Category: by journal

Highly cited paper by dep’t chair at Sloan Kettering is corrected — three times

A radiology journal has published an addendum to a 2005 review on cancer imaging techniques, alerting readers to figure duplication.

But that’s not what caught our attention about this case. The addendum, published in January, is the third notice that The British Journal of Radiology (BJR) has issued for the 2005 review by Hedvig Hricak, chair of the Department of Radiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City. The notices, published between 2014 and 2018, all describe duplication.

Why the series of notices, all describing a similar problem? Continue reading Highly cited paper by dep’t chair at Sloan Kettering is corrected — three times

Caught Our Notice: Researcher who sued PubPeer commenter up to 21 retractions

Titles: 1) Notch-1 induces Epithelial-mesenchymal transition consistent with cancer stem cell phenotype in pancreatic cancer cells

2) Sensitization of squamous cell carcinoma to cisplatin induced killing by natural agents

What Caught Our Attention: Regular readers will be familiar with the saga involving Fazlul Sarkar and PubPeer: In 2014, Sarkar sued anonymous commenters on the site, claiming defamation (and that damaging comments may have cost him a new job). Although Sarkar won an initial ruling, it was overturned by an appeals court. In the midst of that, the ACLU (which represented PubPeer in the case) released a copy of a misconduct investigation report compiled by Sarkar’s institution, Wayne State University, which concluded that he had committed enough misconduct to warrant retracting 40 papers. The two latest notices, both of which cite Wayne State’s investigation, bring Sarkar’s total to 21.   Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Researcher who sued PubPeer commenter up to 21 retractions

Can soil science research dig itself out from a citation stacking scandal?

Jan Willem van Groenigen

Last year, the soil science community was rocked by reports that an editor, Artemi Cerdà, was accused of citation stacking — asking authors to cite particular papers — boosting his profile, and that of journals where he worked. (Cerdà has denied the allegations.) The case had some major fallout: Cerdà resigned from two journals and the editorial board of Geoderma, additional editors resigned from their posts, and a university launched an investigation. In the midst of the mess, a group of early career scientists in the field released an open letter, urging the leaders of the community “to establish a clear road map as to how this crisis will be handled and which actions will be taken to avoid future misconducts.” Today, Jan Willem van Groenigen, Chair of the Editors in Chief of Geoderma, along with other editors at the journal, published a response to those letter-writers — including a list of the 13 papers that added 83 citations the journal has deemed “unwarranted.” The editorial includes a list of “actions we have taken to prevent citation stacking from recurring and to further strengthen the transparency of the review process” — including monitoring editors and showing authors how to report suspicious conduct.

Retraction Watch: It’s been nine months since the young researchers released their open letter — why respond now?

Continue reading Can soil science research dig itself out from a citation stacking scandal?

Caught Our Notice: Gorilla paper in the mist? Journal flags ape hormone paper

Title: Biologically validating the measurement of oxytocin in western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) urine and saliva using a commercial enzyme immunoassay

What Caught Our Attention: Quite frankly, anything with “gorilla gorilla gorilla” in the title will catch our eye, even if it is just the scientific name of the western lowland gorilla. In this case, the journal issued an expression of concern over an “unintended discrepancy” that may have affected the paper, which validates the use of a tool to measure oxytocin in the apes’ urine and saliva. The authors voluntarily notified the editors of Primate of the potential issue, and the journal issued an Expression of Concern only one month after the article was published — which is pretty fast for a notice, although not a record (see this one, issued six days after publication).

We contacted the editor, who told us:

Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Gorilla paper in the mist? Journal flags ape hormone paper

McGill dept chair says she was blindsided by coauthor’s plagiarism

When Parisa Ariya was invited to write a review for a special issue of the journal Atmosphere, she asked one of her former doctoral students to take the lead. But she soon regretted that decision after discovering Lin (Emma) Si had plagiarized and duplicated significant portions of the review.

Ariya, chair of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at McGill University in Montreal, told Retraction Watch that she believes it’s important to foster the careers of young women in science and was excited for her former student, Si, to take on the challenge of writing her first review. (Si was cc’d on our email communications with Ariya, but did not respond to our individual request for comment.)
Continue reading McGill dept chair says she was blindsided by coauthor’s plagiarism

Caught Our Notice: Climate change leads to more…neurosurgery for polar bears?

