Title: What Caught Our Attention: A previous collaborator with high-profile plant biologist Olivier Voinnet (who now has eight retractions) has issued an interesting correction to a 2010 PNAS paper. Susana Rivas is last author on the paper, the correction for which notes some images were duplicated, and others were “cropped and/or stretched to match the other blots.” Rivas is currently a group leader at The Laboratory of Plant-Microbe Interactions (LIPM), “a combined INRA-CNRS Research Unit.” Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Voinnet co-author issues another correction
Category: by journal
Why one journal will no longer accept author-suggested reviewers
In a recent editorial, the Journal of Neurochemistry declared it would no longer accept author-suggested reviewers. While other journals have done the same in order to prevent fake reviews, the Journal of Neurochemistry is basing its decision on a different logic. We spoke with editor Jörg Schulz about why he believes relying on reviewers picked by editors helps reduce bias in the peer-review process.
Retraction Watch: What prompted you to compare the outcomes of papers reviewed by experts suggested by authors versus experts selected by editors, or experts the authors “opposed?”
Continue reading Why one journal will no longer accept author-suggested reviewers
“The ‘1’ key was not pressed hard enough:” Did a typo kill a cancer paper?
Errors in a 2017 paper about a new cancer test may have occurred because of a simple typo while performing calculations of the tool’s effectiveness.
According to the last author, the “1” key was likely not pressed hard enough.
The error, however small, affected key values “so greatly that the conclusions of the paper can no longer be supported,” the editor said, which prompted the journal to retract the paper. Continue reading “The ‘1’ key was not pressed hard enough:” Did a typo kill a cancer paper?
Cancer biologist retracts five papers
A cancer researcher based at The Ohio State University has retracted five papers from one journal, citing concerns about figures.
The notices for all five papers state the Journal of Biological Chemistry raised questions about some figures, and the authors were not able to supply raw data in all instances. Four of the notices say the authors offered to submit data from repeat experiments and corrected figures, which the journal declined.
According to Kaoru Sakabe, data integrity manager at JBC, the authors “agreed to withdraw these articles after we declined their offers.”
Journals retract 30 papers by engineer in South Korea
An engineer in South Korea has lost 30 papers, at least seven of which for duplication and plagiarism. He has also been fired from his university position.
Soon-Gi Shin, whose affiliation was listed as Kangwon National University in Gangwon, is the sole author on the majority of the papers, published in four journals between 2000 and 2015.
Taewan Kim, the dean of international affairs at the university, told Retraction Watch that Shin was fired on August 21, 2017, over “violation[s] of research ethics.”
Continue reading Journals retract 30 papers by engineer in South Korea
Ethics, authorship concerns sink homeopathy paper by researchers arrested last year
For a host of reasons, a journal has retracted a paper co-authored by a researcher who reportedly once faced charges of practicing medicine without proper qualifications.
According to the retraction notice for “Psorinum Therapy in Treating Stomach, Gall Bladder, Pancreatic, and Liver Cancers: A Prospective Clinical Study,” published Dec. 8, 2010 in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the paper was plagued by:
Continue reading Ethics, authorship concerns sink homeopathy paper by researchers arrested last year
Child took wrong compound for over a year after “communication error”
A journal is retracting a paper after it discovered researchers gave a child the wrong supplement for more than a year.
Rhiannon Bugno, managing editor for Biological Psychiatry, told Retraction Watch the mix-up did not put the patient at risk. However, the mistake was enough for the journal’s editor, John Krystal, of Yale University, to request the retraction of a 2016 paper describing the young girl’s experience taking the compound,“Rett-like Severe Encephalopathy Caused by a De Novo GRIN2B Mutation Is Attenuated by D-serine Dietary Supplement.”
Originally published June 17, 2016, the paper was retracted Jan. 15. Led by corresponding author Xavier Altafaj, of the University of Barcelona (UB) and Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), researchers described using an amino acid, D-serine, to treat a child with a rare genetic disorder that affects neurons.
According to the notice, the researchers did use D-serine in lab work used as proof-of-concept; however, when it came time to try it in the patient, as a result of a “communication error:”
Continue reading Child took wrong compound for over a year after “communication error”
Caught Our Notice: Bioethics article retracted for…ethics violation
Title: Bioethics and Medical Education
What Caught Our Attention: As we’ve said before, you can’t make this stuff up: An article on bioethics had its own ethical issues to deal with. It turns out, the authors had “substantial unreferenced overlap” with another article, that “overlap” including the article’s title. Here’s a side by side comparison of the first page, highlighting the matching text: Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Bioethics article retracted for…ethics violation
Oops: Elsevier journal retracts the wrong paper
When Saidur Rahman learned last month that his 2010 review paper about nanoparticles in refrigeration systems had been retracted, he was concerned—no one at the journal had told him it was going to be pulled.
Rahman, a professor of engineering at Sunway University in Selangor, Malaysia, had recently corrected his 2010 review in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews—specifically, in January, the journal published a two-page correction rewriting the parts of the paper that were “appear close to some materials we had included in some of our other review research.” But Rahman was not anticipating a retraction. Continue reading Oops: Elsevier journal retracts the wrong paper
Data in biofuel paper “had either been grossly misinterpreted or fabricated”
A biology journal has retracted a 2011 paper after the University of California, Los Angeles determined that the data in three figures “cannot be supported.”
In February, the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology retracted the paper, which explores efforts to engineer bacteria to convert plant biomass into biofuel.
Claudia Modlin, assistant director of UCLA’s Office of Research Policy and Compliance, told Retraction Watch that the university informed the journal about the issues last October, after reviewing the work. Continue reading Data in biofuel paper “had either been grossly misinterpreted or fabricated”