The editor of Desalination has retracted a paper that plagiarized from another article published in the same journal six years earlier. The papers describe desalination systems, of course.
This retraction happened on a relatively quick timeline: The paper, “An integrated optimization model and application of MEE-TVC desalination system,” was published online in June, and pulled in January.
Here’s the retraction note:
A paper on a hybrid algorithm turned out to be a hybrid itself — some original data, plus some from a paper that the authors had published earlier.
According to the retraction note, the overlap was significant enough to pull it from the scientific record.
The retracted paper describes an algorithm that is the combination of a “genetic algorithm” and a “cultural algorithm”– which, as their names sort of suggest, focus on looking at a population of solutions, and the history of which kinds of solutions work, respectively. According to the abstract, results to optimization problems found with a hybrid algorithm are “more accurate and the fast convergence is obvious.”
The retraction note provides a few details about the nature of the duplication:
Continue reading Algorithm paper retracted for “significant overlap” with another
The list of co-authors on a paper about a “bioelectronic composite” was apparently too sparse.
According to its retraction note — posted at the request of the editor-in-chief and the corresponding author — the paper failed to include some of the collaborators.
The Biosensors & Bioelectronics paper looks at a protein complex that could function as part of a “bio-hybrid” device, like a sensor or a solar cell. It has been cited only by its retraction according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
What went wrong in allotting credit for the work pretty straightforward, according to the note for “Monolayers of pigment–protein complexes on a bare gold electrode: Orientation controlled deposition and comparison of electron transfer rate for two configurations.” Here it is in full:
Continue reading Journal retracts bioelectronics paper for lack of credit to collaborators
Research papers containing abstracts that are shorter and consist of more commonly used words accumulate citations more successfully, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Informetrics.
After analyzing more than 200,000 academic papers published between 1999 and 2008, the authors found that abstracts were slightly less likely to be cited than those that were half as long. Keeping it simple also mattered— abstracts that were heavy on familiar words such as “higher,” “increased” and “time” earned a bit more citations than others. Even adding a five-letter word to an abstract reduced citation counts by 0.02%.
According to Mike Thelwall, an information scientist at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, who was not a co-author on the paper: Continue reading Papers with simpler abstracts are cited more, study suggests
Authors have retracted two papers about visual perception and working memory from the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, after the first author admitted to falsifying or fabricating data in four other papers.
The authors have requested another two retractions, as well, which will bring the total for Edward Awh and his former graduate student David Anderson to nine retractions. (Earlier in 2015, they lost a paper due to an error in the analytic code, which Awh told us was unrelated to the misconduct.)
The retraction notice attached to both articles cites a 2015 settlement agreement between the Office of Research Integrity and first author Anderson (the “respondent”), who admitted to misconduct while working as a graduate student in the lab of Awh at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Since then, “additional problems” were discovered in the newly retracted articles, such as removed data points.
Awh, who has since moved to the University of Chicago, sent us a lengthy statement, explaining the concerns about each article: Continue reading More retractions bring total to 7 for neuroscience pair, 2 more pending
After temporarily removing a paper that suggested a link between the vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV) and behavioral issues, the journal has now retracted it.
Vaccine says the reason is “serious concerns regarding the scientific soundness of the article,” including flawed methodology and unjustified claims.
Christopher A. Shaw, a co-author on the paper and a researcher at the University of British Columbia, told us he has seen the notice, but doesn’t know the specific issues the journal had with the paper:
We still don’t know why [Editor in Chief] Dr Poland removed the article.
Here’s the retraction notice for “Behavioral abnormalities in young female mice following administration of aluminum adjuvants and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil:”
An MD Anderson Cancer Center researcher who has been under investigation by the institution for at least several years has had seven papers retracted from a single journal.
Bharat Aggarwal told us in 2012 that MD Anderson was investigating his work, but in 2013 threatened to sue us for reporting on the case. Aggarwal is no longer listed in the MD Anderson directory, and an email to him there bounced.
This week, Biochemical Pharmacology retracted seven studies of which he is the only common author, noting the “data integrity has become questionable.” The papers have been cited a total of more than 500 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge; one has been designated as “highly cited.” Here are the seven retractions: Continue reading Journal retracts 7 papers by MD Anderson cancer researcher long under investigation
A chemistry journal has issued a retraction after “a thorough and time-consuming analysis” revealed two out of four authors did not agree to submitting an article published in May, which also contains “considerable overlap and redundancy” with another paper published a few weeks prior in a different journal.
Shortly after the paper appeared in Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy, the journal was told “that parts of the manuscript were reused” from an article in the Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers that was published online March 16. That led to the investigation, and the discovery of the additional authorship issues.
Here’s the full notice: Continue reading Author dispute, “considerable overlap” retract chemistry study
The editor in chief of Vaccine has removed a paper suggesting a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine can trigger behavioral changes in mice.
The note doesn’t provide any reason for the withdrawal, although authors were told the editor asked for further review.
Two co-authors on the paper — about Gardasil, a vaccine against HPV — have previously suggested that aluminum in vaccines is linked to autism, in research a World Health Organization advisory body concluded was “seriously flawed.”
Approximately 80 million doses of Gardasil were administered in the U.S. between 2006 and 2015. Both the the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have ruled the vaccine to be safe — the CDC, for instance, calls it “safe, effective, and recommended.”
The journal published an uncorrected proof of “Behavioral abnormalities in young female mice following administration of aluminum adjuvants and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil” online on January 9th, 2016. In its place now is a note that says:
Continue reading Journal temporarily removes paper linking HPV vaccine to behavioral issues
A journal is Journals are retracting three papers after a biomaterials researcher duplicated his own work, sometimes using the same figures to describe different experiments.
Two of the papers are on bone regeneration; one is about targeting tumors. In addition to issues with figures, two one of the retraction notes explain that the papers contain “widespread plagiarism of text” from other papers by the researcher, Hossein Hosseinkhani.
Hosseinkhani is currently affiliated with the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology; when he did the work in the now retracted papers, published in 2004 and 2007, he was based at Kyoto University Hospital and then National Institute for Materials Science in Japan.
The Journal of Controlled Release published all three two of the papers. Here’s the retraction note for “Bone regeneration through controlled release of bone morphogenetic protein-2 from 3-D tissue engineered nano-scaffold,” which has been cited 118 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Continue reading Journals retracts three bone papers for duplication by same author