Last week, we reported on an uniformative retraction notice in Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE), an Oxford University Press (OUP) title, that the publisher wanted $32 to read. To OUP’s credit, they quickly acknowledged that the retraction hadn’t been handled properly.
Earlier this week, OUP’s senior publisher for journals Cathy Kennedy followed up with some welcome news: Continue reading Oxford University Press clarifies policy: All retraction notices will be open access
We can only imagine how Joe Hollyfield felt to learn from us, of all people, that his journal, Experimental Eye Research, had retracted two manuscripts in a recent issue.
The papers, “Mechanisms of retinal ganglion cell injury and defense in glaucoma,” by Qu J, Wang D, and Grosskreutz CL, and “Mitochondria: Their role in ganglion cell death and survival in primary open angle glaucoma,” by Osborne, NN, carried the same retraction notices:
This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author(s) and/or editor. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy.
Because in our experience such unhelpful wording often masks interesting details — read, author misconduct — we called Hollyfield for comment. He graciously walked us through the retractions, explaining the case in detail, until we realized that we were talking about different papers entirely. Hollyfield, it turned out, thought we were asking about the travails of Sangiliyandi Gurunathan, an eye researcher from India whom we’d previously covered and whose work recently had been retracted by Experimental Eye Research and other journals for image manipulation.
But Hollyfield was unaware of the two retractions we’d intended to talk about with him and told us he’d look into them.
Here’s what he learned: Continue reading Publisher error handling two eye papers leads to retractions, new policy on notices
On Tuesday, we reported on the case of a retraction notice in Molecular Biology and Evolution, an Oxford University Press (OUP) journal, that had three problems: Continue reading Remember the $32 opaque retraction notice? Molecular Biology and Evolution removes paywall
At least four retractions have appeared involving the work of a group of Japanese researchers who appear to have reused figures — and doctored them — in multiple manuscripts.
The authors, led by Yoshiyuki Hattori, of Dokkyo University School of Medicine in Mibu (whose motto, by the way, is “where character is developed through learning” a reader points out that we had the wrong Dokkyo initially), published the same figure twice, and in the same year, in the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Biochimica et Biophysica Acta.
Here’s a retraction notice from the JCP: Continue reading New retractions of diabetes, cardiovascular papers from Japan involve repeat use of figures
The authors of a 2008 paper alleging to have described how a particular protein binds to the parathyroid hormone have retracted it. The paper, “Structure of the Parathyroid Hormone Receptor C Terminus Bound to the G-Protein Dimer Gβ1
2,” has been cited 12 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the notice: Continue reading Ties that don’t bind: Group retracts parathyroid hormone crystallography paper
A contested retraction has punctuated the complicated saga of a 2003 paper in the FASEB Journal. (FASEB stands for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.)
A retraction notice for the paper, “Molecular analysis of Nogo expression in the hippocampus during development and following lesion and seizure,” appeared in mid-June: Continue reading Following investigation, FASEB Journal retracts paper after agreeing to run a correction
Scott Weber seems to have been behaving badly. The Journal of Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing (JCAPN) has retracted five of Weber’s papers, dating back to 2009. And the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (JAANP)and Perspectives in Psychiatric Care also have pulled articles by the nursing researcher. The reason: he misused his sources and plagiarized the work of others.
That’s our interpretation of the retraction notices, which come close to saying as much but don’t quite get there. Here they are, so you can judge for yourself: Continue reading Former Pitt psych nursing researcher loses seven papers (and counting) in referencing, plagiarism scandal
A group of Turkish researchers has retracted a paper purporting to show a method of calculating the thermodynamic properties of certain transition metals, because it was plagiarized from another article. The withdrawn paper, “A simple analytical EAM model for some bcc metals,” was published in 2010 in Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation.
Here’s the notice (we added a link to the plagiarized paper): Continue reading Plagiarism forces retraction of mathematical modeling paper
The journal Angiogenesis is retracting two articles by a group of researchers in India whom it accuses of using manipulated images in six other publications as well.
According to the retraction notice for one of the papers, “Gold nanoparticles inhibit vascular endothelial growth factor-induced angiogenesis and vascular permeability via Src
dependent pathway in retinal endothelial cells” (we’ve annotated with links and citation data): Continue reading Angiogenesis retracts two papers, cites image manipulation in eight, as PI blames unethical students
Earlier this week we reported on the latest retraction of an article by Naoki Mori, number 21 in a series. We could have waited a few days and saved ourselves some trouble.
The journal Leukemia Research has retracted a 2006 paper by Mori, titled “Curcumin suppresses constitutive activation of AP-1 by downregulation of JunD protein in HTLV-1-infected T-cell lines.” From the notice, which is behind a paywall: Continue reading Should we change our name to Mori Watch? Yet another retraction from cancer researcher