Irony alert: If you’re going to publish in the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, you’d better be able to play well with others.
Not so, it seems, with a certain Darrel Montero. Montero, an associate professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University, and his colleagues have lost their 2012 paper in the journal for what appears to be a case of data theft.
As the retraction notice explains:
Continue reading Social work researchers lose paper for misuse of data
The Journal of Pediatric Nursing has retracted a 2013 article (meeting abstract, really) on growth hormone after the drug company that employed the authors cried “take it back.”
The research appears to have been presented at a meeting of the Pediatric Endocrinology Nursing Society, and looked at inefficiency in the use of devices for administering growth hormone. All but one of the authors is listed as working for Novo Nordisk, an international pharmaceutical firm.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Nursing journal pulls Novo Nordisk growth hormone paper over data provenance
Physica B: Condensed Matter has retracted a 2013 paper by a group from Morocco and France for, well, inappropriate condensation of printed matter.
The article, “Granular and intergranular conduction in La1.32Sr1.68Mn2O7 layered manganite system,” came mostly from a team of physicists at University Ibn Zohr, and appeared in June.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Plagiarism leads to retraction of conduction paper
The temporary withdrawal of a Molecular Plant paper had us scratching our heads, but the issue seems to be explained by a glitch.
If you click on this version of “Application of the CRISPR–Cas System for Efficient Genome Engineering in Plants” (subscription required), you see this:
This paper has been withdrawn pending a decision by the Editorial Board
But that page also says that the latest version of the paper was published on October 3. Clicking on that version sends you to the paper, which begins: Continue reading Plant journal withdraws paper — or does it?
A group of authors from Saudi Arabia and Egypt has lost their 2012 paper in the International Journal of Dentistry for what appears to be a case of large-scale lifting of text from a previously published paper.
The now-retracted article was titled “A Prospective Study of Early Loaded Single Implant-Retained Mandibular Overdentures: Preliminary One-Year Results,” and has yet to be cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
From the abstract: Continue reading Say “Argh!” Dental journal extracts paper for plagiarism
About a month ago, we reported on a retraction by Pamela Ronald, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues. We noted then that this was a case of scientists doing the right thing. Ronald contacted us after that post ran, and let us know that there would be another retraction shortly. That retraction notice has now appeared, in Science: Continue reading Pamela Ronald does the right thing again, retracting a Science paper
A stem cell journal is retracting a paper by Gerold Feuer, a researcher at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse who was also found to have misused grants.
The Feuer story is complicated. Heralded in 2008 for landing $6.2 million in grants from the New York Stem Cell Board, Feuer was suspended in October 2010 while the university investigated allegations he had misused funds, specifically to funnel state dollars to HuMurine, a company he founded in 2008. In December 2010, Upstate said they had found evidence he had committed 53 acts of financial misconduct, and dismissed him.
From an August 2012 court ruling on a case Feuer brought to fight that dismissal: Continue reading Retraction appears for stem cell researcher found to have used funds for his company’s gain
We have a fourth retraction in the Journal of Biochemistry for Naohito Aoki, a Japanese researcher and former postdoc in a German lab, whose images have been called into question but whose retraction notices were scant. In this case, however, the journal, while not exactly overbrimming with information about the article, at least gives us some sense of what’s going on.
Aoki worked in the lab of Axel Ullrich, of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, and appeared on two retracted articles in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) with his mentor, along with a third with a co-author from Japan, Tsukasa Matsuda. Although those notices don’t say anything about the reason for the retractions — this was before the JBC started providing such information — Ulrich told us that Aoki had been manipulating images. Continue reading Aoki notches fourth retraction for image problems
Chemical Engineering Journal has retracted a 2011 article from a group of researchers in Portugal after determining that the scientists made up their data.
The clincher: According to the journal, the researchers did not possess the proper lab equipment to perform the study as reported.
The article, “Detoxification of high-strength liquid pollutants in an ozone bubble column reactor: Gas–liquid flow patterns, interphase mass transfer and chemical depuration,” appeared in August 2011 and was written by Rodrigo J. G. Lopes and Rosa M. Quinta-Ferreira, from the Group on Environmental, Reaction and Separation Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Coimbra. The paper has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, both times by the original authors.
Here’s what the abstract has to say about the work: Continue reading Second retraction for chemist from Portugal who forged names, data
A researcher at Shanxi Normal University in China has notched two retractions, once for plagiarism and one for duplication.
Here’s the most recent notice, which appeared in Chemical Physics Letters on September 25: Continue reading Chemist loses two papers, one each for plagiarism and duplication