Category: springer retractions

Herbal arthritis remedy study retracted for “copyright issues”

The authors of a clinical study of an herbal medication have retracted after it became clear that one of the study authors had included two figures without the consent of his co-investigators.

The paper was a study of Green Cross Corporation of Korea’s SHINBARO, which was approved last year for the treatment of osteoarthritis by the Korean FDA.

The editors of the Archives of Pharmacal Research, where the research found a home, ran this notice: Continue reading Herbal arthritis remedy study retracted for “copyright issues”

Authors retract “one-center” cancer study for plagiarizing from…another center

The World Journal of Surgical Oncology has posted the retraction of a 2010 article by Italian researchers who lifted substantial parts of their text from a group that had published on the same topic seven years earlier.

The article, “Colon and rectal surgery for cancer without mechanical bowel preparation: one-center randomized prospective trial,” came from a group of surgical oncologists at San Martino Hospital in Genoa led by Stefano Scabini, who is listed in other publications as chief of the service.

According to the notice: Continue reading Authors retract “one-center” cancer study for plagiarizing from…another center

Study linking antidepressants to diabetes retracted when authors publish it twice

A group of researchers from Texas and Zimbabwe has lost a paper after they tried publishing it twice — first in the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, and then in the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Study linking antidepressants to diabetes retracted when authors publish it twice

Feminist studies journal retracts paper after post-acceptance editing dispute

The journal Feminist Legal Studies has retracted a paper by a controversial Canadian scholar, Sunera Thobani, after the researcher evidently disagreed with post-acceptance edits.

Thobani, of the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of British Columbia, became a figure of some international repute for statements in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that were highly critical of the United States and its response to the assaults and of the West in general: Continue reading Feminist studies journal retracts paper after post-acceptance editing dispute

Fired Kalasalingam prof Gurunathan’s retraction count stands at eight

We’ve found another retraction for a paper bySangiliyandi Gurunathan, the former researcher at Kalasalingam University in India fired over multiple instances of data fabrication that also caused six Ph.D. students to get kicked out of their program.

The retraction was published In Vitro Cellular & Developmental Biology – Animal in October 2011 but we only saw it last month. It reads, in full: Continue reading Fired Kalasalingam prof Gurunathan’s retraction count stands at eight

We’re up to 13: Retractions keep coming for Diederik Stapel

The retraction count is up to 13 for Dutch psychology fraudster Diederik Stapel, with four more in the publications the Journal of Consumer Research, Motivation & Emotion, Psychology & Marketing, and Social Cognition.

Here are the notices: Continue reading We’re up to 13: Retractions keep coming for Diederik Stapel

Plagiarism costs Canadian lab-on-a-chip researcher a paper — in his own journal

We have long (well, for the past two years) wondered about the pitfalls of publishing in one’s own journal, and here’s a case that illustrates precisely how fraught that practice can be.

The journal Microfluidics and Nanofluidics has retracted a 2010 article, titled “Induced-charge electrokinetic phenomena,” by Dongqing Li and Yasaman Daghighi, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, for what appears to be extensive misappropriation of text and data.

As the notice explains: Continue reading Plagiarism costs Canadian lab-on-a-chip researcher a paper — in his own journal

Primate journal cites duplication in erratum, but does not retract

The International Journal of Primatology has a commendably open notice this month about a 2012 paper on the dietary habits of monkeys — “Western Purple-faced Langurs (Semnopithecus vetulus nestor) Feed on Ripe and Ripening Fruits in Human-modified Environments in Sri Lanka” — with echoes of a 2007 article by the same Sri Lankan researcher: Continue reading Primate journal cites duplication in erratum, but does not retract

Wham, bam, no thank you, ram: Publisher error leads to retraction of already-withdrawn sheep sperm paper

Caution: Sexual innuendo ahead.

The withdrawal method is a notoriously unreliable form of birth control. It seems that what happens between the sheets applies to paper as well as cotton.

Here’s a retraction notice from BMC Research Notes that speaks — and nudges and winks — for itself. The 2011 article, “Effect of controlled and uncontrolled cooling rate on motility parameters of cryopreserved ram spermatozoa,” by a team of Irani veterinary scientists: Continue reading Wham, bam, no thank you, ram: Publisher error leads to retraction of already-withdrawn sheep sperm paper

Astrophysics retraction trail includes paper that plagiarized another already retracted for…plagiarism

Sometimes, the full story of scientific misdeeds isn’t clear until several retraction notices appear. Take the case of a group of Vietnamese astrophysicists led by Thong Duc Le.

If you were to read a Physics Letters B retraction notice about one of the group’s papers, “Search for cosmological time variation of the fine-structure constant using low-redshifts of quasar,” you wouldn’t have any idea why the paper was retracted, nor that the move was related to any other retractions: Continue reading Astrophysics retraction trail includes paper that plagiarized another already retracted for…plagiarism