Family Practice has retracted a 2009 review article on diabetes whose author had published a similar — in spots identical — paper two years earlier in another journal. We think the notice is nine-tenths solid, but there’s a part at the end that raises an important question about how much, or little, editors should do to accommodate the embarrassments of their authors.
The notice:
In April 2011, we praised Psychological Science for its handling of a retraction. At the time, we went as far as to call the retraction notice a “model” of transparency for other journals to follow.
Well, they evidently took that compliment seriously, according to a new retraction notice for a paper by Lawrence Sanna. Sanna left Michigan under a cloud a few months ago after another scientist found his data statistically implausible, as Ed Yong reported in Nature.
The newly retracted paper, “Construing collective concerns: Increasing cooperation by broadening construals in social dilemmas,” was published in 2009 while Sanna was still at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Here’s a sample from the abstract: Continue reading Psychological Science retracts a Sanna paper, citing lawyers, COPE…and Retraction Watch
The European Journal of Surgical Oncology has retracted a meeting abstract that evidently was never meant to be.
The study, by researchers at Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Good Hope Hospital, both in Birmingham, England, was to be presented at this year’s annual meeting of the Association of Breast Surgery and purported to compare rates of patient satisfaction among women who underwent two kinds of breast reconstruction, TRAM — transverse rectus abdominis myocutaneous — flap and DIEP (short for deep inferior epigastric perforators) flap.
But according to the notice: Continue reading Cancer journal pulls deeply flawed meeting abstract on breast surgery
The authors of a paper on websites that sell cholesterol-lowering statin medications without prescriptions have retracted it. The move followed the threat of a lawsuit against the journal by a company included in the study that says it never dispenses sans a script.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Statins without prescription website paper retracted after company says it requires scripts, threatens suit
Expert Opinion on Pharmacotherapy has retracted a 2011 paper for plagiarism by two authors, one of whom, V. Craig Jordan, is a leading researcher on the class of drugs known as selective estrogen receptor modulators, or SERMs, and is credited with discovering the anti-tumor properties of the breast cancer drug tamoxifen.
Jordan, who is scientific director at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University, appears to have been unaware of the offense when the paper was published. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Plagiarism topples paper co-authored by top tamoxifen scientist
Yesterday, we brought you news of a story in Belgium involving questions about whether a woman who gave birth following an ovarian transplant could have become pregnant without the transplant. The case, which led to a university investigation but no retraction, included allegations of theft and arson.
This morning, we were made aware of a request for a retraction from The Lancet related to other work by Jacques Donnez, the obstetrician-gynecologist at the center of the case. In 2004, Donnez and colleagues published what they said was the first pregnancy using frozen banked ovarian tissue in The Lancet. The paper has been cited hundreds of times, but not everyone agreed with Donnez et al’s assessment at the time. All but one of the authors of a Lancet letter — colleagues of Donnez’s at the Catholic University of Louvain — describing the perinatal follow-up of the woman now say they don’t either, and want to retract their letter.
In their letter requesting retraction, published in the journal on July 14, Corinne Hubinont and colleagues write that they “did not have access to the patient’s gynaecological records throughout the pregnancy,” but that “Recently, we had the opportunity to read the patient’s notes,” which include a progesterone measurement “omitted by Donnez and colleagues:” Continue reading Ovarian transplant update: Authors of 2004 live-birth follow-up letter ask Lancet to retract it
Conflict Resolution Quarterly, which we probably all should read but don’t, is retracting a 2010 paper on commercial interactions by a French researcher who combined two other articles into a work he called his own.
But, true to its name, the journal takes a more, shall we say, diplomatic approach to the affair.
Here’s the notice (which, tsk tsk, is behind a paywall): Continue reading Buyer beware: Conflict Resolution Quarterly pulls paper for plagiarism
There’s a story brewing in Belgium that is, as one local newspaper put it, worthy of a TV drama.
Here’s our attempt at a summary: Jacques Donnez, chair of Catholic University of Louvain’s (UCL) gynecology department, and colleagues published two studies in Human Reproduction in 2010. One study claimed to show that a woman had given birth after undergoing chemotherapy for severe sickle cell disease and then getting an ovarian transplant from her sister.
The other of those studies, the authors noted, confirmed “data published earlier as a case report” in 2007. That case report of a woman with another type of anemia — the pregnancy only went as far as an embryo, which did not survive — garnered a good deal of attention, because, as New Scientist reported: Continue reading Fireworks: Belgian dispute over ovarian transplant findings includes claims of theft, arson
Here’s a new one that may stoke the debate about whether a paper deserves retraction merely for being wrong or less than fully right.
The journal Cell Biochemistry and Function, a Wiley title, has retracted an article it published earlier this year by a pair of Chinese authors — or, rather, from one author an an unwitting co-author. That authorship issue alone should be enough to warrant a retraction. But the retraction notice also includes a more interesting matter: Continue reading Biochemistry journal retracts paper for being, well, less than conclusive
A mathematician will be performing subtraction on his CV now that he has had to retract a 2011 paper because his co-authors never agreed to submit it with him.
Kewen Zhao, of Qiongzhou University, Sanya, China, has lost a paper in Discrete Applied Mathematics, a journal for which Zhao claims to review. (Given the circumstances, perhaps he meant Indiscreet Applied Mathematics.)
According to the notice: Continue reading Chinese mathematician forced to retract paper after two co-authors say they had nothing to do with work