Category: by journal

Two retracted papers were published behind bosses’ backs

Researchers have retracted two 2016 papers from the same journal which were published without the permission of the supervising scientists.

According to the retraction notices, the two Applied Materials & Interfaces articles were “published without the full knowledge or consent of the principal investigators” who guided the research, but are not named in the notices.

The papers share the same three authors, listed in the same order. Last author Fangqiong Tang and middle author Laifeng Li are principal investigators in different labs at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. First author Nanjing Hao was formerly in Tang’s research group, but is now at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

Here’s the retraction notice for “Fabrication of Carbohydrate-Conjugated Fingerprintlike Mesoporous Silica Net for the Targeted Capture of Bacteria,” which was retracted only months after it was published in November 2016: Continue reading Two retracted papers were published behind bosses’ backs

3rd retraction appears for fired Pfizer breast cancer researcher

Pfizer has retracted a paper by a former employee who was fired after the company discovered she had been doctoring data.

The retraction, in Molecular Cancer Research, is the third of five papers Pfizer asked to retract, after an investigation discovered they contained duplicated images. The papers have been discussed on PubPeer, which is also mentioned in the latest retraction notice.

As a result of the investigation, Pfizer terminated the employment of Min-Jean Yin, the last author on the newly retracted paper.

According to the notice, Yin and five of her co-authors agreed to the retraction:

Continue reading 3rd retraction appears for fired Pfizer breast cancer researcher

Researcher who lost whistleblower lawsuit logs 4 more retractions

A brain journal has retracted four papers by a researcher due to image duplications that the university uncovered during an investigation into his work.

According to the retraction notice, Wayne State University found that Christian Kreipke had used several images in these articles “to represent different results in grant proposals and/or poster presentations,” and that the data were unreliable. Kreipke now has a total of five retractions, by our count.

As we’ve reported before, Wayne State and Kreipke have been engaged in conflict for several years. In 2012, Kreipke was dismissed from his assistant professor post at Wayne State after the university said it found evidence of research misconduct, according to Courthouse News. Kreipke fired back against the university, filing a whistleblower lawsuit. In it, Kreipke claimed that the institution was “involved in a conspiracy,” according to unsealed court documents, in which it had swindled the U.S. government out of millions in research funding.

A judge dismissed the case in 2014, but the conflict between Kreipke and Wayne State was not over. Continue reading Researcher who lost whistleblower lawsuit logs 4 more retractions

Unexplained abnormalities in stem cells prompt Columbia researchers to pull diabetes paper

Researchers at Columbia University have retracted a 2013 paper in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, after uncovering abnormalities in the stem cell lines that undermined the conclusions in the paper.

Last year, corresponding author Dieter Egli discovered he could not reproduce key data in the 2013 paper because almost all the cell lines first author Haiqing Hua used contained abnormalities, casting doubt on the overall findings. When Egli reached out to Hua for answers, Hua could not explain the abnormalities. As a result, Hua and Egli agreed the paper should be retracted.

Since some of the details of how the paper ended up relying on abnormal cells remain unclear, the university confirmed to us that it is investigating the matter.

Here’s the retraction notice for “iPSC-derived β cells model diabetes due to glucokinase deficiency,” cited 42 times: Continue reading Unexplained abnormalities in stem cells prompt Columbia researchers to pull diabetes paper

When you have 94 retractions, what’s two more?

Attention Joachim Boldt: The 1990s are calling, and they want their papers back.

The Annals of Thoracic Surgery has retracted two papers from the early 1990s on which Boldt was the first author – bringing the retraction tally for the disgraced German anesthesiologist to 96, by our count. Both articles were found to contain manipulated data.

The first paper, from 1990, was titled “Acute Preoperative Plasmapheresis and Established Blood Conservation Techniques,” and was written when Boldt was on the faculty at Justus-Liebig University, in Giessen.

According to the notice:

Continue reading When you have 94 retractions, what’s two more?

Faked data, plagiarism, no co-author okays…yeah, this paper’s been retracted

A researcher in South Korea has retracted a 2016 paper on which he is listed as senior author because a former student wrote and published the article without his permission.

According to the retraction notice, the former student also fabricated data and plagiarized “a substantial amount of material” from previous papers published by the senior and middle author.

Here’s the retraction notice for “Oleaginous yeast-based production of microbial oil from volatile fatty acids obtained by anaerobic digestion of red algae (Gelidium amansii),” published in the Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering in April 2016 and retracted in January: Continue reading Faked data, plagiarism, no co-author okays…yeah, this paper’s been retracted

When does animal research become unnecessary and cruel? A paper’s methods give a biologist pause

Elies Bik

Microbiologist Elies Bik is well-known for applying a close eye to studies, and has spent years anonymously submitting reports on plagiarism and image duplication to journal editors. Last year, she published an analysis of work, with troubling results – that 1 in 25 biomedical papers contains inappropriate duplications in images. She’s never stopped reading papers closely, and recently flagged one on Twitter for concerns about its methodology. Although Bik is not against animal research, she said the treatments rats faced in the paper made her queasy – and didn’t seem justified. She explains her reasoning below.

Continue reading When does animal research become unnecessary and cruel? A paper’s methods give a biologist pause

Coauthor’s past misconduct prompts dep’t chair to retract Diabetes study

A department chair of a Swedish university asked to retract a 2010 study in Diabetes after none of the authors could explain image-related ambiguities.

The matter prompted particular attention because the paper’s first author, Pontus Almer Boström, had been found guilty of scientific misconduct by the University of Gothenburg in 2012, after Jan Borén noted some irregularities in data calculated by Boström. At that point, the research group combed the data to identify further issues arising from Boström’s work, and didn’t find any.

But last summer, when a user on PubPeer raised questions about some of the images in the 2010 paper, the matter was brought back into focus. According to Borén, they found “no evidence of scientific misconduct in this study.” But Boström had left the university in 2009 and could not be reached, the corresponding author had passed away, and the remaining co-authors hadn’t stayed in the field. So Borén decided it would be best to retract the study to avoid any “lingering questions.”

Here’s the retraction notice for “The SNARE Protein SNAP23 and the SNARE-Interacting Protein Munc18c in Human Skeletal Muscle Are Implicated in Insulin Resistance/Type 2 Diabetes,” in which Borén thanks “Peer 1″ on PubPeer for “detecting the ambiguities and bringing them to our attention:” Continue reading Coauthor’s past misconduct prompts dep’t chair to retract Diabetes study

Authors couldn’t find a patient to give consent for case report. Then the patient found the report.

When a group of authors decided to write up a curious case of a 35-year-old woman with a mysterious mass that took 11 years to be diagnosed, they tried repeatedly to contact the patient for her permission. When they couldn’t reach her, they published the paper anyway, removing any identifiable information.

But the report apparently included enough details for the patient to recognize herself — and when she read the paper, she asked the authors to retract it.

That’s the story according to the publisher of the 2016 case study, which recently retracted it with this notice:

Continue reading Authors couldn’t find a patient to give consent for case report. Then the patient found the report.

Editor steps down from journal while it investigates citation irregularities

Artemi Cerdà

The editor of the journal Land Degradation & Development has stepped down amidst an investigation into citation problems at the journal.

The editor, Artemi Cerdà of the University of Valencia in Spain, has also disappeared from the list of editors at two journals published by the European Geosciences Union, which recently announced that one of its editors had engaged in citation manipulation.

Here’s a statement we just received from a spokesperson for Wiley, which publishes Land Degradation & Development:

Continue reading Editor steps down from journal while it investigates citation irregularities