Sometimes, an Expression of Concern says a heck of a lot without — as befits the genre — coming to a particular conclusion. Take this (paywalled)* example describing a paper from a group at Huazhong Science and Technology University, Wuhan, China: Continue reading Expression of Concern reveals journal editors bending over backward to give authors benefit of the doubt
Category: by publisher
This retraction stinks: Authors pull paper on pig gas
Here’s a stinky retraction.
The authors of a 2006 article in the Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences have yanked the paper — without an explanation.
The article, titled “Effectiveness of Lactobacillus plantarum strain KJ-10311 to remove characteristic Malodorous gases in piggery slurry,” came from J. D. Kim and K. M. Park. Kim appears to be a member of the journal’s editorial board, which perhaps explains why the authors were able to get away with this retraction notice: Continue reading This retraction stinks: Authors pull paper on pig gas
Misconduct at Oxford prompts retraction of insulin paper
Cell Metabolism has retracted a 2006 article by a group of researchers at Oxford in England after an investigation concluded that the first author had committed misconduct.
The paper, “Nicotinamide nucleotide transhydrogenase: A key role in insulin secretion,” came from the lab of Frances Ashcroft, a world-renowned expert on ion channels. (We’ve written about Ashcroft’s lab before.)
According to the abstract: Continue reading Misconduct at Oxford prompts retraction of insulin paper
Bone-headed move? Authors of cancer-skeleton paper copy from paper in same journal
Climacteric is retracting a 2013 article by a group of researchers in Seoul who used data from a paper by another duo of Korean scientists also published in, you guessed it, Climacteric.
The paper, “Different bone mineral density in cervical and endometrial cancer,” came from a group of Soonchunhyang University and was published online late last year. It purported to look at the association between gynecologic cancers and bone mineral density: Continue reading Bone-headed move? Authors of cancer-skeleton paper copy from paper in same journal
Citation manipulation: Journal retracts paper because author boosted references to a journal he edits
A group of researchers have lost a paper in a computer science journal because they were apparently using its references to help the impact factor of a different journal that one of them edits.
Here’s the notice for “Impacts of sensor node distributions on coverage in sensor networks,” a paper first published in 2011 and cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Citation manipulation: Journal retracts paper because author boosted references to a journal he edits
“Copyright violation” fells tapeworm paper
We have a report about a case report of a “rare presentation” that doesn’t seem to be as rare as the authors would like is to think it is.
Here’s what we’re talking about:
Neurology expresses concern over dementia study after authors report error in analysis
Neurology has issued an expression of concern over a 2013 article by a group of scientists in The Netherlands and the United States who found a potentially devastating error in their analysis.
The article, “Structural and functional brain connectivity in presymptomatic familial frontotemporal dementia,” came from the lab of John C. van Swieten, of Erasmus University in The Netherlands. According to the abstract of the article: Continue reading Neurology expresses concern over dementia study after authors report error in analysis
Journal grounds paper on radiation exposure in air traffic controllers because it was “published inadvertently”
The Indian Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine has retracted a 2013 article by a pair of researchers who’d claimed to find that air traffic controllers suffer poor health from exposure to microwave radiation. But that turns out to have been an, um, flight of fancy.
The article, “Adverse health effects of occupational exposure to radiofrequency radiation in airport surveillance radar operators,” was written by Naser Dehghan and Shahram Taeb, both of Shiraz University in Iran. According to the abstract:
Film review by noted critic a rerun, retracted
Many devotees of French film consider Jean Renoir’s 1939 La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) to be the best example of the genre, and indeed of movie making writ large.
Bad cut alert: One of the rules of the publishing game is, “ne pas plagier,” which we don’t think we need to translate here.
But that’s something that Robert Cardullo seems to have neglected. Cardullo, of Izmir University of Economics in Turkey, isn’t a nobody in the world of film criticism (you can say movie reviewing if you like, we won’t mind). Here’s a bio from Mellen Press: Continue reading Film review by noted critic a rerun, retracted
2 for 2: Fraud, plagiarism force retraction of Staph aureus paper
The Journal of Food Science has retracted a 2012 paper by Chinese scientists, one of whom copped to having made up data in the paper — which also plagiarized from a 2009 article by other researchers — and forging his co-authors’ names on the manuscript.
The article, “A Multiplex PCR Assay for the Rapid and Sensitive detection of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Simultaneous Discrimination of Staphylococcus aureus from Coagulase-Negative Staphylococci,” appeared online in October 2012 and was written by a group from Northwest A & F University, in Yangling, and Tianshui Normal University.
It has been cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. From the abstract: Continue reading 2 for 2: Fraud, plagiarism force retraction of Staph aureus paper