Category: freely available

Forged author list blows up explosives contamination paper

WWII poster for Ravenna Ordnance Plant, via Wikipedia
WWII poster for Ravenna Ordnance Plant, via Wikipedia

An environmental journal has retracted a paper on a technology that helps degrade explosives released into soil, because the first author never got the permission of his “co-authors” — oh, and used data that were “illegally obtained,” according to one of the slighted co-authors.

According to the EPA, more than 30 sites around the country are contaminated by decommissioned explosives, including weapons plants and army depots. A major source of the pollution was workers washing out old bombs into “evaporation lagoons” and then burning the resulting sludge.

The site used for the retracted paper was Ravenna Army Ammunition Plant, a decommissioned weapons factory that stored explosive waste in unlined landfills. According to the EPA, “open burning was also a common practice.”

The problems with the paper in Water, Air & Soil Pollution were uncovered after the head of the company, University of Georgia (UGA) professor Valentine Nzengung, found the paper on ResearchGate. He discovered that first author Chunhui Luo had used (now out-of-date) data without permission, and added Nzengung’s name to the paper without his knowledge. The other author is another UGA professor, Walter O’Niell, who told us he was also not informed about the paper.

Nzengung gave us further details via email: Continue reading Forged author list blows up explosives contamination paper

Cry me a retraction: Scientists pull Cry protein paper for irreproducibility

world journal of microbialA paper on the biological insecticide Cry protein — most famously produced by genetically modified “Bt” corn — has been retracted because the authors couldn’t reproduce the findings.

The initial paper concluded that their modified gene produced a Cry protein that was significantly more toxic than the one currently spliced into food crops to make them resistant to moths, beetles, and other insects. However, when repeating the experiments, the modified proteins weren’t any more deadly than the original version.

Here is the notice: Continue reading Cry me a retraction: Scientists pull Cry protein paper for irreproducibility

First cut is the deepest: paper on incisional hernia sliced for duplication

jamcolsurgeonsThe authors of a 2014 paper in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons about incisional hernia have lost their article for being a duplicate submission.

The paper, “Impact on Quality of Life of Using an Onlay Mesh to Prevent Incisional Hernia in Midline Laparotomy: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” came from a group at the Parc Tauli University Hospital, part of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, in Spain.

By duplicating another paper, the authors (three of which appear to be listed on both papers) committed “a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system,” according to the retraction notice: Continue reading First cut is the deepest: paper on incisional hernia sliced for duplication

Publisher and uni go head to head over disputed images in diabetes papers

Mario Saad, via unicamp.br
Mario Saad, via unicamp.br

The State University of Campinas University of Campinas and the American Diabetes Association disagree strongly over how to handle disputed images from faculty member Mario Saad, who is suing the ADA to prevent retraction of his papers.

While the State University of Campinas University of Campinas (Unicamp) acknowledges that 2 of Saad’s papers contain “mistakes”, it concluded there was “not an intention in the actions of the authors,” and the mistakes did not have a negative impact on the scientific community. Ultimately: “the studies published have their own strength, are healthy and were not artificially strengthened by the incorrect images.”

In response, however, Saad’s lawsuit says the ADA asked the school to reinvestigate the articles, and refused to accept any papers from Unicamp faculty in any ADA journals until the issues are resolved.

The ADA has issued four expressions of concern in Saad’s research published in its flagship journal, Diabetes. Saad’s lawsuit aims to prevent the journal from retracting those papers, and asks for monetary compensation.

Retraction Watch has obtained a report of the investigation by Unicamp and Saad’s lawsuit. You can read the full lawsuit here, and the investigation report here.

Here is an excerpt from the Unicamp’s findings: Continue reading Publisher and uni go head to head over disputed images in diabetes papers

Math paper subtracted for plagiarism

Screen Shot 2015-02-10 at 1.02.16 PMISPACS’ Journal of Nonlinear Analysis and Application, whose website promises “very fast publication,” has pulled a paper for ripping off an article posted on arXiv.org.

