Category: scientific reports

“The main improvements reported are invalid”: Quantum communication paper retracted

scientificreportsA paper on quantum communication has been retracted for failing to address several important problems, making the conclusions invalid.

Quantum communication involves sending a series of photons in specific quantum states over fiberoptic cables. It’s a little like the 1s and 0s of traditional computing, but much more secure. If the photons are intercepted on their way to the intended target, the quantum states will change, and the recipients can know their information was accessed by other parties. This is especially interesting to governments with a lot of secret information to transmit: both China and the U.S. have programs to develop these networks.

The retracted paper was a discussion of how to efficiently send lots of quantum information from different sources through the same fiberoptic cables at once.

Here’s the notice for “Efficient Quantum Transmission in Multiple-Source Networks”: Continue reading “The main improvements reported are invalid”: Quantum communication paper retracted

Far from earth-shatteringly new: Plagiarism topples Chinese quake paper

scientificreportsA group of scientists at the Chinese Earthquake Administration in Beijing have lost their 2014 paper in Nature Scientific Reports for lifting chunks of text from a previously published article.

The abstract of the paper, “Early magnitude estimation for the MW7.9 Wenchuan earthquake using progressively expanded P-wave time window,” states: Continue reading Far from earth-shatteringly new: Plagiarism topples Chinese quake paper

Paper linking cell phones during pregnancy to behavior problems in mice corrected

scientificreportsThe authors of a study published last year looking at the effects of cell phone exposure on mice in utero have corrected a figure after it was questioned. New experiments, they write, confirm the original conclusions they drew from the figure.

Here’s the corrected figure from the paper in Scientific Reports, published by Nature Publishing Group: Continue reading Paper linking cell phones during pregnancy to behavior problems in mice corrected

Two Moriguchi stem cell papers being retracted

It was, as Nature News wrote last month, a story that “seemed too good to be true:”

Stem-cell transplant claims debunked

Transplant of induced pluripotent stem cells to treat heart failure probably never happened

Hisashi Moriguchi, a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo, had claimed a result that would have put him years ahead of researchers toiling in stem cell research. But the claims were met with a great deal of doubt — to say the least — and the story began to unravel when Harvard, where Moriguchi said he’d done the work, denied it had ever taken place.

And as expected, the retractions have now started. Today, a Nature Publishing Group journal said they would be retracting two papers, “A therapeutic method for the direct reprogramming of human liver cancer cells with only chemicals” and “Successful cryopreservation of human ovarian cortex tissues using supercooling.” The notices for the Scientific Reports papers will both say the same thing: Continue reading Two Moriguchi stem cell papers being retracted