Category: by publisher

Updated: Former Vanderbilt scientist faked nearly 70 images, will retract 6 papers: ORI

ori logoA former Vanderbilt University biomedical engineer committed fraud on a massive scale, according to a new Office of Research Integrity (ORI) report.

Igor Dzhura is banned from receiving federal funding for three years, and is retracting six papers, which have been cited more than 500 times. Since leaving Vanderbilt, he has worked at SUNY Upstate Medical University, and now works at Novartis.

According to the ORI, Dzhura was a busy boy at Vanderbilt, faking images and drastically inflating the number of experiments he conducted by duplicating computer files and saving them in nested folders. The total body count from his work includes: Continue reading Updated: Former Vanderbilt scientist faked nearly 70 images, will retract 6 papers: ORI

Journal retracts paper when authors refuse to pay page charges

gm cropsTaylor & Francis has withdrawn a paper published online after a disagreement with the authors about page charges.

Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, Judit Dobránszki, Jean Carlos Cardoso, and Songjun Zeng had submitted the manuscript, “Genetic transformation of Dendrobium,” to GM Crops and Food: Biotechnology in Agriculture and the Food Chain earlier this year. It was accepted on July 29, and posted online on October 30.

Taylor and Francis — who recently took over the journal from Landes Biosciences — had requested $1,000 in page charges, and $340 in color charges. But Teixeira da Silva — who has been made persona non grata by an Elsevier journal following “personal attacks and threats,” and had a paper retracted by a Springer journal after he demanded the editors’ resignations — insisted in an email to the publisher that Continue reading Journal retracts paper when authors refuse to pay page charges

“Conscious fabrication” leads to retraction of diabetes study

diabetcoverDiabetologia has retracted a 2011 meeting abstract from a group in Sweden, indicating that the second author has been found guilty of research misconduct — a charge the scientist denies.

The abstract, “Reduced syntaxin-5 in skeletal muscle of patients with type 2 diabetes is linked to increased diacylglycerol, activation of PKCtheta and impaired insulin signalling,” was presented at the annual meeting of the European Association of the Study of Diabetes. The first author was Kurt Højlund, who now is at the University of Southern Denmark. The second author was Pontus Boström, of the Karolinska Institutet.

According to the notice: Continue reading “Conscious fabrication” leads to retraction of diabetes study

Leukemia paper retracted for plagiarism — 18 years later

BTER_116_1_cvr_spine.p65Nearly two decades after a Polish researcher plagiarized the work of a Turkish team, her theft has been exposed and the paper retracted.

According to an article in Polish-language paper Gazeta Wyborcza, Jolanta Rzymowska of the Medical University of Lublin was the subject of two disciplinary hearings, the first in February 2014, following the discovery of her plagiarism by well-known Polish fraud hunter Marek Wronski. It was determined that her 1996 paper contained word-for-word text from a paper by a team at the University of Ankara.

Ultimately, Rzymowska was given an official reprimand, rather than any harsher disciplinary action, because she copied descriptions rather than results. From a Google translation of the article: Continue reading Leukemia paper retracted for plagiarism — 18 years later

Engineer in South Korea forced to retract ten papers in one fell swoop

metals and materials internationalChang-Suk Han, a member of the engineering faculty at Hoseo University in South Korea, has had ten articles retracted at once because of duplicated data.

Here are the ten studies from Metals and Materials International: Continue reading Engineer in South Korea forced to retract ten papers in one fell swoop

Paper on circulating tumor cells taken out of circulation after lab error

medical oncologyA group of researchers at the Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences in Guangzhou, China have retracted a paper that came out of a clinical trial on transarterial chemoembolization, a targeted kind of chemotherapy.

According to the notice, one of the authors mixed up the control samples with the clinical samples, and “could not recall which samples were in the wrong group.” The paper hasn’t yet been cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the notice in Medical Oncology:

Continue reading Paper on circulating tumor cells taken out of circulation after lab error

Univ.: No misconduct, but “poor research practice” in mgt prof’s work now subject to 7 retractions

fred-walumbwa
Fred Walumbwa

The Leadership Quarterly has retracted a trio of papers by Frederick Walumbwa, an “ethical leadership” guru at Florida International University, whose work has come under scrutiny for flawed methodology. And another journal  has pulled one of his articles for similar reasons. That brings his count – as far as we can tell — to seven retractions and a mega-correction.

Meanwhile, Arizona State University, Walumbwa’s former employer, has found

that the preponderance of evidence does not support the charge of research misconduct by Dr. Walumbwa…

but that he engaged in “poor research practice.”

The bottom line, according to the Leadership Quarterly, which first announced problems with the articles in February:

Continue reading Univ.: No misconduct, but “poor research practice” in mgt prof’s work now subject to 7 retractions

Lancet journal puts ICU paper on watch after authors acknowledge potentially fatal flaw

lancetrmLancet Respiratory Medicine has issued an expression of concern for a meta-analysis on tracheostomy in the intensive care unit that they published earlier this year.

The paper, “Effect of early versus late or no tracheostomy on mortality of critically ill patients receiving mechanical ventilation: a systematic review and meta-analysis“, came from a group at Harvard, Weill Cornell and the University of Athens. The authors purported to find that: Continue reading Lancet journal puts ICU paper on watch after authors acknowledge potentially fatal flaw

“Significant” copying forces retraction of sternotomy paper

icatsInteractive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery has yanked a 2005 sternotomy paper by a group of researchers who plagiarized from an earlier article on the subject.

The article, “The complications of repeat median sternotomy in paediatrics: six-months follow-up of consecutive cases,” came from a team at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, England, and has been cited eight times, according to Scopus.

Here’s the notice:

Continue reading “Significant” copying forces retraction of sternotomy paper

“Know how to recognize pseudoscience:” Reader reveals how fish oil paper came to be retracted

Ian Garber
Ian Garber

After our post yesterday on a fishy retraction from author Brian Peskin, a reader who alerted the journal to problems got in touch to give us the lowdown.

Ian Garber is in the last year of medical residency at the University of British Columbia. Here’s the story he told us via email: Continue reading “Know how to recognize pseudoscience:” Reader reveals how fish oil paper came to be retracted