136i001.inddKarel Bezouška, who, as we noted last year “broke into a lab refrigerator so he could tamper with samples being used to try to replicate the experiments during the investigation,” has had his fourth paper retracted.

Here’s the notice, for “Synthesis of Multivalent Glycoconjugates Containing the Immunoactive LELTE Peptide: Effect of Glycosylation on Cellular Activation and Natural Killing by Human Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells,” in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS): Continue reading Karel Bezouška, who broke into lab to tamper with investigation, has JACS paper retracted

Doing the right thing: Team finds data merge error in depression paper, retracts

bbicover114A team of neuroscientists from Sweden has retracted their 2013 paper in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity after discovering that they’d made a mistake while merging their data.

According to the abstract, the study, “Lower CSF interleukin-6 predicts future depression in a population-based sample of older women followed for 17 years,” purported to find that: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Team finds data merge error in depression paper, retracts

Anti-terrorism researcher notches ninth retraction — or does he?

Nasrullah Memon
Nasrullah Memon

A year ago, we wrote about eight retractions by Nasrullah Memon, an anti-terrorism researcher at the University of Southern Denmark, for plagiarism.

He seems to has another retraction, although that may be in dispute. As Debora Weber-Wulff reports, Memon’s chapter in Advanced Data Mining and Applications, which “constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications, ADMA 2007, held in Harbin, China in August 2007,” is now marked “retracted.” Continue reading Anti-terrorism researcher notches ninth retraction — or does he?

First retraction appears in case of cardiologist Poldermans

EBPOM_00219_M3Don Poldermans, the cardiology researcher in the Netherlands whose prominent career came to disgrace in a rather confusing scandal, finally has a retraction.

Poldermans, formerly of Erasmus Medical Center, copped to charges of misconduct but not of fraud in the case — which, if you speak Dutch, you can read about in detail here.

As we wrote in 2012: Continue reading First retraction appears in case of cardiologist Poldermans

Doing the right thing: Authors retract brain paper with “systematic human error in coding”

fronthumneuroA group of Swiss neurologists have lost their 2013 article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience after reporting that their data were rendered null by coding errors.

The article, “Spontaneous pre-stimulus fluctuations in the activity of right fronto-parietal areas influence inhibitory control performance,” purported to find that: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Authors retract brain paper with “systematic human error in coding”

Journal dumps grain paper for controversial data

productionThe journal Tropical Animal Health and Production has retracted a 2013 paper by a group from India whose data on feeding young cows special wheat wasn’t quite what it was cracked up to be.

The article, “Nutritional evaluation of wheat straw treated with Crinipellis sp. in Sahiwal calves,” found that: Continue reading Journal dumps grain paper for controversial data

Another retraction for sex researcher Weijmar Schultz

Weijmar Schultz
Weijmar Schultz

Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, the Groningen sex researcher (and Ig Nobel winner) who misused the 1985 thesis of an American scholar, and the work of another researcher, in at least five published articles, has tallied another retraction in the affair, his sixth.

As we reported earlier, Schultz had been cleared of plagiarism but found to have abused the work (in an “unintended and unknowing” fashion, we’re told) of one Diana Jeffrey, by taking passages from her dissertation without acknowledgement. These articles are pretty long in the tooth, having been published in the 1990s.

The latest, in the Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, appeared in 1992. Titled “Sexual rehabilitation after gynecological cancer treatment,” Schultz wrote it with a colleague H.B.M. Van de Wiel, whose name shows up on the other retractions, too.

According to the notice: Continue reading Another retraction for sex researcher Weijmar Schultz