society journal retractions – Page 26

2001 sepsis paper “deviates from the ethical standard of authorship,” says journal

We don’t have a lot of information on a recent retraction of a 2001 paper published in a Japanese journal — just a brief and strongly worded note explaining that it follows “a strict, extensive, and judicious review.”

The paper, retracted 14 years after it was published, describes patients in Okinawa, Japan who developed severe symptoms following infection by bacteria belonging to the Aeromonas genus. One example:

The one patient was a 15-year-old high school girl student, who had been healthy in her school life, was admitted to the hospital with a sudden onset of left thigh muscle pain and swelling. She subsequently went into septic shock and died one day after admission. Pathological examination on autopsy revealed massive gas formation, skin bullas and ulcers, and extensive severe soft tissue damage throughout the body.

“Aeromonas species infection with severe clinical manifestation in Okinawa, Japan-association with gas gangrene” has been cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. It was published in a Japanese journal, Rinsho Biseibutshu Jinsoku Shindan Kenkyukai Shi — which translates to the Journal of the Association for Rapid Method and Automation in Microbiology.

The retraction note suggests that there are major flaws: Continue reading 2001 sepsis paper “deviates from the ethical standard of authorship,” says journal

Do radiology journals retract fewer papers? New study suggests yes

There’s good news and bad news in radiology research, according to a new study: The number of retractions is increasing in radiology journals, but the rate of retraction remains lower than that seen in biomedical journals outside the field of radiology.

According to the study in the American Journal of Roentgenology, between 1986 and 2001, radiology journals retracted — at the most — one paper per year, but from 2002 to 2013, at least two papers were pulled each year. Overall, roughly 11 articles are retracted out of every 100,000 articles published in radiology journals — compared to 15 out of 100,000 for biomedical journals outside radiology.

Still, writes author Andrew Rosenkrantz in “Retracted Publications Within Radiology Journals:”

Continue reading Do radiology journals retract fewer papers? New study suggests yes

Why publishing negative findings is hard

When a researcher encountered two papers that suggested moonlight has biological effects — on both plants and humans — he took a second look at the data, and came to different conclusions. That was the easy part — getting the word out about his negative findings, however, was much more difficult.

When Jean-Luc Margot, a professor in the departments of Earth, Planetary & Space Sciences and Physics & Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, tried to submit his reanalysis to the journals that published the original papers, both rejected it; after multiple attempts, his work ended up in different publications.

Disagreements are common but crucial in science; like they say, friction makes fire. Journals are inherently disinterested in negative findings — but should it take more than a year, in one instance, to publish an alternative interpretation to somewhat speculative findings that, at first glance, seem difficult to believe? Especially when they contain such obvious methodological issues such as presenting only a handful of data points linking biological activity to the full moon, or ignore significant confounders?

Margot did not expect to have such a difficult experience with the journals — including Biology Letters, which published the study suggesting that a plant relied on the full moon to survive: Continue reading Why publishing negative findings is hard

Johns Hopkins investigation leads to retraction of two lung papers, one highly cited

An investigation at Johns Hopkins University has uncovered several issues with the figures in two papers on a lung disease linked to smoking, one of which is highly cited.

The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine is retracting both papers, which examine the role of protein NRF2 in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But both contain spliced and duplicated figures, among other issues.

Both papers — which share a total of five authors — received an expression of concern in 2014, after the corresponding author noticed anomalies in the figures. That same year, PubPeer commenters had begun raising questions about some of the figures in one of the papers.

A spokesperson for Johns Hopkins declined to say whether the investigation considered if the errors were the result of misconduct.

All authors agreed with the retraction, except for one who couldn’t be located. Here’s more from the retraction note for both papers:

Continue reading Johns Hopkins investigation leads to retraction of two lung papers, one highly cited

Investigation leads to 5th retraction for drug researcher

A pharmaceutical researcher has received his fourth and fifth retractions for duplicating papers.

Last we saw Giuseppe Derosa on this blog, he was notching retractions after publishing results from the same clinical trial in six different papers; as part of that fallout, a journal has pulled a fourth paper associated with the trial.

Here’s the note for “Effects of an olmesartan/amlodipine fixed dose on blood pressure control, some adipocytokines and interleukins levels compared with olmesartan or amlodipine monotherapies,” which has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Investigation leads to 5th retraction for drug researcher

JACS imaging paper “under editorial review”

The Journal of the American Chemical Society has issued an expression of concern over “the presentation of results” in a 2014 paper about a new probe for use in imaging.

We haven’t heard back from the journal nor the authors of the paper, so there’s not much we can officially say about what the journal is investigating.

Here’s the text from the expression of concern:
Continue reading JACS imaging paper “under editorial review”

Sparks fly in Finland over misconduct investigation

Researchers in Finland are criticizing an investigation by VTT Technical Research Centre into one of its scientists.

The investigation followed allegations about the VTT’s plasma and serum metabolomics (QBIX) group, previously led by Matej Orešič (who is now based at the Steno Diabetes Center in Gentofte, Denmark) and Tuulia Hyötyläinen. Kai Simons, who conducted an earlier investigation of the group, and the Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Helsinki, have criticized VTT, saying it cut corners in its investigation.

VTT found no evidence of data tampering or falsification in a 2008 paper co-authored by Orešič in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, but said the paper — which has not been corrected or retracted — included some “exaggerated conclusions.” In turn, Orešič and Hyötyläinen filed a complaint for “an alleged violation of good scientific practice” by Simons during the initial investigation. Continue reading Sparks fly in Finland over misconduct investigation

Labor pains study brought into this world twice

A group of authors published two articles about one study on pain during childbirth, so one journal is retracting it.

This may seem like a standard case of salami slicing — but this one comes with a nearly 600-word commentary co-authored by the editors of the two journals in question.

The commentary lays out — in a refreshingly transparent way — exactly why the journals came to a joint decision to retract one of the papers:

Continue reading Labor pains study brought into this world twice

Another case of plagiarism in papers published only months apart

Remember when we recently found PLOS ONE had published two papers with “substantial overlap” from two different groups, that were edited around the same time? Well, we have discovered another similarly perplexing case of plagiarism in two studies published only months apart. But in this instance, we have a possible explanation for how two groups of authors from different institutions could report a similar experiment and data, and even use some of the same text.

It also concerns a paper focusing on cancer biology — in this case, it’s a 2014 paper retracted by Clinical and Investigative Medicine after editors learned that it contained many similarities to a study published only a handful of months before in Tumour Biology.

According to an email from an author on the retracted paper to the editor, Continue reading Another case of plagiarism in papers published only months apart

Wikipedia page reincarnated as paper: Authors plagiarized paper on reincarnation

When an entry on Wikipedia dies, can it come back as a paper in a peer-reviewed journal?

Apparently not, according to the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, which has retracted a 2013 article about reincarnation after discovering the authors lifted text from a “old revision” of a Wikipedia entry on the subject.

The article, “The mystery of reincarnation,” states that:

One of the mysteries puzzling human mind since the origin of mankind is the concept of “reincarnation” which literally means “to take on the flesh again.”

The article presents how different religions describe reincarnation, and apparently provides “some research evidence” about the phenomenon. But according to the retraction notice, the authors, led by AK Nagaraj of Mysore Medical College, took on the words again of other writers:

Continue reading Wikipedia page reincarnated as paper: Authors plagiarized paper on reincarnation

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