Category: by publisher

Publisher updates with more info on staph retraction

cidWe brought you this story last week, about a paper on drug resistant staph being retracted for a lab error. Now, we’ve got an update from Rachel Safer, senior editor for medical journals at Oxford University Press, where the paper was published.

Apparently, the researchers “inadvertently relied upon the use of a test system that was not approved for the microorganism studied in their paper,” leading to the retraction, and the corresponding author of the study wasn’t initially all that responsive:

Continue reading Publisher updates with more info on staph retraction

Hayabusa Science retraction made official, but behind a paywall

science 62714Science has published the retraction of a 2006 paper about an asteroid, following a report in its news pages that the study’s authors had requested the move.

Here’s the paywalled — tsk, tsk — notice: Continue reading Hayabusa Science retraction made official, but behind a paywall

Wrong in the tooth: Faked data, authorship issues force retraction of dental paper

cridCase Reports in Dentistry has pulled a 2014 article about an oral parasitic infection (caution: not pretty) after learning that the authors were not exactly honest about their work.

Here’s the abstract of the paper, “Rhinosporidiosis of the Parotid Duct”: Continue reading Wrong in the tooth: Faked data, authorship issues force retraction of dental paper

Dissertation in transition: Plagiarism leads to delisting of education thesis, lost PhD

ccjThe author of a doctoral dissertation on veterans education has lost the paper — and a mention of the work in a roster of theses — because he lifted text from a previously published dissertation from a student at another institution.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Dissertation in transition: Plagiarism leads to delisting of education thesis, lost PhD

Chemical engineering journal retracts paper with unknowing author

AiChemE-logoAIChemE’s website promises, “Subscribing to the AIChE Journal is like having access to nine topical journals in the field.”

Without a subscription, though, you might miss out on some valuable topical information – like why a paper you want to cite has been retracted, something the Committee on Publication Ethics recommends be freely available.

Here’s the notice for “Flow Structure and Particle Motions in a Gas-Polyethylene Fluidized Bed,” originally published in 2007:

Continue reading Chemical engineering journal retracts paper with unknowing author

Two-timing sinks papers on ships in journal shaken by major scandal

jvcWhen we heard about this retraction, we were forced to ask: Are there any articles left in Journal of Vibration & Control?

The publication was forced to retract 60 papers by the same author in July, after he was caught exploiting a technological loophole to review his own papers.

Now, papers on loading cargo ships has been felled by a much less tech-savvy method: Two authors submitted a paper to both Mathematical and Computer Modelling of Dynamical Systems and the Journal of Vibration & Control, both of which accepted and published the paper.

The authors, Yousef M. Al-Sweiti and Dirk Soeffker, have now lost three papers in total. Here’s the joint notice from SAGE and Taylor & Francis (we’ve added links to relevant retractions): Continue reading Two-timing sinks papers on ships in journal shaken by major scandal

Fudged figures sink breast cancer paper

oncogeneA prestigious cancer journal has pulled an article over “concerns” regarding some of the figures, which PubPeer commenters had tagged as suspect.

A few weeks after the paper was published on June 9, comments on PubPeer began accumulating. Commenters called out both potentially manipulated and repeated images. The exact timeline is not clear, because Oncogene does not list a date on the retraction notice, but by August 29 the paper had been retracted.

Here’s the notice for “IL-6 secreted by cancer-associated fibroblasts induces tamoxifen resistance in luminal breast cancer,” by researchers at Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine and Ruijin Hospital, both in Shanghai, China, and the University of Michigan: Continue reading Fudged figures sink breast cancer paper

87% of bugs resistant to antibiotics? Not so fast, as staph paper yanked after staff mistake

What could have been a truly scary study about drug resistant staph infections in hospitals has been retracted due to a lab error.

6.coverResearchers at a community hospital in Pittsburgh claimed that the commonly quoted 3% rate of staph that is resistant to ceftriaxone and sensitive to methicillin was drastically understated. However, an “honest error in the interpretation of a key lab test” called the findings into question.

Here’s the abstract: Continue reading 87% of bugs resistant to antibiotics? Not so fast, as staph paper yanked after staff mistake

Tonic-clonic stats error sinks epilepsy paper

pm_cover_dez_01A brain imaging study in children with epilepsy has been retracted by the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging due to a statistics error.

Here’s the notice for “Microstructural Brain Abnormalities of Children of Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy With Generalized Tonic-Clonic Seizure: A Voxel-Based Diffusional Kurtosis Imaging Study”: Continue reading Tonic-clonic stats error sinks epilepsy paper

Structure fumble sinks second of author’s JACS papers

jacsat_v136i001.inddProof that organic chemistry is hard for everyone, not just pre-meds: A paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society was retracted after the structures of compounds being studied were “misassigned.”

Another study by author Doo Ok Jang, also in JACS, was retracted in 2013 for the same reason; you can read our coverage here. Jang and Sang Yoon Kim published that one in 2008; the paper we’re talking about today was published in 2010 by Jang and Sung Jun Kim.

Here’s the notice for “Indium-Mediated Catalytic Enantioselective Allylation of N-Benzoylhydrazones Using a Protonated Chiral Amine:” Continue reading Structure fumble sinks second of author’s JACS papers