Category: biomedcentral

High-profile aging paper posts old erratum, requested by author more than one year prior

GenomeBioGenome Biology has partially retracted a high-profile paper about an epigenetic biomarker of aging – a year and a half after the author alerted the journal to a software coding error that invalidated one of its findings.

The paper, “DNA methylation age of human tissues and cell types,” garnered some media coverage and forms the basis of its author Steve Horvath‘s work on measuring human aging. It has been cited 73 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The article is also recommended on the post-publication peer review site Faculty of 1000.

The lengthy, peer-reviewed erratum notice, written by Horvath, refers to several figures and files, as well as a conclusion:

Continue reading High-profile aging paper posts old erratum, requested by author more than one year prior

Flood paper washed away after “oversight” leads to publication of wrong manuscript

JEHSEThe editor of the Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering has retracted a paper mapping flood zones in Iran because the authors mistakenly uploaded a manuscript that had already been published elsewhere.

According to corresponding author Majid Bagheri of K.N. Toosi University of Technology in Tehran, a different paper on wastewater treatment was accepted and peer-reviewed at JEHSE, but then the authors uploaded the wrong manuscript, and that manuscript, on flood zones, made it all the way through acceptance and publication due to an “oversight.”

The retracted version of the paper was published online on December 27, 2014 in JEHSE, a BioMed Central title. The preceding, non-retracted version, was published online at the Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering just four days earlier, on December 23, 2014.

Here is Bagheri’s account: Continue reading Flood paper washed away after “oversight” leads to publication of wrong manuscript

Chocolate-diet study publisher claims paper was actually rejected, only live “for some hours.” Email, however, says…

bohannon
John — aka “Johannes” — Bohannon

Following revelations in io9.com this week from John Bohannon about how he successfully “created” health news by conducting a flawed trial of the health benefits of chocolate and gaming the data to produce statistically significant results, the journal that ultimately published the findings is now claiming the paper wasn’t accepted.

Trouble is, we’ve got correspondence from Bohannon showing that’s false. Here’s a quote from an email from publisher Carlos Vazquez to which Bohannon responded on March 2:

Continue reading Chocolate-diet study publisher claims paper was actually rejected, only live “for some hours.” Email, however, says…

Chinese medical case study erased after guardian consent withdrawn

JMCRThe editor of the Journal of Medical Case Reports, a BioMed Central title, has retracted and removed a case study of a novel surgical treatment after the patient’s legal guardian withdrew consent post-publication.

The paper, “Novel two-stage surgical treatment for Cantrell syndrome complicated by severe pulmonary hypertension: a case report,” describes the treatment of a six-month-old Han Chinese girl suffering from a rare combination of birth defects called Cantrell syndrome, complicated by pulmonary hypertension.

The original article, published in March 2014, has been removed from the journal’s website, though the abstract can be read on PubMed. It is unclear whether the authors, the child’s guardian, or some other party informed the editor of the withdrawal of consent.

The brief notice offers few details:

Continue reading Chinese medical case study erased after guardian consent withdrawn

Former Florida ob-gyn prof notches eighth retraction

University of Florida
University of Florida

Nasser Chegini, the former University of Florida professor currently under investigation by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), has now had eight papers retracted.

The eighth paper, in the journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology, is about the effect of a compound used during fertility treatments on Smads, signaling molecules that carry messages from TGF-beta receptors to the nucleus. It’s being retracted disappeared due to the discovery of data that “have been fabricated or falsified by the last author” — namely, Chegini.

Here’s more from the notice for “Gonadotropin releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) alters the expression and activation of Smad in human endometrial epithelial and stromal cells:” Continue reading Former Florida ob-gyn prof notches eighth retraction

Wayne State neuroscientist fudged images in five papers

Teresita L. Briones
Teresita L. Briones

Teresita Briones, a former nursing professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who studied neuroscience, manipulated images in five papers, according to the Office of Research Integrity.

Briones, who focused on neuroplasticity: Continue reading Wayne State neuroscientist fudged images in five papers

BioMed Central retracting 43 papers for fake peer review

bmc logoBioMed Central is retracting 43 papers, following their investigation into 50 papers that raised suspicions of fake peer review, possibly involving third-party companies selling the service.

In November 2014 we wrote about fake peer reviews for Nature; at that point there had been about 110 retractions across several journals. The addition of 16 retractions by Elsevier for the same reason, and today’s 43 from BMC, brings retractions resulting from the phenomenon up to about 170.

BMC has also contacted institutions regarding 60 additional papers that were rejected for publication, but seem to be part of the same kind of scam. Regarding the third-party agents, BMC senior editor of scientific integrity Elizabeth Moylan writes: Continue reading BioMed Central retracting 43 papers for fake peer review

New favorite plagiarism euphemism: “Inadvertently copied text”

biodata miningPlagiarism earned genomics researchers an erratum, not a retraction, in BioMed Central journal BioData Mining.

We keep a list of best euphemisms for plagiarism, and this one is right up there.

Here’s the notice for “An iteration normalization and test method for differential expression analysis of RNA-seq data”: Continue reading New favorite plagiarism euphemism: “Inadvertently copied text”

Are companies selling fake peer reviews to help papers get published?

copeFaked peer reviews — a subject about which we’ve been writing more and more recently — are concerning enough to a number of publishers that they’ve approached the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to work together on a solution.

In the past, we have reported on a number of cases in which authors were able to submit their own peer reviews, using fake email addresses for recommended reviewers. But what seems to be happening now is that companies are offering manuscript preparation services that go as far as submitting fake peer reviews. And that, no surprise, worries publishers.

Here’s COPE’s statement out today: Continue reading Are companies selling fake peer reviews to help papers get published?

Publisher discovers 50 manuscripts involving fake peer reviewers

bmc logoBioMed Central has uncovered about fifty manuscripts in their editorial system that involved fake peer reviewers, Retraction Watch has learned.

Most of the cases were not published because they were discovered by a manuscript editor on a final pre-publication check. The five or so that have been published will go through some sort of re-review, which may result in expressions of concern or retraction.

The narrative seems similar to that in the growing number of cases of peer review manipulation we’ve seen recently. What tipped off the editor was minor spelling mistakes in the reviewers’ names, and odd non-institutional email addresses that were often changed once reviews had been submitted, in an apparent attempt to cover the fakers’ tracks. Those “reviewers” had turned in reports across several journals, spanning several subjects.

It would seem that a third party, perhaps marketing services helping authors have papers accepted, was involved.

The publisher has let all of its external editors in chief know about the situation. To prevent it from happening again, authors will not be able to recommend reviewers for their papers. Here’s a message from BioMed Central senior managing editor Diana Marshall that went out to a number of journal editors earlier today: Continue reading Publisher discovers 50 manuscripts involving fake peer reviewers