Category: wiley

“Strange. Very strange:” Retracted nutrition study reappears in new journal

In an unusual turn of events, a nutrition paper has come back to life a year after being pulled from its original publication.

After the paper was retracted from the journal Obesity, the authors revised it and republished it in another journal, Pediatric Obesity. Both journals are published by Wiley. The second version of the paper doesn’t mention the previous retraction. Indeed, the journal editor told us he didn’t know the paper had been retracted. Still, he stood by his decision to publish it.

The authors told us the paper was retracted after editors at Obesity raised concerns over the authors’ methodology. The authors revised the paper, adding some analysis and explanation of their methodological approach, and said the new version was accepted by peer reviewers before being published in Pediatric Obesity.

However, an outside expert who reviewed both papers for us said he thinks the authors didn’t change enough. According to Patrick McKnight, head of the Measurement, Research methodology, Evaluation, and Statistics group at George Mason University and a Statistical Advisory Board member of STATS.org:

Continue reading “Strange. Very strange:” Retracted nutrition study reappears in new journal

Nightmare scenario: Text stolen from manuscript during review

A food science journal has retracted a paper over “a breach of reviewer confidentiality,” after editors learned it contained text from an unpublished manuscript — which one of the authors appears to have reviewed for another journal.

The publisher and editors-in-chief of the Journal of Food Process Engineering became aware of the breach when the author of the unpublished manuscript lodged a complaint that his paper, under review at another journal, had been plagiarized by the now retracted paper.

We’re hazy on a few details in this case. Although the journal editor told us the “main author” of the retracted paper reviewed the original manuscript for another journal, the corresponding author of the retracted paper said he was not to blame. (More on that below.)

When looking into the matter, the publisher found that one of the co-authors of the published paper had acted as a reviewer of the unpublished manuscript. Alexandra Cury, an associate editor at Wiley, explained: Continue reading Nightmare scenario: Text stolen from manuscript during review

An editor in chief was caught manipulating citations. Now he’s been asked to resign.

Artemi Cerdà

An earth science journal has asked an editor to resign after it was revealed he had been manipulating citations at multiple journals.

Artemi Cerdà had already agreed to step down temporarily from Land Degradation & Development after the publisher, Wiley, was alerted that Cerdà had resigned from other journals for citation manipulation. In a new statement, the journal announces that Cerdà’s resignation has become permanent.

Here’s the entire statement:

Continue reading An editor in chief was caught manipulating citations. Now he’s been asked to resign.

Prominent NIH researcher up to a dozen retractions

Stanley Rapoport. Source: NIH

Neuroscientist Stanley Rapoport hasn’t had much luck with his co-authors.

Recently, we’ve reported on multiple retractions of papers co-authored by Rapoport after three different first authors were found to have committed misconduct. Now, the fallout from one of those cases had led to four more retractions, bringing Rapoport’s total to 12.

The latest batch of retractions stem from the actions of Jagadeesh Rao.

Here’s the first notice, issued by Psychopharmacology:

Continue reading Prominent NIH researcher up to a dozen retractions

Editor steps down from journal while it investigates citation irregularities

Artemi Cerdà

The editor of the journal Land Degradation & Development has stepped down amidst an investigation into citation problems at the journal.

The editor, Artemi Cerdà of the University of Valencia in Spain, has also disappeared from the list of editors at two journals published by the European Geosciences Union, which recently announced that one of its editors had engaged in citation manipulation.

Here’s a statement we just received from a spokesperson for Wiley, which publishes Land Degradation & Development:

Continue reading Editor steps down from journal while it investigates citation irregularities

Paper quickly retracted after author used another group’s work

The author of a 2016 paper has agreed to retract it after an investigation revealed that most of the article came from another research group at the same university.

According to the notice, the author based the majority of his paper on results generated by other scientists without their permission.

Here’s the retraction notice for “Controlled synthesis of magnetic block copolymers for anti-microbial purpose,” published in the Journal of Applied Polymer Science in November and retracted in February: Continue reading Paper quickly retracted after author used another group’s work

Does a paywall protect patient privacy?

A psychoanalyst has retracted an award-winning 2016 paper over concerns that it contained “sensitive” patient information.

On July 15, Judith L. Mitrani, a psychoanalyst based in California, published an article that included “sensitive clinical material” about a patient. Although we do not know what prompted the concerns, on November 21, Mitrani, in agreement with the journal’s editor-in-chief and publisher, retracted the article. The author and editor told us the retraction was meant to prevent non-experts from accessing the paper and to stop other non-Wiley sites from posting it.

The article was published after it had won the journal’s essay contest in 2015.

Here’s the retraction notice for “On Separating One from the Other: Images of a Developing Self,” published in the British Journal of Psychotherapy (BJP):

Continue reading Does a paywall protect patient privacy?

Do you calculate if you should accept an invite to peer review? Please stop, say journal editors

Raphael Didham

Scientists are always pressed for time; still, Raphael Didham of the University Western Australia was surprised when he fell upon a group of early career scientists using a spreadsheet formula to calculate whether one was obligated to accept an invitation to review a paper, based on how many manuscripts he’d submitted for review. “I recall that sharp moment of clarity that you sometimes get when you look up from the keyboard and realise the world you (thought you) knew had changed forever,” Didham and his colleagues write in a recent editorial in Insect Conservation and Diversity. We spoke with Didham about how to convince scientists that peer reviewing is a benefit to their careers, not a burden.

Retraction Watch: You talk about the current problem of “zero-sum” reviewing. Could you define that in the context of the scientific peer review system? Continue reading Do you calculate if you should accept an invite to peer review? Please stop, say journal editors

Dangerous chemo mistake retracted by journal after two years

An oncology journal has retracted a 2014 paper that contained a potentially fatal mistake.

Specifically, the paper suggested that a chemotherapy drug be injected intrathecally — i.e., in the spine. But according to the retraction notice, the medical literature has unequivocally shown that that form of treatment is “uniformly fatal.”

The retraction comes approximately 18 months after the journal published a letter to the editor alerting readers to the risky wording in the 2014 paper.

Here’s the notice, issued by Hematological Oncology:

Continue reading Dangerous chemo mistake retracted by journal after two years

What turned a cancer researcher into a literature watchdog?

Jennifer Byrne

Sometime in the middle of 2015, Jennifer Byrne, professor of molecular oncology at the University of Sydney, began her journey from cancer researcher to a scientific literature sleuth, seeking out potentially problematic papers.

The first step was when she noticed several papers that contained a mistake in a DNA construct which, she believed, meant the papers were not testing the gene in question, associated with multiple cancer types.  She started a writing campaign to the journal editors and researchers, with mixed success. But less than two years later, two of the five papers she flagged have already been retracted.

When asked why she spent time away from bench research to examine this issue, Byrne told us:  Continue reading What turned a cancer researcher into a literature watchdog?