A researcher at Tufts University has retracted a paper in Cell, a year after retracting a study on a similar subject from the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Here’s the notice for “SIRT1 Suppresses β-Amyloid Production by Activating the α-Secretase Gene ADAM10,” a 2010 paper by Tufts’ Gizem Donmez, MIT’s Leonard Guarante — of longevity research fame — and colleagues: Continue reading Cell retraction of Alzheimer’s study is second for Tufts neuroscientist
We’re going to get a little meta here, so be warned.
Take a look at the headline of this post. For those of you unfamiliar with the symbols to the left and right of the words, those are quotation marks. What that means is that we’ve taken those two sentences from another source. And here is that other source, a blog post from Tahseen Consulting titled — yes, you guessed it, “Is Imitation the Sincerest Form of Flattery? Not Without Proper Attribution.”
Apparently, the last group of authors who liked Tahseen’s words enough to use them did so without that whole attribution thing. Here, let us demonstrate attribution again, this time using the WordPress block-quote function. From the post: Continue reading “Is Imitation the Sincerest Form of Flattery? Not Without Proper Attribution.”
Although most of what Alanis Morissette sang about in her hit song “Ironic” wasn’t irony at all, had she included a line or two about Angela Adrian she would have nailed it.
Adrian is an expert in intellectual property law, a former editor of the International Journal of Intellectual Property Management, a legal scholar whose resume boasts more degrees than a protractor. According to this bio:
Dr Angela Adrian is a dual qualified lawyer in Louisiana and the UK. Her specialisms include Intellectual Property, Information Technology, International Trade, and Criminal Law. She has two Masters degrees with distinction in Business & Management (Schiller International University) as well as in Commercial Law (University of Aberdeen). She obtained her Juris Doctorate at Loyola University, New Orleans. Dr Adrian published her PhD from Queen Mary, University of London as a monograph entitled “Law and Order in Virtual Worlds: Exploring Avatars, their Ownership and Rights”. Currently, she is Chief Knowledge Officer of Icondia Ltd, an images rights company, co-author of the 4th edition of “Intellectual Property: Text and Essential Cases” (Australia), and Editor of the International Journal of Intellectual Property Management.
She’s also a serial plagiarist. Continue reading Intellectual property lawyer loses papers for … plagiarism
The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy is retracting a 2013 article for what appears to be the misappropriation of data.
The paper, titled “Hydrogen production by an anaerobic photocatalytic reforming using palladium nanoparticle on boron and nitrogen doped TiO2 catalysts,” was written by researchers from the Veltech Dr RR & Dr SR Technical University, in Chennai, India, and Arizona State University.
According to the abstract: Continue reading Hydrogen journal pulls palladium paper for data misuse
Pro tip: If you’re going to write a paper on giving voice to hidden words, PLEASE try not to plagiarize!
Esther Sánchez-Pardo, of Complutense University in Madrid, was the author of a 2010 article in the European Journal of English Studies titled “Who will carry the word? The threshold between unspeakability and silence in the Holocaust narratives of Charlotte Delbo and Jorge Semprun.”
The problem, it turns out, is that a couple of other authors had their words carried, but Sánchez-Pardo didn’t bother to speak their names.
According to the abstract: Continue reading Holocaust paper yanked for plagiarizing
A paper on liver failure in infants has been retracted due to a lab error, though the author contends that the paper still holds a valuable message for pediatricians — one that could save lives.
To get to that, though, we had to make it through what turns out to be an unnecessarily vague retraction notice (more on that in a moment) in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology & Nutrition:
Continue reading Paper on liver failure in babies withdrawn for lab mix-up
A paper in Immnunity has been retracted after two separate panels determined some of the figures “inappropriately presented” the data but cleared the team of wrongdoing.
However, the original data are now unavailable, according to the notice, so there’s no way to know if the paper’s conclusions are sound.
Here’s the notice for “Suppressors of Cytokine Signaling 2 and 3 Diametrically Control Macrophage Polarization”: Continue reading Immunology paper retracted for inappropriate presentation but “no evidence of intentional misconduct”
Another retraction has appeared up for frequent fliers Jun Li, Kailun Zhang and Jiahong Xia at Huazhong Science and Technology University in Wuhan, China.
We’ve covered them twice before, for a variety of retractions, corrections, and expressions of concern.
The retraction, in Clinical and Experimental Immunology, upgrades an expression of concern published earlier this year, and is the team’s fourth.
Here’s the notice for “CCR5 blockade in combination with rapamycin prolongs cardiac allograft survival in mice”: Continue reading Serial figure fakers have expression of concern upgraded to a retraction
Another stem cell paper has been retracted from Nature, this one a highly cited 2008 study that had already been the subject of what the journal’s news section called a “furore” in 2010.
According to that 2010 news story:
The researchers behind the original work1, led by Thomas Skutella of the University of Tübingen, reported using cells from adult human testes to create pluripotent stem cells with similar properties to embryonic stem cells.
But a 2010 Brief Communication Arising called those findings into question. And now, the authors have retracted the paper. Here’s the notice for “Generation of pluripotent stem cells from adult human testis:” Continue reading Another Nature stem cell paper is retracted
A stumble in data preparation earned a retraction for a paper on delirium tremens
, a life-threatening side effect of alcohol withdrawal that spans a wide range of symptoms, including hallucinations and seizures.
Though the initial retraction notice was extremely unhelpful, the author stepped in to give us a better picture of the errors that led to the paper’s demise.
Here’s the notice from Alcohol and Alcoholism about “Biochemical Predictors of Delirium Tremens in Patients in Alcohol Withdrawal”: