It’s not unusual for us to hear allegations that journals have caved to corporate demands that they retract papers. And companies have certainly objected to the publication of results that painted their products in an unflattering light.
Continue reading Stunner: Researchers retract paper because company complains it’s hurting profits
A group of bird researchers in China has lost their article in Wetlands Ecology and Management on the migratory habits of shorebirds after the editors of the journal learned that they’d cobbled the paper together from their own previously published work.
The article by Song et. al., “Ecological stability of the shorebird stopover site in the Yalu River Estuary Wetlands, China,” had appeared online in February.
Here’s the abstract: Continue reading Birds of a feather: Duplication grounds migration paper
A recent paper proposing a way to “print any drug instantly” has been withdrawn by the author, following bewildered reactions from the blogosphere.
The paper made the rounds at various chemistry-focused blogs last month. Derek Lowe of In The Pipeline picked up on it too, calling the article
one of the oddest papers to appear in Drug Discovery Today, which is saying something.
Apparently, the author — or someone claiming to be the author, using the initials YC — wasn’t crazy about the criticism. He left this comment on In The Pipeline and elsewhere: Continue reading Paper claiming a way to “print any drug instantly” gets unprinted
Former U.S. vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin is no stranger to retractions, or perhaps “walk backs,” as politicians usually call them. There was her apology for comments about Pope Francis, a clarification about comments thought to be directed at Rush Limbaugh, and a walk back on her behalf from her running mate, Sen. John McCain.
Now, a paper in the academic literature that refers to her has been retracted. Here’s the notice from Political Research Quarterly: Continue reading A retraction involving Sarah Palin
A group of researchers in Singapore has lost two 2013 articles in BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care for problems with their data.
One of the articles was titled “Patients with Dysphagia: Encounters in Taking Medication;” the other, “Issues Associated with Delirium Severity Among Older Patients.” In both cases, the first and second authors were Rajaram S and Chua HC, of Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.
According to the retraction notices:
Continue reading Data “irregularities” prompt retraction of palliative care papers
What a difference a new editor can make.
Consider the case of a paper in Scientometrics that came to the attention earlier this year of Jeffrey Beall.
Beall, a research librarian and scourge of the predatory publishing world, had previously posted on his blog about his frustrations with the journal’s seeming indifference to the word theft. (He also helped bring about another plagiarism retraction we covered earlier this year.)
The article was titled “Educational reforms and internationalization of universities: evidence from major regions of the world,” and was written by a group from China and Pakistan.It has been cited just once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, by another paper in Scientometrics.
In December, the journal Child Development posted an Expression of Concern about a study because of “possible inaccuracies in its data.” A few months later, however, that changed. Here’s what now appears where the Expression of Concern did: Continue reading Unusual: Journal withdraws Expression of Concern about child development paper
Shigeaki Kato, who resigned from the University of Tokyo in 2012 after being found to have inappropriately manipulated dozens of images, has two more retractions, both in Molecular Cell.
Here’s the notice for 2002’s “Nuclear Receptor Function Requires a TFTC-Type Histone Acetyl Transferase Complex:” Continue reading Shigeaki Kato up to 25 retractions
We’ve been alerted to two more retractions of articles by University of Calgary researcher Cory Toth, both in the journal Diabetes, for image doctoring.
One paper, from 2008, was titled “Receptor for Advanced Glycation End Products (RAGEs) and Experimental Diabetic Neuropathy.” It has been cited 93 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The notice states: Continue reading More retractions for researcher who says he will no longer publish
In December, we reported on the case of Timothy Sheehy, a former government contractor who was found to have faked results. ORI found that Sheehy
fabricated the quantitative and qualitative data for RNA and DNA purportedly extracted from 900 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) colorectal tissue samples presented in Table 1 of the CEBP paper and falsely reported successful methodology to simultaneously recover nucleic acids from FFPE tissue specimens, when neither the extractions nor analyses of the FFPE samples were done. Thus, the main conclusions of the CEBP paper are based on fabricated data and are false.
Sheehy agreed to ask that one of his papers be retracted. The retraction notice has appeared: Continue reading Retraction appears for former federal contractor who faked data