What Caught Our Attention: Any time there’s an issue with a paper co-authored by researchers from such high-profile institutions as Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Cambridge, we take notice. In this case, the group — which included Laurie Glimcher, then-dean at Cornell, now president of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute — chose to retract a 2013 paper from a Cell journal after learning they couldn’t reproduce some of the experiments. Continue reading Caught Our Notice: A team from Harvard, Cornell, Cambridge, HHMI, and UCSF can’t reproduce a paper’s findings
Category: by publisher
The mystery of the mistaken retraction is solved — sort of
We finally have some clarity on the case of the erroneous retraction over at the Annals of Surgical Oncology.
Last week, we reported that the journal, and its publisher, Springer Nature, were having some trouble with a retracted presentation from a 2017 cancer meeting. Turns out, the issue involved crossed wires for similar articles in the journal by the same trio of researchers.
Elizabeth Hawkins, a spokeswoman for Springer Nature, told us:
Continue reading The mystery of the mistaken retraction is solved — sort of
A frustrated former editor asked a publishing group for help. He didn’t like what they said.
When the former editor of a public health journal didn’t get a straight answer about why the journal retracted his paper that was critical of corporate-sponsored research, he brought his concerns to an organization dedicated to promoting integrity in academic publishing. He wanted the group to help resolve the impasse he’d reached with the publisher, but was sorely disappointed.
David Egilman, the former editor of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, had been seeking answers about the paper for a year. In November, the journal’s editorial board resigned, in protest of the “apparent new direction that the journal appears to be moving towards.” They objected to the “unilateral withdraw[al]” of Egilman’s paper, with little explanation, the delay in publishing other papers that had been accepted under Egilman’s leadership, and the decision to appoint a new editor with industry ties.
Amidst all that upheaval at the journal, Egilman still wasn’t getting the answers he wanted about why his paper was withdrawn. So he brought his concerns to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Oops: Springer Nature journal retracts the wrong paper
The Annals of Surgical Oncology (ASO) owes an apology to a group of researchers at two hospitals in South Florida.
Last month, the journal retracted a conference presentation about a device, from a company called Cianna Medical, that is designed to allow surgeons to home in to suspicious lumps in the breast and avoid needless damage to the surrounding tissue. According to the notice for “SAVI SCOUT RADAR – A non-wire non-radioactive localization device can be used for axillary lymph node surgery,” the authors of the study had failed to obtain ethics approval for the research, which was originally presented in April 2017 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons.
Trouble is, that part about lack of ethics approval is not true.
Continue reading Oops: Springer Nature journal retracts the wrong paper
When multiple doctors treat a patient, who gets to publish the case report?
Three researchers are fighting over who should get to publish a case report on a pair of unique patients.
Yoo-Mi Kim—who was not an author on the paper—claimed that he had diagnosed the patients described in the report, and should have been the one to write it up. The authors—Jun Woo Park and Soo Jung Lee—disagreed, claiming that they had treated the patients for years and had received oral consent from the patients to publish the report.
The Journal of American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, unable to resolve the disagreement, has published an expression of concern highlighting the dispute. Continue reading When multiple doctors treat a patient, who gets to publish the case report?
Thousands boycott new Nature journal about machine learning
More than two thousand researchers have signed a petition to boycott a new Nature journal over the fact it will be available only by subscription.
The new journal — Nature Machine Intelligence, about machine learning — plans to charge readers for access, unlike most other journals in the field. The researchers who signed the petition have pledged not to submit their work to the new journal, and will decline to review or edit papers for it, as well.
Most journals published by Nature Publishing Group are available only by subscription — but that doesn’t work for the machine learning community, the signatories argue:
Continue reading Thousands boycott new Nature journal about machine learning
Infighting at journal prompts retraction of editorial “full of misinformation”
An editor thought she did a great job running an anesthesiology journal. But her colleagues— including the new editor who took over for her—heartily disagree.
During her tenure at the journal, the outgoing editor penned an editorial taking credit for the journal’s rise to success. But, according to a new commentary published in the journal, the former editor’s article presented wrong statistics, and minimized the contributions of those who had come before her. So when the new editor took office, he retracted it—and published the lengthy commentary explaining why. Continue reading Infighting at journal prompts retraction of editorial “full of misinformation”
Chemists duke it out over who was first to discover a 30-year-old technique
Decades ago, unbeknownst to each other, two chemists were independently working on a screening approach to identify new potential drugs. Both published papers about the technique around the same time. So now, when scientists write papers that cite the technique, who should get credit for discovering it?
Decades later, that question still hasn’t been answered — and the researchers continue to argue, this time over one’s decision not to cite the other’s work.
More than 30 years ago, Árpád Furka—now retired from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest—developed an approach he says has had “outstanding importance” in drug development. The technique, called split-mix synthesis, made it possible to synthesize and screen millions of peptides at once, instead of one by one. Furka patented the method in 1982, presented an abstract in 1988, and published a paper in 1991. Continue reading Chemists duke it out over who was first to discover a 30-year-old technique
Author under fire has eight papers retracted, including seven from one journal
A researcher whose work on the use of nanomaterials has been heavily scrutinized on PubPeer — with one critic alleging a paper contained “obviously fabricated” images — has lost eight papers. [Editor’s note: See update below.]
The eight articles — seven from Biosensors and Bioelectronics and one from Analytica Chimica Acta, both published by Elsevier — all cite issues related to duplications, and conclude with some version of the following:
Continue reading Author under fire has eight papers retracted, including seven from one journal
Flawed climate science paper “exposed potential weaknesses” in the peer review process
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How did a deeply flawed paper, which contradicts mainstream science on climate change, pass peer review?
That is what three editorial board members tried to figure out after the journal, Global and Planetary Change, faced heavy criticism for publishing the controversial paper last year. The board members published their findings earlier this month in a commentary.
Martin Grosjean, the corresponding author on the editorial, told Retraction Watch that the editors and publisher, Elsevier, share the same interest: Continue reading Flawed climate science paper “exposed potential weaknesses” in the peer review process