A paper on the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) that was called a “very flawed and biased study with the potential of being misinterpreted or misused” has been retracted.
Continue reading Journal retracts paper claiming a link between the HPV vaccine and lower pregnancy rates
A year after retracting 29 papers in one fell swoop, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a scientific society which is also one of the world’s largest scientific publishers, is retracting 49 articles from a journal and a conference because of problems in the way they were peer reviewed.
In a statement, IEEE said:
Continue reading Publisher retracts nearly 50 papers at once
A team of researchers in Iran has lost a 2018 paper on using emu oil to prepare stem cells because they tried to recycle previously published images.
The journal told us that a whistleblower had raised concerns about the article, prompting an involved back-and-forth with the authors and even efforts at accommodation before the eventual decision to pull the paper.
The article, “A biomimetic emu oil-blended electrospun nanofibrous mat for maintaining stemness of adipose tissue-derived stem cells,” appeared in Biopreservation and Biobanking. According to the abstract:
Continue reading Authors “in shock” when image reuse doesn’t fly with publishers of paper on emu oil and stem cells
Mladen Pavicic, of the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, and the Ruder Boskovic Institute in Zagreb, Croatia has had a paper retracted from Nanoscale Research Letters.
He’s not happy about it.
In a preprint posted to arXiv, “Response to “Retraction Note: Can Two-Way Direct Communication Protocols Be Considered Secure,” Pavicic writes:
Continue reading “I cannot agree to this unfounded, unscientific, and rather Kafkian retraction.”
The Journal of Food Safety has retracted two papers by a group from Iran over concerns that the work was tainted by problems with peer review and bad data.
The articles, both of which appeared in 2018, came from the lab of Ebrahim Rahimi, of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Tehran. Rahimi, by our count, has now lost four papers for questionable peer review and findings.
For Rahimi’s article, “Antibiotic resistance properties and genotypic characterization of enterotoxins in the Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from traditional sweets,” the retraction notice reads:
Continue reading Food poisoning researcher up to four spoiled papers
An agriculture researcher has lost nine papers from Elsevier journals for “illegitimate reviewer reports.”
The researcher, Christos Damalas, is, well, irked.
The journals included Chemosphere, Crop Protection, Land Use Policy, and Science of the Total Environment, and the papers were all published in 2017 and 2018, with Damalas as corresponding author and co-authors from Iran and Pakistan. Together, the nine papers have been cited about 75 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Knowledge.
Here’s a typical notice, this one from Crop Protection:
Continue reading Author protests as Elsevier retracts nine papers for fake peer review
A group of physicists in Morocco have lost a 2018 paper over plagiarism and other concerns.
The article, “A 2D fluid motion model of the estuarine water circulation: Physical analysis of the salinity stratification in the Sebou estuary,” appeared in European Physics Journal Plus. The first author, Soufiane Haddout, is listed as being at Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra.
According to the notice:
Continue reading Pass the salt…off as your own? Plagiarism, meet salinity.
Pro-tip: If you’re going to try to publish the same paper twice, don’t submit the duplicated version to a journal from the same publisher where you published the original — especially if you plan to monkey with the data.
Well, don’t try to publish the same paper twice, nor monkey with data, period. But you’ll see our point, we hope, when you read this tale.
Continue reading Publisher retracts paper when authors try publishing it again in another of its journals
A pain journal has expressed concern over a 2018 paper by a group of researchers in China after a reader alerted the publication to problems with the article, including previously-reported data and a bogus trial registry record.
The article, “Population pharmacokinetic modeling of flurbiprofen, the active metabolite of flurbiprofen axetil, in Chinese patients with postoperative pain,” appeared in the Journal of Pain Research, a title from Dove Medical Press. The authors are affiliated with several Peking University and Capital Medical University in Beijing.
Here’s the expression of concern:
Continue reading Journal flags paper on painkiller for misused trial registry record
God giveth miracles … and it seems she taketh them away as well.
A group of chemists in China has lost a 2018 paper which described a “miraculous” discovery that wasn’t.
The paper was titled “A miraculous chiral Ir–Rh bimetallic nanocatalyst for asymmetric hydrogenation of activated ketones,” and it appeared in Organic Chemistry Frontiers, a publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
The authors, from the State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals at Dalian University of Technology, purported to show that:
Continue reading ‘Miracle’ on ice as chemists pull nanocatalyst paper that fizzled
