Last month, we covered the retraction of a paper by A.M.K. El-Ghonemy, of Al-Jouf University in Saudi Arabia. The engineer now has a second retraction in the same journal, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
Here’s the notice for “Waste energy recovery in sea water reverse osmosis desalination plants, Part-1: Review”: Continue reading Saudi engineer loses second fresh water paper for plagiarism
A team of neuroscientists in Japan has lost their 2012 article in Brain Research for duplicating elements of a figure from a paper they’d published earlier that year in another journal.
The article, “Dynamic changes of mitochondrial fission proteins after transient cerebral ischemia in mice,” came from a lab at Okayama University. The last author was Koji Abe. According to the retraction notice:
Continue reading Mitochondrial fission paper falls for fusing data from earlier work
Talanta, a journal serving the analytical chemistry community — we’d love to know how the name came to be — has retracted a 2013 article by a group of Indian researchers over an authorship dispute.
The paper, “Non-enzymatic electrochemical glucose sensor based on silver/silver oxide nano-rods reinforced with multiwall carbon nanotubes,” appeared in January, with the authors listed as Leila Shahriary, Santosh K. Haram and Anjali A. Athawale.
But according to the retraction notice:
Continue reading “Conflicts among the authors” force retraction of Talanta paper
Math journal editors can add — but they can also subtract.
That’s what happened to a 2012 paper in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications (JMAA), “On the fractional Ostrowski inequality with uncertainty.”
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Oops: Math journal retracts paper accepted by “accidental administrative error”
A 2003 paper is now subject to an Expression of Concern after its author reused a lot of its material in a 2007 paper.
Here’s the Expression of Concern for “New therapeutic target in primary headaches – blocking the CGRP receptor” by Lars Edvinsson of the University of Copehagen: Continue reading Duplicate publication of headache paper earns Expression of Concern, erratum
BMC Genomics has issued an expression of concern for a 2011 paper by a prominent Argentine chemist, Ariel Fernandez, whose work covers several disciplines — “His research spans representation theory in algebra, physical chemistry, molecular biophysics, and more recently, molecular evolution and drug discovery” — and institutions. And therein lies the tale.
Fernandez appeared as the first author of the article, titled “Subfunctionalization reduces the fitness cost of gene duplication in humans by buffering dosage imbalances,” along with a pair of researchers from Taiwan. Fernandez’s affiliations were listed as being with the Instituto Argentino de Matemática “Alberto P. Calderón”, CONICET (National Research Council of Argentina), in Buenos Aires, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, and the Morgridge Institute for Research, in Madison, Wisc.
According to the abstract:
Continue reading “Conflicting investigations” prompt expression of concern in BMC Genomics
We’ve already reported on the retraction of a paper in a business ethics journal for plagiarism. Yes, plagiarism in an ethics journal. But it turns out there’s at least one more case of exactly the same thing, albeit in a different business ethics journal.
Here’s the notice from the Journal of Business Ethics: Continue reading University of Virginia doctoral candidate plagiarizes in business ethics journal, but remains in program
Scientific experiments are like recipes: With the right components and the proper steps, the end result can be a thing of beauty. But if you start with a cup of salt instead of a cup of flour, well, even the neighbor’s schnauzer won’t touch that batch of sugar cookies.
That’s a little like the situation we have in “Controls on topographic dependence and temporal instability in catchment-scale soil moisture patterns,” a paper published in February in Water Resources Research by Michael Coleman and Jeffrey Niemann of Colorado State University.
According to the notice:
Continue reading Calibration error sends moisture paper down the drain
Bryan William Doreian, who was found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have falsified data in his Case Western dissertation, has retracted a 2009 paper in Molecular Biology of the Cell also cited by the ORI.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Retraction appears for former Case Western dermatology researcher found by ORI to have falsified data
A public health journal has retracted a 2010 paper by a CDC AIDS researcher in Uganda who appears to have lifted much of the work from a Canadian scientist.
The article, “Determinants of project success among HIV/AIDS NGOs in Rakai, Uganda,” appeared in the International Journal of Health Planning and Management, a Wiley title. The author was Stevens Bechange, who was listed as being with the Uganda Virus Research Institute, in Entebbe. Bechange’s Linkedin page says he is a doctoral student at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, UK, studying “Health, Wellness and Fitness.” His contact information on the article was an email with a CDC address (we’ve put in a call to the agency to find out more about his status but haven’t heard back yet).
As the abstract stated:
Continue reading Paper on anti-HIV efforts in Uganda pulled for plagiarism