A paper suggesting that 45% of deer ticks in Texas have Lyme disease was raked over the coals in a letter to the editor in a recent issue of Parasites and Vectors, though it doesn’t seem like a retraction is forthcoming. Continue reading Lyme disease researchers call for retraction of paper on deer ticks in Texas
A little more than a month after removing a highly criticized article that claimed the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine increased the risk of autism in African American boys, Translational Neurodegeneration has officially retracted the paper.
Here’s the notice, dated yesterday: Continue reading Journal makes it official, retracting controversial autism-vaccine paper
The authors of a paper retracted for plagiarism of a popular website have decided not to take the charges — which they don’t contest — lying down.
Here’s the notice for “Alcohol consumption and hormonal alterations related to muscle hypertrophy: a review,” which appeared in Nutrition & Metabolism, a BioMed Central title: Continue reading Author of alcohol paper retracted for plagiarism defends copy-and-paste strategy
Although it shocks some observers every time, we’ve reported on the retractions of more than 100 papers pulled because authors managed to do their own peer review.
Apparently, it’s happened again.
Here’s a retraction notice in BMC Systems Biology for “Predicting new molecular targets for rhein using network pharmacology,” by Aihua Zhang, Hui Sun, Bo Yang and Xijun Wang:
Continue reading It’s happened again: Researcher appears to have peer reviewed his own paper
An article purporting to find that black children are at substantially increased risk for autism after early exposure to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine has been shelved.
Although we don’t know if the events are related, the move comes amid claims that a CDC whistleblower has accused health officials of suppressing information about the link.
Not surprisingly, the prospect that the CDC has been sitting on evidence of an autism-vaccine connection for more than a decade has inflamed the community of activists wrongly convinced that such a link exists.
The paper, “Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young african american boys: a reanalysis of CDC data,” was written by Brian Hooker, an engineer-turned-biologist and an active member of that community. It was submitted in April, accepted on August 5, and published on August 8.
Translational Neurodegeneration, which published the article earlier this month, has now removed it and posted the following notice: Continue reading Journal takes down autism-vaccine paper pending investigation
Imagine you were a cop, sitting in your squad car at the side of the road with a radar gun, when you clock someone speeding. You turn on your lights, pull the speedster over to the side of the road, and walk to her driver’s side window.
Just as you say “Driver’s license and registration, please,” you realize the driver is your squad captain. Oops.
That must have been something like what it was like — with plagiarism detection software sitting in for the radar gun — for the co-editor-in-chief of Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome when he realized that Marilia de Brito Gomes, the other co-editor-in-chief, had published two papers in their journal that contained plagiarized passages.
Here’s the notice for “Historical facts of screening and diagnosing diabetes in pregnancy:” Continue reading Editor in chief steps down after being found plagiarizing in her own journal
Back in January 2013, we wrote about the retraction of a paper in Diabetes that the authors had “submitted without knowledge of inherent errors or abnormalities that they recognized in retrospect after submission.”
Now, Molecular Pain has retracted a paper by the same authors, this time for data manipulation. The article, “Comparison of central versus peripheral delivery of pregabalin in neuropathic pain states,” was written by Cory Toth, a clinical neuroscientist at the University of Calgary, in Canada, and colleagues. It has been cited eight times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Toth said of the Diabetes article at the time:
Continue reading Pain study retracted for bogus data is second withdrawal for University of Calgary group
Here’s a suggestion: If you’re going to plagiarize someone else’s work, don’t draw attention to it by including “fiction” in your title.
That lesson was brought home to us by a recent retraction in the Italian Journal of Pediatrics for “Infantile colic, facts and fiction:”
Continue reading Pro tip: Don’t use “facts and fiction” in your title if you plan to plagiarize
Nutrition & Metabolism has retracted a 2008 article by a dwindling group of researchers from Pakistan. We’d say it’s the equivalent of punting on first down, expect that’s what the editors probably should have done in the beginning.
As it happens, the journal seems to be guilty of delay of game in this case. As this blog post by Jeffrey Beall notes, allegations that the now-retracted paper was a verbatim copy of another article arose in 2010.
The abstract of the article, which is still available, reads: Continue reading And then there were none: Plagiarism forces retraction of metabolism paper with vanishing authors
In December, we reported on the case of Dong-Pyou Han, who was found by the Office of Research Integrity to have spiked rabbit blood samples to make it look as though a vaccine for HIV was working.
At the time, Han’s former institution, Iowa State, told us that “one oral presentation and some abstracts will be removed from the web.”
One of those retractions has occurred, in Retrovirology, of “Eliciting broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV-1 that target gp41 MPER.” Here’s the notice: Continue reading Faked HIV vaccine research presentation retracted
