Whether it’s a one-off or a sign of things to come, Bharat Aggarwal
, the MD Anderson scientist at the center of a blogospheric storm—and an institutional investigation—over the validity of his data, has had a paper withdrawn by the journal Cancer Letters. Continue reading MD Anderson researcher Aggarwal loses paper in Cancer Letters
Category: elsevier
Duplication forces retraction of paper by group whose work is used to justify prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing
A dozen years might seem like a publishing eternity, but the European Journal of Cancer
has decided to purge a duplicate paper from 2000. The article, on the utility of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test for detecting prostate cancer, comes from a group whose work in this area has been widely cited as evidence for the benefits of the highly controversial screening tool.
“Prostate cancer screening in the Tyrol, Austria: experience and results,” by a group of Austrian researchers, has a rather complicated past. It’s been cited 42 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the notice, which appeared in a recent issue of the journal: Continue reading Duplication forces retraction of paper by group whose work is used to justify prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing
Anesthesia journal editor says “if you blow us off, it will be retracted,” and sticks to his word
The Journal of Clinical Anesthesia has retracted a paper by a group of Israeli authors whose study may not have had appropriate ethical approval — or even collected the reported data.
The article, “Accidental venous and dural puncture during epidural analgesia in obese parturients (BMI > 40 kg/m2): three different body positions during insertion,” was published in 2010 by a team from Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, in Zerifin, one of the country’s largest hospitals and an affiliate of Tel Aviv University. Dural puncture is an infrequent but potentially serious complication of labor anesthesia, causing severe headaches and, in rare cases, death if untreated.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Anesthesia journal editor says “if you blow us off, it will be retracted,” and sticks to his word
Plagiarism burns authors of fire safety paper
Safety science might not be the most crowded field, nor its eponymous journal the title on every marquee, but here’s a general rule for would-be plagiarists even in relatively obscure publications: Avoid lifting text from government reports and other publicly available references. (Well, don’t plagiarize at all, but you know what we mean.)
Consider: The journal Safety Science is retracting a 2011 paper whose authors evidently failed to adhere to that principle. Here’s the notice for the article, “Agent-based simulation of fire emergency evacuation with fire and human interaction model,” by Yang Peizhong, Wang Xin and Liu Tao, of Shanghai Jiaotong University: Continue reading Plagiarism burns authors of fire safety paper
Cell runs a lengthy correction, rather than retraction, for image problems
The journal Cell has an interesting — and somewhat puzzling — correction this month that we’ll add to our “mega-correction” file.
At issue is a paper, published in October, from the lab of Harvard’s Stephen Elledge, a noted genetics researcher, whose first author is a post-doc there named Michael Emanuele.
According to the notice, Emanuele (singled out, we note) seems to have been rather careless with the images used in the article, titled “Global Identification of Modular Cullin-RING Ligase Substrates”: Continue reading Cell runs a lengthy correction, rather than retraction, for image problems
Should Iran have nuclear power? Paper addressing question retracted for authorship issues
When Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews accepted a paper last year arguing that nuclear power is Iran’s “assured right,” the editor, Lawrence Kazmirski, thought the article would be at least somewhat controversial. He was right — but for the wrong reason.
Shortly after publication, Kazmirski, director of the National Center for Photovoltaics at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, Colo., received an email from one of the listed co-authors of the article complaining that he and another co-author had not consented to submit the work. Kazmirski contacted the lead author, Afshin Mazandarani, who agreed to withdraw the paper.
The result was the following notice, which appeared in October (we only recently saw it): Continue reading Should Iran have nuclear power? Paper addressing question retracted for authorship issues
Eye of the needle? Paper about camels gets rejected, then published, then retracted
If there’s one thing worse than having your paper rejected by a journal, it’s having it retracted. But usually a paper has to be accepted before it’s published and withdrawn.
Not so for a study from the United Arab Emirates, “Detection and genotyping of GB virus-C in dromedary camels in the United Arab Emirates,” published in 2010 in Veterinary Microbiology.
The editors of the journal ruminated — hey now! is this thing on? — on the paper, only to give it the thumbs down. But come to find out, it got published anyway. Thus, the following retraction notice, which appeared online last month: Continue reading Eye of the needle? Paper about camels gets rejected, then published, then retracted
Hopkins scientists retract prostate cancer screening study at center of 2009 lawsuits
The authors of a study in Urology that was at the center of two 2009 lawsuits brought by a company that funded the work have retracted the paper.
The idea behind the research — by Robert Getzenberg and colleagues at Johns Hopkins — was to find an alternative to the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test, which many urologists recommend, but which many groups — including the US Preventive Services Task Force — find wanting. The work gave rise to a company, Onconome, Science reported in a 2009 story about the lawsuits: Continue reading Hopkins scientists retract prostate cancer screening study at center of 2009 lawsuits
Plagiarism kills weed paper
The January 2012 issue of Biosystems Engineering has a commendably thorough retraction notice regarding a case of plagiarism in its pages.
The notice, regarding the article “Advanced techniques for Weed and crop identification for site specific Weed management,” by Karan Singh, K.N. Agrawal, and Ganesh C. Bora, of North Dakota State University, speaks for itself: Continue reading Plagiarism kills weed paper
Another Hattori retraction over reused figure from cardiology pub
Another paper in Diabetologia by Yoshiyuki Hattori has been retracted for image duplication, marking the second of his articles in the journal to be pulled for that reason.
The notice for the article, “A glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogue, liraglutide, upregulates nitric oxide production and exerts anti-inflammatory action in endothelial cells,” states: Continue reading Another Hattori retraction over reused figure from cardiology pub