What Caught Our Attention: We haven’t heard much about Bharat Aggarwal since his seven retractions in 2016 propelled him onto our leaderboard (and long after he threatened to sue Retraction Watch for our reporting). There was a whisper of a mention, when his name was listed as one of the organizers of a cancer conference from which MD Anderson (his former employer) had to publicly distance themselves as a co-sponsor. Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Researcher who once threatened to sue Retraction Watch now up to 19 retractions
Category: by journal
Caught Our Notice: 54 problems in three scientific images equals one expression of concern
What Caught Our Attention: Usually, an Expression of Concern (EOC) offers general language about “concerns regarding the validity of the data” or “concerns regarding the integrity of the study.” Here the language is anything but, saying that 54 Western blot bands within three figures have problems such as “visible pasted joints,” “square border,” and numerous “appear to be the same band.” According to the notice, the authors have not responded to requests for the original blots, so the editors are allowing the article to remain intact, choosing instead “to alert readers to these issues and allow them to arrive at their own conclusions regarding the figures.” Continue reading Caught Our Notice: 54 problems in three scientific images equals one expression of concern
Authors retract, replace highly cited paper on ADHD in kids
Researchers have retracted and replaced a 2014 paper in JAMA Psychiatry, exploring a new way to classify attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, after discovering errors in the data.
Some experts have criticized the current diagnostic criteria for ADHD—noting, in some cases, it could inflate the rate of diagnosis. Sarah L. Karalunas, the paper’s corresponding author, told Retraction Watch that the aim of the study was to look beyond current criteria and “demonstrate an approach that could be used to better delineate the boundaries of ADHD and other psychiatric diagnostic categories.” Continue reading Authors retract, replace highly cited paper on ADHD in kids
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
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?
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
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
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