The debate over the retraction of a highly controversial paper on the effects of GMOs on rats continues unabated. This week, Adriane Fugh-Berman and Thomas Sherman wrote on the Hastings Center website that Continue reading Journal editor defends retraction of GMO-rats study while authors reveal some of paper’s history
Category: elsevier
“Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction
More than two years ago, we wrote about a retraction for duplication in Biophysical Journal prompted by an email from pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis. That post generated a robust discussion, including one comment from someone calling himself or herself “Double Dutch.”
This past weekend, the last author of that paper, Rienk van Grondelle, left a lengthy response to that comment in which he explained how the duplication happened. We’ve confirmed that it was van Grondelle who left the comment, which we reproduce here in full (we’ve added paragraph breaks for readability): Continue reading “Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction
Doing the right thing: Team finds data merge error in depression paper, retracts
A team of neuroscientists from Sweden has retracted their 2013 paper in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity after discovering that they’d made a mistake while merging their data.
According to the abstract, the study, “Lower CSF interleukin-6 predicts future depression in a population-based sample of older women followed for 17 years,” purported to find that: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Team finds data merge error in depression paper, retracts
Fourth retraction results from Cardiff investigation
Researchers have retracted a fourth paper following an investigation at Cardiff University that found evidence of image manipulation by a researcher named Rossen Donev.
Here’s the notice for “The mouse complement regulator CD59b is significantly expressed only in testis and plays roles in sperm acrosome activation and motility,” a paper first published in Molecular Immunology in 2008: Continue reading Fourth retraction results from Cardiff investigation
Federal court rebuffs request to discredit article that malpractice lawyers want retracted
We’re a bit late to this, but a Federal court in Massachusetts last fall heard a medical malpractice case with fascinating implications for journals.
The case involved allegations by the plaintiffs — two children who had suffered permanent birth defects and their mothers — that they had lost previous malpractice suits because a fraudulent case report was being used to bolster the defense.
The case targeted two ob-gyns, Henry Lerner, of Harvard, and Eva Salamon, of the Bond Clinic, in Winter Haven, Fla., who had published the case study in question. It also named the clinic itself and the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, which published the article in early 2008.
The article, titled “Permanent brachial plexus injury following vaginal delivery without physician traction or shoulder dystocia,” purported to show:
St. Louis Krokodil paper reappears
Earlier this month, we reported on the unexplained withdrawal of a case report from the American Journal of Medicine whose authors said they had treated a man in St. Louis who used krokodil, a homemade mixture of prescription painkillers heroin and flammable contaminants that has proven deadly in Russia.
At the time, all the journal’s publisher, Elsevier, would say about why the article was removed was that there was “a permission problem that the originating institution is working to resolve.”
The paper has now reappeared. And contrary to the notice that appeared on the withdrawal Continue reading St. Louis Krokodil paper reappears
Should this engineering paper have been retracted?
The journal Safety Science has retracted a 2013 paper by a group of engineers from Brazil who had published the article previously, albeit in a much abbreviated form, a year earlier.
What makes this case more than a straightforward matter of duplication/self-plagiarism is that the authors greatly expanded upon the earlier article. The initial paper also appeared in a conference proceedings — the 18th World Congress on Ergonomics – Designing a Sustainable Future — priority that, at least in the minds of some, doesn’t really constitute a true publication. Continue reading Should this engineering paper have been retracted?
Fourth retraction for chemists in Iran
We’ve found a fourth retraction for a group of chemists in Iran who plagiarized.
As before, the offending article had appeared in Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation. This time, however, it did not include a co-author from Ball State University in Indiana, Robert Sammelson, whose name had appeared on three of the earlier papers. Continue reading Fourth retraction for chemists in Iran
“Not suitable in this context” means retraction in pharmacology journal
Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior had a curious retraction notice in September that we’re just now getting around to, but we think you’ll find it to have been worth the wait.
The article, “Interaction of Somatostatin Receptor-2 and Neuropeptide Y Receptor-1 in mice dorsal root ganglion neurons on the Pinch-Nerve injury model,” came from a group in Harbin, China, and Frieburg, Germany, and was published in April 2013.
According to the notice: Continue reading “Not suitable in this context” means retraction in pharmacology journal
“He certainly has some chutzpah!” More plagiarism retractions for sex researcher Ramello
We’ve been alerted to a third retracted paper, and a retracted book chapter, for Stefano Ramello, a self-styled “independent researcher” into sexual identity.
Turns out there wasn’t so much independence after all.
The article, “Same sex acts involving older men. An ethnographic study,” had appeared in the April 2013 issue of the Journal of Aging Studies. According to the retraction notice: Continue reading “He certainly has some chutzpah!” More plagiarism retractions for sex researcher Ramello