Category: informa healthcare

Retraction count grows to 35 for scientist who faked emails to do his own peer review

Hyung-In Moon

Hyung-In Moon, the South Korean plant compound researcher who made up email addresses so he could do his own peer review, is now up to 35 retractions.

The four new retractions are of the papers in the Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry that initially led to suspicions when all the reviews came back within 24 hours. Here’s the notice, which includes the same language as Moon’s 24 other retractions of studies published in Informa Healthcare journals: Continue reading Retraction count grows to 35 for scientist who faked emails to do his own peer review

Journal editor resigned in wake of retractions for fake email addresses that enabled self-peer review

The case of Hyung-In Moon — the researcher who faked email addresses for potential peer reviewers so he could do his own peer review — has already led to one resignation.

Emilio Jirillo, the editor of Immunopharmacology and Immunotoxicology, which retracted 20 of Moon’s papers, stepped down earlier this year in the wake of the case, Retraction Watch has learned.

Here’s a note the publisher posted on the journal’s site on June 15: Continue reading Journal editor resigned in wake of retractions for fake email addresses that enabled self-peer review

20 more retractions for scientist who made up email addresses so he could review his own papers

Hyung-In Moon, the South Korean plant compound researcher who came up with fake email addresses so that he could do his own peer review, has retracted twenty more papers, all in Immunopharmacology and Immunotoxicology, an Informa Healthcare title.

Here are the papers: Continue reading 20 more retractions for scientist who made up email addresses so he could review his own papers

South Korean plant compound researcher faked email addresses so he could review his own studies

Hyung-In Moon

Scientists frustrated by the so-called “third reviewer” — the one always asking for additional experiments before recommending acceptance — might be forgiven for having fantasies of being able to review their own papers.

But one Korean scientist, Hyung-In Moon, managed to do just that, through what must have seemed like clever subterfuge at the time. And he got away with it for a while — until he didn’t, as witnessed by this retraction notice for “Larvicidal activity of 4-hydroxycoumarin derivatives against Aedes aegypti,” published in Pharmaceutical Biology, an Informa Healthcare title: Continue reading South Korean plant compound researcher faked email addresses so he could review his own studies

Plagiarism topples paper co-authored by top tamoxifen scientist

Expert Opinion on Pharmacotherapy has retracted a 2011 paper for plagiarism by two authors, one of whom, V. Craig Jordan, is a leading researcher on the class of drugs known as selective estrogen receptor modulators, or SERMs, and is credited with discovering the anti-tumor properties of the breast cancer drug tamoxifen.

Jordan, who is scientific director at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University, appears to have been unaware of the offense when the paper was published. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Plagiarism topples paper co-authored by top tamoxifen scientist

Second helpings: Immunology journal retracts paper for plagiarism, then U Bari investigation reveals fraud

The journal Immunopharmacology and Immunotoxicology has retracted a 2011 paper by an Italian nursing researcher who lifted text and data from a previously published work, and made up results to fill gaps, too.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Second helpings: Immunology journal retracts paper for plagiarism, then U Bari investigation reveals fraud

Three more retractions for resveratrol researcher Dipak Das, in free radical journals

Das, via UConn

The retraction count for Dipak Das, the resveratrol researcher whom the University of Connecticut found to have committed 145 counts of fabrication and falsification of data, has risen to eight with withdrawals by Free Radical Biology & Medicine and Free Radical Research.

The two Free Radical Biology & Medicine retractions, for “Expression of the longevity proteins by both red and white wines and their cardioprotective components, resveratrol, tyrosol, and hydroxytyrosol” (cited 38 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge) and “Redox regulation of resveratrol-mediated switching of death signal into survival signal” (cited 32 times), are carefully detailed and read the same way: Continue reading Three more retractions for resveratrol researcher Dipak Das, in free radical journals

Rabbits needn’t worry about cell phones’ effects on their sperm count, say three retractions

If you’re a rabbit and you haven’t figured out where to carry your cell phone, your front pocket is just fine.

That’s what you could reasonably infer from the retraction of a paper in the International Journal of Andrology purporting to show that mobile phones affected rabbits’ sperm counts. The notice, signed by the journal’s editor, Ewa Rajpert-De Meyts (we added links): Continue reading Rabbits needn’t worry about cell phones’ effects on their sperm count, say three retractions

Amid lawsuits, toxicology journal corrects four asbestos papers for failure to cite author links to Georgia-Pacific

The journal Inhalation Toxicology has issued a fascinating correction notice covering four articles on various aspects of asbestos exposure by a group of researchers who failed to note their connection to Georgia-Pacific, the industrial giant that became caught up in a deluge of costly lawsuits over the carcinogenic chemical during the 1980s.

As the notice indicates, the ties weren’t mere tangents, but rather involved obvious — and obviously conflicting — relationships: Continue reading Amid lawsuits, toxicology journal corrects four asbestos papers for failure to cite author links to Georgia-Pacific

Seeing double: Current Eye Research retracts three papers for duplication

Three papers in Current Eye Research have apparently not quite lived up to the journal’s name. The journal in November retracted three studies from a group of authors in China who had previously published the papers in their native language.

Here’s the notice, which also appears in this month’s print edition: Continue reading Seeing double: Current Eye Research retracts three papers for duplication