Their plagiarism wasn’t exactly subtle. Here’s the abstract from the paper on arXiv.org:

We introduce and study the class of weak almost limited operators. We establish a characterization of pairs of Banach lattices E, F for which every positive weak almost limited operator T:E→F is almost limited (resp. almost Dunford-Pettis). As consequences, we will give some interesting results.

And here’s the abstract from the retracted paper:

Continue reading Math paper subtracted for plagiarism

IP lawyer/plagiarist’s PhD thesis under review

Dr Angela Adrian
Dr Angela Adrian

The Queen Mary University of London has withdrawn the PhD thesis of an intellectual property lawyer who was previously accused of plagiarism.

We first covered Angela Adrian last year, when she lost three papers on how to apply intellectual property laws and ideas in the age of the internet. (The irony did not escape Adam, who linked to Alanis Morissette’s ballad “Ironic.”) She is now the chief knowledge officer for reputation management firm Icondia, which helps the rich and famous “protect their unique and priceless individuality in the 21st century.”

It’s not clear what the investigation entails; a spokesperson for the school declined to give details “at this stage.” The thesis — about strengthening personality and property rights in the world of online gaming — is unavailable on the university website. Instead, this message is displayed when you try to access it at Queen Mary Research Online (QMRO):   Continue reading IP lawyer/plagiarist’s PhD thesis under review

Chem paper retracted because “a significant amount of data” was wrong

Jced_coverThe editors of ACS’s Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data have sunk a paper on halogenated alkanes after realizing that “a significant amount” of the data was “inaccurate,” thereby “invalidating” the paper.

Here’s the notice for “Influence of Solvent Nature on the Solubility of Halogenated Alkanes” (which has only been cited twice, according to Google Scholar): Continue reading Chem paper retracted because “a significant amount of data” was wrong

Figure dupe sinks cell bio paper

cellular biohemTulane researchers Tong Wu and Chang Han, who have been anonymously accused of figure duplication in the past, have now finally lost a paper for that reason.

The frequent plagiarism tipster Juuichi Jigen (a pseudonym) set up a blog in 2012 alleging that the pair inappropriately reused images in six other papers, though none of those have been retracted. The recent notice, issued at the end of January by the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, states that the figure duplication was confirmed by the University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Research Integrity. Han, the first author, was at UPitt when the paper was published in 2008, though she moved to join Wu at Tulane in 2009.

Here’s the notice for “Regulation of Wnt/ß-Catenin Pathway by cPLA2α and PPARδ“: Continue reading Figure dupe sinks cell bio paper

Diabetes researcher sues journal to prevent retractions of papers cited more than 600 times

Mario Saad, via unicamp.br
Mario Saad, via unicamp.br

Mario A. Saad, who last year retracted a paper for plagiarism, is now suing the American Diabetes Association over four expressions of concern in its flagship journal, Diabetes.

As reported in the Boston Business Journal, Saad’s lawsuit claims that his institution, the State University of Campinas, investigated two articles at the journal’s behest. The American Diabetes Association was unhappy with the results, and asked the school to reopen the investigation, including two additional papers.

Saad is suing to prevent the journal from retracting the papers, in addition to monetary compensation.

Continue reading Diabetes researcher sues journal to prevent retractions of papers cited more than 600 times

Heart study bleeds into three papers, one retracted and one withdrawn

janWith the increasingly hectic pace of modern life, everybody is always on the look out for time-saving tricks and tips.

Scientists at the National University of Singapore and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University certainly found one, but we really can’t recommend it: doing one randomized controlled trial (RCT) with several outcomes, and publishing them as three separate 2014 papers with “considerable overlap.”

So far, one paper has been retracted, and another withdrawn.

Continue reading Heart study bleeds into three papers, one retracted and one withdrawn