Category: by journal

Oh, well — “love hormone” doesn’t reduce psychiatric symptoms, say researchers in request to retract

psychiatry-research

It turns out, snorting the so-called “love hormone” may not help reduce psychiatric symptoms such as depression and anxiety.

At least, that’s the conclusion the authors of a 2015 meta-analysis, which initially found intranasal doses of oxytocin could reduce psychiatric symptoms, have now reached. After a pair of graduate students pointed out flaws in the paper, the authors realized they’d made some significant errors, and oxytocin shows no more benefit than placebo.

First author Stefan Hofmann from Boston University in Massachusetts explains further in a lengthy letter he sent to Psychiatry Research, which he passed on to us: Continue reading Oh, well — “love hormone” doesn’t reduce psychiatric symptoms, say researchers in request to retract

Oops — journal retracted the wrong article

journal-of-human-reproductive-sciences

Sometimes you have the right guy, but charge him with the wrong crime — like nabbing someone for not using a turn signal after he just ran through a red light.

A reproductive sciences journal has admitted to mistakenly retracting the wrong article last year — and is now pulling the previously issued retraction notice, along with retracting a different paper by the same author.

K. P. Suresh, author of both studies (the previously pulled one and the newly retracted one) from the National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, appealed the journal’s 2015 decision to retract his previous paper. As we reported at the time, Suresh argued that his 2012 paper was “entirely different” from the study it is said to have plagiarized from. It turns out, he may have been right, because now the journal has pulled a different paper of his, published in 2011.

According to one of the notices, the Journal of Human Reproductive Sciences previously retracted the incorrect paper due to “technical errors.”

In both cases, the journal cited the reason for retraction as “duplicity of text.”

The journal has now issued another retraction notice for the previously published notice, which reads: Continue reading Oops — journal retracted the wrong article

German university recommends that six papers be retracted following probe

200px-siegel_uni-koeln_grau-svgThe University of Cologne has conducted an investigation into the research of Tina Wenz, and determined that six papers should be pulled due to scientific misconduct.

In a release issued last week (as first reported by Leonid Schneider), the university lists six papers that “present scientific misconduct,” according to our Google Translate.

One of the six papers was already retracted last year by Cell Metabolism, which cited reused northern and western blot band images in two figures.

The other six papers are: Continue reading German university recommends that six papers be retracted following probe

Physics journal retracts paper without alerting author

annals-of-physics

An Elsevier journal has angered an author by removing his study without telling him.

After spending months asking the journal why it removed the paper — about a heavily debated theorem in physics — and getting no response, the author threatened to seek damages from the journal and publisher for “permanently stigmatizing” his work. Yesterday, an Elsevier representative told the author what happened: Experts told the journal the paper had a major mistake, so the journal decided to withdraw the study, but failed to tell the author due to an “internal error.”

That explanation didn’t satisfy study author Joy Christian, scientific director of the Einstein Centre for Local-Realistic Physics in Oxford, UK, who has demanded the journal either republish the article or remove it and return the copyright to him, or he will pursue legal action.

Here’s the cryptic publisher’s note for “Local causality in a Friedmann–Robertson–Walker spacetime:” Continue reading Physics journal retracts paper without alerting author

Does your work need IRB approval? Better check, says author of retracted paper

screen-shot-2016-09-25-at-9-51-48-pm

Does an article that discusses anonymized student projects about how to catalog data count as research on human subjects?

One of the students included in the paper thought so, and complained to the journal after learning that it had published the case study of the program without the approval required for studying people. The authors admitted they didn’t get consent from participants, because they didn’t realize the work required it. The mix-up has prompted both them and the journal to reconsider their policies regarding ethics approval of studies.

In the meantime, “A Project-Based Case Study of Data Science Education” has been retracted, with this notice:

Continue reading Does your work need IRB approval? Better check, says author of retracted paper

Ecology journal flags carnivore paper under investigation

journal-of-applied-ecologyAn ecology journal has issued an expression of concern (EOC) for a recently published study, citing an institutional investigation about the data and conclusions.

According to the notice — issued by the Journal of Applied Ecology — the author’s institution in South Africa has received a report from an independent examiner. The editors are reviewing the paper — about reducing the impact of lethal carnivores such as black-backed jackals — “in light of this information.”

An official from the journal told us the investigation has to do with “relevant background information” that was not included in the study, published online in December.

Here’s the EOC, published earlier this month: Continue reading Ecology journal flags carnivore paper under investigation

1st retraction for researcher who lost whistleblower lawsuit

microvascular-research

A researcher who was dismissed from Wayne State University — then lost a whistleblower lawsuit against it — has logged his first retraction.

In 2012, after Christian Kreipke was dismissed from Wayne State, he filed a lawsuit, alleging that the institution had defrauded the U.S. government of $169 million in research funding. A judge dismissed the case in 2014, noting Kreipke cited “no specific facts,” and as a public university, Wayne State had immunity as an “arm of the state.”

The university’s president has said Kreipke was fired due to misconduct — not his whistleblowing, according to Courthouse News Service. 

Now, a retraction has appeared for Kreipke in Microvascular Research, citing discrepancies between the original data and what was reported in the paper. 

Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading 1st retraction for researcher who lost whistleblower lawsuit

Cell Press won’t retract papers despite one author confessing to fraud

Screen Shot 2016-08-03 at 18.54.35Cell Press journals will not be retracting two papers that were flagged with expressions of concern (EOCs) in April after one author claimed to have manipulated some experiments.

In a strange turn of events, as we previously reported, the study’s corresponding author refuted the claims of the author who confessed to fraud, citing concerns about his “motives and credibility.” Since then, two independent labs repeated the authors’ experiments, and “largely confirm” the central conclusions of a Cell paper, but were inconclusive regarding a paper in Molecular Cell. Regardless, in both cases, the journals have decided to take no further action. 

Both expressions of concern (and their associated editorial notes) will remain online, as part of the “permanent record,” a Cell Press spokesperson told us.

The spokesperson added more about the investigation process: Continue reading Cell Press won’t retract papers despite one author confessing to fraud

Say what? Journal charges fee to lodge allegations against papers

erintHere’s something we haven’t seen before: A journal is asking tipsters to pay a fee to investigate a paper.

After receiving a tip of our own about this new requirement, we reached out to Educational Research International, and received this response: Continue reading Say what? Journal charges fee to lodge allegations against papers

Reviewers may rate papers differently when blinded to authors’ identities, new study says

Kanu Okike
Kanu Okike

Although previous research has suggested peer reviewers are not influenced by knowing the authors’ identity and affiliation, a new Research Letter published today in JAMA suggests otherwise. In “Single-blind vs Double-blind Peer Review in the Setting of Author Prestige,” Kanu Okike at Kaiser Moanalua Medical Center in Hawaii and his colleagues created a fake manuscript submitted to Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research (CORR), which described a prospective study about communication and safety during surgery, and included five “subtle errors.” Sixty-two experts reviewed the paper under the typical “single-blind” system, where they are told the authors’ identities and affiliations, but remain anonymous to the authors. Fifty-seven reviewers vetted the same paper under the “double-blind” system, in which they did not know who co-authored the research. We spoke with Okike about some of his unexpected results.

Retraction Watch: You found that reviewers were more likely to accept papers when they could see they were written by well-known scientists at prestigious institutions. But the difference was relatively small. Did anything about this surprise you? Continue reading Reviewers may rate papers differently when blinded to authors’ identities, new study says