A 2014 paper on a component for thin electric circuits has been retracted from Composites Science and Technology due to a “disagreement” over author contributions, according to the retraction note.
The retraction note for “Preparation and dielectric properties of BaTiO3:epoxy nanocomposites for embedded capacitor application” is short and sweet. Here it is, in full:
Continue reading “Disagreement about the relative contributions” of authors burns capacitor paper
Biotechnology Letters has retracted a paper on a new gene delivery technique due to “the deliberate and fraudulent use of data in the paper that had previously appeared in other papers of these two authors.”
The journal’s Editor in Chief Colin Ratledge told us that someone tipped him off that one of the authors, University of Kalyani microbiologist Keka Sarkar, had been self-plagiarizing:
I can say that a person who was familiar with the work of Dr Sarkar got in touch with about their concerns about her publications and, in particular, her paper published in Biotechnology Letters. They supplied a dossier of her publications showing the obvious duplications of figures and that she had been using the same figures in different papers to illustrate the results from supposedly different experiments.
He found that, indeed, multiple figures in the Biotechnology Letters had appeared in other publications of Sarkar’s, some prior to the paper’s October 2013 publication, and one after. The details are in the whole retraction note:
Continue reading Gold nanoparticle paper crushed by “deliberate and fraudulent use of data”
Justus Liebig University in Germany has been investigating concerns that Joachim Boldt, number two on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard and now up to 92 retractions, may have “manipulated” more data than previously believed.
Until now, the vast majority of Boldt’s retractions were thought to have involved inadequate ethics approval. However, new retraction notices for Boldt’s research suggest that there’s evidence the researcher also engaged in significant data manipulation.
The first retraction from the university investigation emerged last year. Two of three new notices cite the investigation specifically, and an informant at the university told us that there are more retractions to come.
Here are the retracted papers that are freshly on the record, starting with an August retraction for a 1991 Anesthesiology paper (cited 37 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge):
Continue reading Three more retractions for former record-holder Boldt, maybe more to come
Editors at BioMed Central have taken the unusual step of updating a retraction notice after an investigation found the authors were not responsible for a peer review process gone awry. The paper is one of dozens of other papers retracted in March for fake peer reviews.
That month, the paper “Clinical application of contrast enhanced ultrasound to diagnose benign prostatic hyperplasia” in Diagnostic Pathology was among the 43 papers retracted due to fake peer reviews. (Retractions for the phenomenon — more about it in our Nature feature here — are up to about 170.)
According to the update posted in July, an investigation into the paper by the Jiading Central Hospital in Shanghai, where the authors work, found that they “did not participate in influencing the peer review process.”
Here’s more from the update to the notice:
A 2003 paper may have left out potentially “significant” data on the long-term side-effects of an antipsychotic drug used in children, according to a former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
As reported by the Toronto Star, David Kessler is alleging that Janssen, the maker of Risperdal (and owned by Johnson & Johnson), omitted data about the risks of the drug: In particular, that boys who use it over a long period may be at risk of growing breasts.
There’s anecdotal evidence of the side effect. One family claimed the drug had caused their son to grow a pair of 46 DD-sized breasts in a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson, reported the Wall Street Journal in February. They won, to the tune of $2.5 million. The suit is apparently just one of 1,200 like it.
The abstract of the paper, “Prolactin levels during long-term risperidone treatment in children and adolescents,” published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, suggests that levels of a key hormone aren’t a problem in the long term:
Continue reading Drugmaker accused of omitting side effect data from 2003 Risperdal paper
A lung cancer paper in the International Journal of Cancer has been retracted because of “serious errors related to image duplication.” This marks the eighth retraction for first author, ShouWei Han.
The decision was made by the journal’s editor-in-chief, the publisher Wiley and co-author Jesse Roman (a co-author on Han’s other retracted papers). According to the notice, Han didn’t respond “to requests by the journal or the co-author.”
In 2011, Han was the target of an investigation by his former employer, the University of Louisville in Kentucky. Papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology and American Journal of Physiology: Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology have been retracted.
Here’s the full retraction notice for the latest retraction:
Continue reading Eighth retraction published for former physiology researcher
The Veterinary Journal has retracted a 2014 paper that found that sheep eat more when their food is supplemented with urea (yes, the same compound found in urine).
The notice was published after a “complaint which raised serious concerns.”
Here’s more from the notice:
Researchers have withdrawn a 2010 article in the Journal of Biological Chemistry about an immune regulator.
The paper was pulled without any explanation (in standard JBC style). Here’s the complete notice:
This article has been withdrawn by the authors.
The study’s authors were based out of Shandong University Medical School, Jinan General Hospital of Jinan Command and Duke University Medical Center.
Two of the authors have had previous papers retracted.
Continue reading Authors withdraw immunology study, no reasons given
The authors of a paper on parasitic nematodes have retracted the article because they misidentified the organism in question, so “the possibility of misleading readers was high.”
The paper, “Histopathological features of Capillaria hepatica infection in laboratory rabbits,” appeared in Toxicologic Pathology in 2009 and came from a lab at Huntingdon Life Sciences, in Cambridgeshire, England.
According to the abstract: Continue reading The worm has turned: Nematode study retracted for misidentification
Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents has retracted a 2015 review article about natural fighters of cancer stem cells for reproducing “content to a high degree of similarity without appropriate attribution or acknowledgement” from a handful of papers.
Although the editor and publisher pulled the paper, they did so with the cooperation of the authors, according to the retraction note: Continue reading Paper on natural ways to fight cancer stem cells nixed for plagiarism