Category: elsevier

Yup, this happened: “Mystery” writer impersonated cardiovascular pathologist, penned published letter

A 2014 letter in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology has been retracted because editors aren’t sure who wrote it.

“Can Grayscale IVUS Detect Necrotic Core-Rich Plaque?”, a letter on the potential of intravascular ultrasound, was submitted under the name of a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Erling Falk. The paper was sent with a Gmail account (a technique used by some academics to conduct fake peer reviews), and editors communicated with the author through the acceptance process.

Shortly after the letter was published, Erling Falk of Aarhus University contacted the journal and asked who wrote the letter. They discovered that nobody by that name worked at the University of Copenhagen and emails to the author’s Gmail address went unanswered. So the journal issued a retraction.

Here’s the complete notice:

Continue reading Yup, this happened: “Mystery” writer impersonated cardiovascular pathologist, penned published letter

“Significant overlap” between figures spurs note of concern for 13-year-old retinoblastoma paper

AmJPatholThe American Journal of Pathology has posted a note of concern to a 2002 paper about retinoblastoma after discovering two sets of figures “share significant overlap… suggesting that they did not originate from different specimens.”

The overlap was “simultaneously brought to the attention of the Editors” by both the corresponding author and a “concerned reader.”

The paper examined the role of a transcription factor called NF-kappaB in driving retinoblastoma, and suggested that inhibiting the molecule’s activity could be a therapeutic strategy.

The authors attribute the overlap to “an inadvertent misidentification of the original files at the stage of image capture.” They add that they “sincerely regret this inadvertent error;” because other data in the paper show “concordant results,” they stand by the paper’s findings.

Here’s the note:

Continue reading “Significant overlap” between figures spurs note of concern for 13-year-old retinoblastoma paper

“Will you marry me?”: An unusual note sneaks into acknowledgements of scientific paper

This is an artistic life reconstruction of the new horned dinosaur Regaliceratops peterhewsi in the palaeoenvironment of the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada. SOURCE: Art by Julius T. Csotonyi. Courtesy of Royal Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller, Alberta.
Artist’s rendering of Regaliceratops peterhewsi, by Julius T. Csotonyi, courtesy of Royal Tyrrell Museum

Scientists have discovered the skull of a new dinosaur, a feathered relative of the Triceratops, according to new findings released in Current Biology today.

Now, we know what you may be thinking – we don’t normally cover science news. We’re writing about this paper because of a little note we saw in the acknowledgements:

Continue reading “Will you marry me?”: An unusual note sneaks into acknowledgements of scientific paper

Sub-optimal: Industrial optimization paper crushed by author’s “serious error of judgment”

chemo intell lab systemsChemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, an Elsevier publication, has retracted a 2014 paper by researchers in China and the United Kingdom for data misuse and authorship issues.

The article, “Optimization of fluidized bed spray granulation process based on a multiphase hybrid model,” was purportedly written by Dapeng Niu, of the College of Information Science and Engineering at Northeastern University, in Shenyang, China, Ming Li, of De Montfort University, in Leicester, England, and Fuli Wang, a vice-president at Northeastern.

But Niu apparently didn’t perform any experiments, lifted the data from other sources, and published the paper without his co-authors’ okay.

Here’s more from the retraction notice: Continue reading Sub-optimal: Industrial optimization paper crushed by author’s “serious error of judgment”

Geology dust-up: Second sand paper swept away for duplication

GeomorphologyCiting an “abuse of the scientific publishing system,” the editors of Geomorphology have retracted a paper from a quartet of geologists in China for containing “significant similarity” to four other papers.

It is the second recent retraction for the group: In a loop of self-plagiarism, the Geomorphology paper was cited as a source of copied material in a retraction last month from Sedimentary Geology.

This most recent retraction is of a January 2014 paper, “The influence of sand bed temperature on lift-off and falling parameters in windblown sand flux,” analyzing the rise and fall of windblown sand based on the temperature of the sand bed.

Here is the full text of the notice:

Continue reading Geology dust-up: Second sand paper swept away for duplication

ORI-sanctioned former UT-Southwestern cancer researchers up to 10 retractions

CLThere’s been a 10th retraction from two former postdocs at a UT-Southwestern cancer research center who were sanctioned by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) last September, in part due to observations and comments from Retraction Watch readers.

It’s a 2008 Cancer Letters paper, “Methylation of apoptosis related genes in the pathogenesis and prognosis of prostate cancer,” retracted at the request of Makoto Suzuki, the first author who has claimed responsibility for falsifying data in this and five other papers. Continue reading ORI-sanctioned former UT-Southwestern cancer researchers up to 10 retractions

Retraction-plagued management researcher hit with expression of concern

OrgBehav_ak13The editor-in-chief of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes has issued an Expression of Concern about a 2011 paper that explores the link between ethical leadership and employee performance.

The paper, “Linking ethical leadership to employee performance: The roles of leader–member exchange, self-efficacy, and organizational identification,” is one of seven that were flagged in a report by Arizona State University (ASU) that investigated the corresponding author, Frederick Walumbwa, for possible research misconduct, as we noted in November.

“The fit statistics reported in the article contain many errors,” the notice says. It goes on to say that “it is difficult to understand the implications of these errors unless the raw data is made available” — but that the authors were not able to provide it. Here’s the full text of the expression of concern: Continue reading Retraction-plagued management researcher hit with expression of concern

Harvard biofilm paper in Cell breaks down after challenged findings can’t be repeated

CELL_161_4.inddResearchers at Harvard have retracted a Cell paper on biofilm disassembly after they repeated the experiment—following contradictory results from another team—and the new results “can no longer support” the original conclusions.

The 2012 paper, “A Self-Produced Trigger for Biofilm Disassembly that Targets Exopolysaccharide,” describes a factor called norspermidine, produced by the bacteria Bacillus subtilis, that appeared to break down biofilms. The researchers used it to prevent biofilm formation of B. subtilis, Escherichia coli, and Staphylococcus aureus. The paper was cited 72 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Two years after it was published, a team from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and the University of Dundee in the UK contradicted the findings in another Cell publication, “Norspermidine Is Not a Self-Produced Trigger for Biofilm Disassembly.” This time, the authors concluded that norspermidine is not present in B. subtilis biofilms, and actually promotes, rather than breaks down, biofilms. They wrote: Continue reading Harvard biofilm paper in Cell breaks down after challenged findings can’t be repeated

Double-dipping equals double retraction for fracking paper

tran por medTransport in Porous Media and the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering have retracted two articles on shale gas by Chinese researchers for duplication and other “mistakes.”

The articles came from a group at the State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation at Southwest Petroleum University, in Chengdu. The articles share a corresponding author.

According to the abstract of the TPM paper, “Pressure Transient Analysis for Multi-stage Fractured Horizontal Wells in Shale Gas Reservoirs”:

The presented model could be used to interpret pressure signals more accurately for shale gas reservoirs.

Make that a double, according to its notice:

Continue reading Double-dipping equals double retraction for fracking paper

Authors retract leptin paper due to “fabricated data”

CellPress_ak2The authors of a study on the effects of the hormone leptin on the liver have retracted it from Cell Metabolism, almost four months after the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) determined it contained faked data, courtesy of its first author.

However, the authors say that the paper’s conclusions remain valid, and are supported by new experiments and additional research by outside groups.

Here’s more from the retraction notice: Continue reading Authors retract leptin paper due to “fabricated data”