Category: by publisher

Should scientific misconduct be handled by the police? It’s fraud week at Nature and Nature Medicine

naturemed1213It’s really hard to get papers retracted, police might be best-equipped to handle scientific misconduct investigations, and there’s finally software that will identify likely image manipulation.

Those are three highlights from a number of pieces that have appeared in Nature and Nature Medicine in the past few weeks. Not surprisingly, there are common threads, so join us as we follow the bouncing ball. Continue reading Should scientific misconduct be handled by the police? It’s fraud week at Nature and Nature Medicine

A retracted retraction? Authors salvage entomology paper with image issues

jtbThe paper is dead. Long live the paper!

Earlier this year, we brought you the case of a group of Brazilian insect researchers who lost two 15-year-old papers in different journals for duplication. One of those papers has been resurrected, albeit in a rather puzzling way.

The article, “Non-local interactions and the dynamics of dispersal in immature insects,” had appeared in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, which had issued the following retraction notice:
Continue reading A retracted retraction? Authors salvage entomology paper with image issues

Nature Medicine retracts MS paper with ghost data by former GSK researcher

naturemed1213Nearly six months after first expressing concern about the validity of a 2010 paper on multiple sclerosis, Nature Medicine has retracted the article for containing “erroneous” data — which in this case don’t seem to have existed, making them more fabricated than wrong.

The paper, “Crucial role of interleukin-7 in T helper type 17 survival and expansion in autoimmune disease,” came from a group led by Jingwu Zhang, who at the time ran GlaxoSmithKline’s Research and Development Center in Shanghai.

In June, the journal issued an expression of concern about the article after readers discovered problems with the data, as reported by Nature Medicine’s blog.
Continue reading Nature Medicine retracts MS paper with ghost data by former GSK researcher

Same “difference,” as anesthesia paper retracted for plagiarism

Cover, Coverabbild, Titel, TitelbildA group of anesthesiology researchers in China has lost their 2011 paper in Der Anaesthesist because, well, the article wasn’t theirs to begin with.

The paper, “Different anesthesia methods for laparoscopic cholecystectomy,” came from authors at the 309th Hospital of PLA, in Beijing, who purported to report on a randomized trial of 68 patients undergoing laparoscopic colon surgery with either general or spinal (that is, a nerve block) anesthesia. According to the abstract:
Continue reading Same “difference,” as anesthesia paper retracted for plagiarism

Author dispute leads to retraction of neurology paper

cjnsCall us old-fashioned, but we think that if a group of authors set out to write an article about a viewpoint, they probably ought to share that viewpoint.

But that’s not the case with a bunch of researchers led by Tjaard Ubbo Hoogenraad, a neurologist in the Netherlands specializing in Alzheimer’s disease. The study, “A Viewpoint about the Treatment of Wilson’s Disease,” appeared in the July 2013 issue of the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences.  (Wilson’s disease is a rare genetic disorder in which the body loses the ability to get rid of copper, which in turn accumulates with toxic effect in tissues.)

Evidently, that viewpoint wasn’t quite shared. According to the retraction notice:  Continue reading Author dispute leads to retraction of neurology paper

Retraction prompts letter of explanation by co-author — and a legal threat against Retraction Watch

ejnmmiThe European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging has an interesting exchange of retraction-related notices in its pages.

The article, “Neuroradiological advances detect abnormal neuroanatomy underlying neuropsychological impairments: the power of PET imaging,” appeared in 2011 and was written by Benjamin Hayempour and Abass Alavi, one of the pioneers in PET imaging.

According to the retraction notice:

This article has been withdrawn at the request of the Editor-in-Chief of European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging owing to the unexplained close similarity of some passages to parts of a previous publication [Rushing SE, Langleben DD. Relative function: Nuclear brain imaging in United States courts. J Psychiatry Law 2011; 39 (winter): 567–93].
Continue reading Retraction prompts letter of explanation by co-author — and a legal threat against Retraction Watch

Drug withdrawal: St. Louis Krokodil paper disappears

ajmedOn November 11, St. Louis’s KTVI reported that krokodil, a nasty opioid concoction with roots in Russia, had arrived in their town. They based that report on a case study published in the American Journal of Medicine, “Krokodil’—A Designer Drug From Across the Atlantic, with Serious Consequences,” and interviewed two of the paper’s authors, Dany Thekkemuriyil and Unnikrishnan Pillai.

The case study involved a 30-year-old man the Thekkemuriyil and Pillai said they had seen at St. Mary’s Health Center in Richmond Heights, Missouri. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported a few days later: Continue reading Drug withdrawal: St. Louis Krokodil paper disappears

Mathematicians have second paper retracted

inequalA group of mathematicians in Iran have had a second paper retracted, and if we may, neither of the notices adds up.

Here’s the notice: for the new paper, in the Journal of Inequalities and Applications: Continue reading Mathematicians have second paper retracted

Controversial Seralini GMO-rats paper to be retracted

food and chemical toxicologyA heavily criticized study of the effects of genetically modified maize and the Roundup herbicide on rats is being retracted — one way or another.

The paper — by Gilles Seralini and colleagues — was published in Food and Chemical Toxicology last year. There have been calls for retraction since then, along with other criticism and a lengthy exchange of letters in the journal. Meanwhile, the paper has been cited 28 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, and the French National Assembly (their lower house of Parliament) held a long hearing on the paper last year, with Seralini and other scientists testifying.

Now, as reported in the French media, the editor of the journal, A. Wallace Hayes, has sent Seralini a letter saying that the paper will be retracted if Seralini does not agree to withdraw it.

Here’s most of the November 19 letter, including Hayes’ proposed retraction notice: Continue reading Controversial Seralini GMO-rats paper to be retracted

At long last, disputed dance study retracted from Nature

trivers natureA 2005 Nature study that has vexed one of its authors since 2007 is finally being retracted.

The notice for “Dance reveals symmetry especially in young men,” by William M. Brown, Lee Cronk, Keith Grochow, Amy Jacobson, C. Karen Liu, Zoran Popovic´& Robert Trivers, says very little: Continue reading At long last, disputed dance study retracted from Nature