Title: Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy

What Caught Our Attention: There’s a lot going on here, so bear with us. (Ba-dum-bum.)

First, there was the paper itself, co-authored by, among others, Michael Mann and Stephan Lewandowsky. Both names may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers. Mann is a prominent climate scientist who has sued the National Review for defamation. A study by Lewandowsky and colleagues of “the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial” was the subject of several Retraction Watch posts when it was retracted and then republished in a different form. And the conclusion of the new paper, in Bioscience, seemed likely to draw the ire of many who objected to the earlier work: Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Climate change leads to more…neurosurgery for polar bears?

Clue fans, here’s scientific proof that it was Colonel Mustard with a candlestick

Leo Reynolds, via Flickr

When we last heard from Eve Armstrong one year ago today, she was a postdoc at the BioCircuits Institute at the University of California, San Diego, musing mathematically about what would have happened if she had asked one Barry Cottonfield to her high school prom in 1997. Today, she is a postdoc at the Computational Neuroscience Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania — where, it would appear from a new preprint, titled “Colonel Mustard in the Aviary with the Candlestick: a limit cycle attractor transitions to a stable focus via supercritical Andronov-Hopf bifurcation,” she has solved a brutal murder.

To be more precise:

We establish the means by which Mr. Boddy came to transition from a stable trajectory within the global phase space of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a stable point on the cement floor of an aviary near the west bank of the Schuylkill River.

The preprint will be posted at arXiv tomorrow, but Armstrong did not want to keep the world in suspense any longer, so we are hosting the manuscript here at Retraction Watch on a more appropriate day, April 1. She was also kind enough to answer a few questions about the work: Continue reading Clue fans, here’s scientific proof that it was Colonel Mustard with a candlestick

Nature journal retracts controversial CRISPR paper after authors admit results may be wrong

Nature Methods has retracted a 2017 paper suggesting a common gene editing technique may cause widespread collateral damage to the genome.

The notice has a long backstory: After the paper was published, it immediately drew an outcry from critics (including representatives from companies who sell the tool, whose stock fell after publication). Some critics argued that the authors, led by Vinit B. Mahajan at Stanford University, hadn’t employed sufficient controls, so they couldn’t be sure that the observed mutations stemmed from the tool, rather than normal background variation between mice. Only months after the paper appeared, the journal issued an expression of concern about the article. In a new preprint posted on BioRxiv on Monday, the authors concede that their critics may be right.

In the new preprint, Mahanjan and his colleagues acknowledge that the gene editing technique — known as CRISPR-Cas9 — “may not introduce numerous, unintended, off-target mutations.”

However, according to the retraction notice, Mahajan and several of his co-authors object to the retraction: Continue reading Nature journal retracts controversial CRISPR paper after authors admit results may be wrong

Caught Our Notice: Duplicates, errors prompt two retractions for same author

Titles: 1) Angiopoietin-Like 4 Confers Resistance to Hypoxia/Serum Deprivation-Induced Apoptosis through PI3K/Akt and ERK1/2 Signaling Pathways in Mesenchymal Stem Cells

2) Novel Mechanism of Inhibition of Dendritic Cells Maturation by Mesenchymal Stem Cells via Interleukin-10 and the JAK1/STAT3 Signaling Pathway

What Caught Our Attention: In the span of 48 hours, PLOS ONE retracted two papers this month that were co-authored by Bo Yu, based at Key Laboratories of Education Ministry for Myocardial Ischemia Mechanism and Treatment and The Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University in China. Both notices cite multiple duplications and errors, and conclude:

Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Duplicates, errors prompt two retractions for same author

PNAS wouldn’t let authors cite unpublished manuscript. Now, it admits it was wrong.

Question: Do you value Retraction Watch? If so, would you consider a tax-deductible donation of $25, or a recurring donation of an amount of your choosing, to support us?

When researchers submitted a paper about a type of microparticle to PNAS, they wanted to give credit where it was due, and cite an unpublished manuscript that helped guide their work. But the journal’s policy forbid citing unpublished work, and the reference was removed before publication. Now, concerns from the authors of that unpublished work have prompted the journal to have a change of heart.  

Continue reading PNAS wouldn’t let authors cite unpublished manuscript. Now, it admits it was wrong.