We have some updates on the case of more than 120 fake SCIgen conference proceedings papers that slipped into IEEE and Springer journals.
Category: springer retractions
NIH/Harvard team loses aging study to manipulated data
Age has retracted a 2012 article by a group of scientists from the National Institutes of Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston after an NIH inquiry turned up evidence of data manipulation in the work.
The article, “Aging decreases rate of docosahexaenoic acid synthesis-secretion from circulating unesterified α-linolenic acid by rat liver,” came from the lab of Stanley Rapoport, chief of the brain physiology and metabolism section of the National Institute on Aging.
As the abstract explained: Continue reading NIH/Harvard team loses aging study to manipulated data
Pain study retracted for bogus data is second withdrawal for University of Calgary group
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
Do you see what I see? Heart imaging journal yanks cardiac study for plagiarism
The International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging has retracted a 2013 paper by a group of researchers from Italy. The reason: plagiarism.
The paper was titled “Diagnostic accuracy of 320-row computed tomography as compared with invasive coronary angiography in unselected, consecutive patients with suspected coronary artery disease,” and it came from scientists in Rome led by Francesco Pelliccia of the Department of Heart and Great Vessels at Sapienza University.
Continue reading Do you see what I see? Heart imaging journal yanks cardiac study for plagiarism
“Unable to dispel the doubts,” authors lose protein structure paper
A suggestion: If you’re going to use the words “overestimated accuracy” in the title of your paper, you’d better make sure you aren’t guilty of the same yourself.
A group of authors in China has lost their June 2013 paper in the European Biophysics Journal because they appear to have misinterpreted their data. The paper, “Overestimated accuracy of circular dichroism in determining protein secondary structure,” came from chemists at Fudan University in Shanghai, and purported to find that:
Continue reading “Unable to dispel the doubts,” authors lose protein structure paper
A matter of degree: M. Theol loses a paper
Evidently the editors of the Journal of Religion and Health were a tad distracted when they published a paper earlier this year by Australian theologian Joseph Lee and his “colleague,” M. Theol.
M. Theol, of course, is a degree, not a person — as a correction notice explains:
Pro tip: Don’t use “facts and fiction” in your title if you plan to plagiarize
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
Want to make sure your paper gets published? Just do your own peer review like this researcher did
We’ve reported on some pretty impressive cases of researchers doing their own peer review, one of which led to 28 retractions. We have another.
Yongdeng Lei, of the School of Geography and Remote Sensing Science at Beijing Normal University, pulled the wool over the eyes of two Springer journals. Here’s the notice from Environmental Management for “Typhoon Disasters and Adaptive Governance in Guangdong, China:” Continue reading Want to make sure your paper gets published? Just do your own peer review like this researcher did
“Critical data” errors force retraction of vision paper
A group of authors in Korea has lost their 2013 paper on treating vision loss after one of the two cases they’d reported turned out to have been fatally flawed.
The paper, “Isolated central retinal artery occlusion as an initial presentation of paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria and successful long-term prevention of systemic thrombosis with eculizumab,” had appeared in the Japanese Journal of Ophthalmology.
According to the abstract: Continue reading “Critical data” errors force retraction of vision paper
“Unfortunately, scientific publishing is not immune to fraud and mistakes”: Springer responds to fake papers story
We have an update on the story of 120 bogus papers being removed by IEEE and Springer. The latter posted a statement earlier today, which we include in its entirety below: Continue reading “Unfortunately, scientific publishing is not immune to fraud and mistakes”: Springer responds to fake papers story