Bharat B. Aggarwal, the MD Anderson researcher under investigation at his institution over concerns of image manipulation, has withdrawn a second paper, although you’d never know why from the statement.
The notice for the article, “Evidence for the critical roles of NF-κB p65 and specificity proteins in the apoptosis-inducing activity of proteasome inhibitors in leukemia cells,” is pretty minimal: Continue reading Another withdrawal by MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, again for unclear reasons
When a group from Saint Louis University published a case report in Pediatric Transplantation on a baby with an unusual infection after kidney transplant surgery, they thought they’d stumbled on a first. At the time they wrote:
[Acalculous candidal cholecystitis] caused by Candida is an uncommon entity usually seen in the critically ill. Here, we present the case of an 18-month-old renal transplant patient who developed candidal AAC during the post-operative period. Previous articles have addressed acalculous cholecystitis secondary to a variety of causes, or addressed a wide variety of Candida infections in the biliary tract, but this is the first discussion of cholecystitis caused by Candida without confounding factors such as biliary calculi or multiple pathogens. After the discussion of our patient’s case, we also reviewed the English-language literature regarding candidal AAC and discussed diagnosis, treatment, and mortality.
A year later, however, the group is walking back their article. A retraction notice in the journal states that: Continue reading On second thought: Transplant paper retracted for researcher error
Current Opinion in Gastroenterology is a bimonthly journal “offering a unique and wide ranging perspective on the key developments in the field” that “features hand-picked review articles from our team of expert editors.”
Apparently, those hands picked what amounted to the same “unique” article twice. The journal is retracting a 2004 paper, “Enteral feeding,” by Khursheed Jeejeebhoy, an expert in nutrition at the University of Toronto (he’s now emeritus), because it duplicates a 2003 paper with the same title.
Here’s what the notice, which, lamentably, sits behind a paywall, has to say: Continue reading Gastro journal retracts duplicate review, but what really happened?
The author of a controversial and now-retracted paper questioning the science of climate change has been reprimanded by his university for plagiarism. According to USA Today’s Dan Vergano, who broke the news:
[Edward] Wegman was the senior author of a 2006 report to Congress that criticized climate scientists as excessively collaborative, and found fault with a statistical technique used in two climate studies. Portions of the report analysis were published in the journal, Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, in a 2008 study.
University of Massachusetts professor Raymond Bradley filed a complaint against Wegman in 2010, noting that portions of the report and the CSDA study appeared lifted from one of his textbooks and from other sources, including Wikipedia. CSDA later retracted the study, noting the plagiarism, last year.
Here’s the explicit retraction notice: Continue reading Climate science critic Wegman reprimanded by one university committee while another finds no misconduct
Alzheimer’s & Dementia has “temporarily withdrawn” a 2012 abstract, slated for publication next month, linking Alzheimer’s disease with exposure to dental x-rays.
The author is Caroline Rodgers, a self-described “independent writer/researcher who investigates public health issues and advocates for change.” Although we can’t find the text, we’re guessing that its premise is similar to that of her 2011 paper in Medical Hypotheses, titled “Dental X-ray exposure and Alzheimer’s disease: a hypothetical etiological association.”
Here’s the abstract from that paper: Continue reading Dental X-rays linked to Alzheimer’s disease? Abstract saying so temporarily withdrawn
A couple of engineers in Iran turn out to be better at predicting the “failure probability” of water pipes than of their chances of being published.
Consider this retraction notice for “Estimation of failure probability in water pipes network using statistical model,” originally published in February 2011 in Engineering Failure Analysis: Continue reading “Failure probability” turns out to be quite high as engineers double-submit paper, then see it retracted
The International Journal of Impact Engineering has a highly technical retraction of an article whose authors discovered that crucial findings relied on a model that was different from the one they reported using in a particular figure.
The article, “Dynamic behavior of polymers at high strain-rates based on split Hopkinson pressure bar tests,” was published online last November by a pair of researchers from the U.K. and China. As the notice states:
Continue reading Flawed model leads to retraction of polymer paper
A retraction notice from Tissue Antigens:
The following article from Tissue Antigens, A gene-specific primer extension and liquid bead array system for killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor genotyping by H. J. Park, Y. Oh, H. J. Kang, E. J. Han, H. Y. Shin, H. S. Ahn, K. S. Ahn, B. H. Yoon & B. D. Han, published online on 14 March 2011 in Wiley Online Library (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com) and in Tissue Antigens, 77:535–539, has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor-in-Chief, James McCluskey, and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to inadvertent publication of the same article in a prior issue of the journal: Park, H. J., Oh, Y., Kang, H. J., Han, E. J., Shin, H. Y., Ahn, H. S., Ahn, K. S., Yoon, B. H. and Han, B. D. (2011), A gene-specific primer extension and liquid bead array system for killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptor genotyping.Tissue Antigens, 77:251–256. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. accepts responsibility for this error. Continue reading Oops! Tissue Antigens retracts paper after accidentally publishing it twice
The journal Inhalation Toxicology has issued a fascinating correction notice covering four articles on various aspects of asbestos exposure by a group of researchers who failed to note their connection to Georgia-Pacific, the industrial giant that became caught up in a deluge of costly lawsuits over the carcinogenic chemical during the 1980s.
As the notice indicates, the ties weren’t mere tangents, but rather involved obvious — and obviously conflicting — relationships: Continue reading Amid lawsuits, toxicology journal corrects four asbestos papers for failure to cite author links to Georgia-Pacific
We knew we hadn’t heard the last of Joachim Boldt, whose nearly 90 retractions make him the putative record holder for a single author in this indistinguished club. But we didn’t expect this:
The European Journal of Anaesthesiology has retracted a paper, “Supplemental oxygen reduces serotonin levels in plasma and platelets during colorectal surgery and reduces postoperative nausea and vomiting,” from Boldt’s former colleagues at the Klinikum Ludwigshafen after determining that the authors were trying to hide their association with the disgraced anesthesiologist.
Continue reading Not so fast! Journal retracts paper from Boldt group over author hijinks, more