The other day we brought you the story (well, not quite a STORY) of a group of researchers who had to retract a paper in the Journal of Computational Chemistry because of a “computation error.” We still don’t know what that means.
That was fresh in our minds when we came across the following retraction notice in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research: Continue reading Premature delivery? Paper on rapid assay for ruptured placenta pulled for “mishandling” of tests
If you’re going to publish in the Journal of Computational Chemistry, it probably makes sense to have one’s computer tuned up for the task.
Or else you might wind up like a group of researchers in China who had to endure this misfortune: Continue reading Computational chem journal retracts article for, um, computation error
When the first sentence of a science paper reads like this, you might think you’re in for quite a ride:
Jumping out of an airplane may seem like a crazy and scary thing to do, but for a skydiver it is a fun and exciting experience.
Unfortunately for the authors of an earlier version of that paper comparing gamblers and skydivers, published in 2011 in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, the ride was short-lived, according to a retraction notice just published: Continue reading Psychologists take a gamble on using data about risky behavior, and are forced to retract a paper
The European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry has published a curious retraction notice for a paper in its February 2012 issue from a group of Indian scientists.
The abstract of the article,”Proton-pumping-ATPase-targeted antifungal activity of cinnamaldehyde based sulfonyl tetrazoles,” is still available on Medline:
Here’s what the abstract of the paper said about the study: Continue reading ‘Molecular characterization’ errors lead to retraction from medicinal chemistry journal
A senior member of a high-profile foreign aid research team has left the project on the heels of a Lancet correction of a heavily criticized paper the team published earlier this month.
Paul Pronyk, who until last week was director of monitoring and evaluation at Columbia University’s Center for Global Health and Economic Development, which runs the Millennium Villages Project, wrote a letter to the Lancet acknowledging errors in the paper, “The effect of an integrated multisector model for achieving the Millennium Development Goals and improving child survival in rural sub-Saharan Africa: a non-randomised controlled assessment,” originally published May 8. That admission came after Jesse Bump, Michael Clemens, Gabriel Demombynes, and Lawrence Haddad wrote a letter criticizing the work, which was published this week accompanied by corrections to the paper: Continue reading Millennium Villages Project forced to correct Lancet paper on foreign aid as leader leaves team
Earlier this month, we reported on a correction by Luk van Parijs, the biologist the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) fired in 2005 after he admitted to making up data.
Immunity has now run a retraction involving van Parijs, dated May 25, 2012, for 2003’s “Autoimmunity as the Consequence of a Spontaneous Mutation in Rasgrp1”: Continue reading An Immunity retraction for Luk van Parijs, three years after the ORI found evidence of fabrication in the paper
Improperly aligned columns have cost researchers at the Mayo Clinic a paper in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The paper originally concluded that fainting spells (syncope) give patients with high blood pressure in their lung arteries poor prognoses, an observation that turned out to be incorrect.
The problem? The group merged two electronic databases, but did not align columns properly, a problem found only after first author Rachel Le revisited the dataset looking to cull more data.
The retraction notice published on May 22 (the one on ScienceDirect is free to air, while the one on the JACC site is behind a paywall): Continue reading Not for the faint of heart: Cardiologists retract syncope paper after realizing data columns weren’t aligned right
Last week, we brought you the story of Thong Duc Le and his colleagues, physicists who were forced to retract four papers, including one that cited, as we noted “their own study that had already been retracted for plagiarism.”
The team has now retracted three more papers: Continue reading Three more retractions for Vietnamese physicists who plagiarized a plagiarized paper
A group of French researchers liked their paper on the properties of molten tin so much they published it twice. In the same journal. Four months apart.
The article, “Nitrogen spray atomization of molten tin metal: Powder morphology characteristics,” first appeared online in the January 2007 issue of the Journal of Materials Processing Technology. That one has been cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
In May 2007, the same group, sans two authors, published a paper online in the JMPT (and in January 2008 in print) with the identical title. That article — which managed to get cited three times — has now been retracted: Continue reading Mighty molten powder researchers publish paper in journal twice, months apart
A group of researchers at the University of Utah has retracted two papers from Cell Metabolism after they realized that a dismissed employee had tossed out data that were the basis of some error-laden figures.
Here’s the notice for both papers: Continue reading Authors retract two Cell Metabolism papers after “data were inappropriately removed from the laboratory”