Category: duplication retractions

“Hindsight’s a bitch:” Colleagues dissect painful retraction

Two blog posts are shining additional light on a recent retraction that included some unanswered questions — namely, the identity of the researcher who admitted to manipulating the results.

To recap: Psychological Science recently announced it was retracting a paper about the relationship between the words you use and your mood after a graduate student tampered with the results. But the sole author — William Hart, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama — was not responsible.

The post raised some questions — for instance, who was the graduate student, and if his or her work was so influential to a paper, why was he/she not listed as an author? Hart declined to identify the student, but two new blogs — including one by one of Hart’s collaborators at the University of Alabama — are providing more details.

Continue reading “Hindsight’s a bitch:” Colleagues dissect painful retraction

3rd retraction appears for fired Pfizer breast cancer researcher

Pfizer has retracted a paper by a former employee who was fired after the company discovered she had been doctoring data.

The retraction, in Molecular Cancer Research, is the third of five papers Pfizer asked to retract, after an investigation discovered they contained duplicated images. The papers have been discussed on PubPeer, which is also mentioned in the latest retraction notice.

As a result of the investigation, Pfizer terminated the employment of Min-Jean Yin, the last author on the newly retracted paper.

According to the notice, Yin and five of her co-authors agreed to the retraction:

Continue reading 3rd retraction appears for fired Pfizer breast cancer researcher

Researcher who lost whistleblower lawsuit logs 4 more retractions

A brain journal has retracted four papers by a researcher due to image duplications that the university uncovered during an investigation into his work.

According to the retraction notice, Wayne State University found that Christian Kreipke had used several images in these articles “to represent different results in grant proposals and/or poster presentations,” and that the data were unreliable. Kreipke now has a total of five retractions, by our count.

As we’ve reported before, Wayne State and Kreipke have been engaged in conflict for several years. In 2012, Kreipke was dismissed from his assistant professor post at Wayne State after the university said it found evidence of research misconduct, according to Courthouse News. Kreipke fired back against the university, filing a whistleblower lawsuit. In it, Kreipke claimed that the institution was “involved in a conspiracy,” according to unsealed court documents, in which it had swindled the U.S. government out of millions in research funding.

A judge dismissed the case in 2014, but the conflict between Kreipke and Wayne State was not over. Continue reading Researcher who lost whistleblower lawsuit logs 4 more retractions

Neuroscientist flags errors in his days-old paper “for the sake of science integrity”

Only days after his paper was published online, a neuroscientist has posted a comment on PubMed alerting readers to several duplication errors.

Despite the issues, which the researcher says were introduced into the final manuscript after peer review, he reassured readers that they do not influence the final conclusions in the paper.

On February 9, ten days after the article came online, corresponding author Garret Stuber at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrote a detailed comment on PubMed Commons, explaining that the “research community” had brought four figure-related errors to his attention. After investigating the concerns, Stuber discovered that the problems emerged after the peer-review process, “while revising the manuscript to comply with Nature Neuroscience’s final formatting guidelines.” In his note, he outlined the specific duplication issues that arose, which he says he plans to detail to the journal in a formal corrigendum letter.

Stuber alerted the scientific community about his PubMed comment via Twitter: Continue reading Neuroscientist flags errors in his days-old paper “for the sake of science integrity”

Cancer biologist stops research as his retraction count rises to 13

Anil Jaiswal

A cancer biologist based at the University of Maryland is transitioning out of research, as a journal has retracted three more of his papers.

Anil Jaiswal has now lost 13 papers, including, as we reported on February 6, six retractions issued earlier this month.

The Baltimore Sun reported this week that Jaiswal would no longer be conducting research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, which we confirmed from a spokesperson:

Continue reading Cancer biologist stops research as his retraction count rises to 13

Researcher sued to stop retractions; he just earned two more and is now up to 11

The notices keep coming for diabetes researcher Mario Saad.

Diabetes has just retracted two more of his papers, both of which had been flagged by expressions of concern, citing problems with duplications. What’s more, the journal added another expression of concern to a 2009 paper on which Saad — based at the University of Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil — is listed as last author, again over concerns of duplication.

This isn’t Saad’s first run-in with the journal: In 2015, the researcher sued the publisher, the American Diabetes Association, after it issued expressions of concern for four of his papers. Later that year, a judge dismissed Saad’s defamation suit. The journal eventually retracted the papers.

The latest articles flagged by Diabetes appear to be part of an intricate publishing web, as the journal suggests all papers have used features of previous papers, and also include elements that have been republished by subsequent articles.

Here’s the first retraction notice, for “A Central Role for Neuronal AMP-Activated Protein Kinase (AMPK) and Mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) in High-Protein Diet–Induced Weight Loss:”

Continue reading Researcher sued to stop retractions; he just earned two more and is now up to 11

Elsevier to retract six more papers by computer scientist, citing duplication and fake reviews

Yesterday we reported that Elsevier journals had pulled three papers by a computer scientist with an impressive publication record. The publisher has since informed us that it plans to pull six more, again citing duplication and manipulation of the peer-review process.

Shahaboddin Shamshirband at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s record will be down by a total of nine papers once the publisher issues the additional notices. We also found evidence that an additional paper was removed by a journal, but haven’t confirmed if that’s a retraction.

One of Shamshirband’s co-authors has objected to one of the retractions Elsevier has already issued for faked reviews, arguing the reviewers were PhD students without institutional email addresses. A spokesperson for Elsevier told us:

Continue reading Elsevier to retract six more papers by computer scientist, citing duplication and fake reviews

Computer scientist loses at least three papers, two for faked reviews

A computer scientist in Malaysia has lost two papers for faked peer reviews, and another for duplication. A fourth paper on which he is a co-author appears to have simply disappeared.

One retraction lays the blame for the fake reviewer on corresponding author Shahaboddin Shamshirband at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. According to the journal, Shamshirband — who has co-authored more than 200 papers and book chapters, despite receiving his PhD in 2014, according to his biography on Vitae — supplied a fake email for the reviewer during the submission process.

Here’s the retraction notice for that paper, issued by the journal Measurement:

Continue reading Computer scientist loses at least three papers, two for faked reviews

Cancer researcher logs 6 retractions, bringing total to 10

Anil Jaiswal

A journal has retracted six papers by a cancer researcher at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, bringing his total to 10.

The retractions cite an investigation by the university, and detail problems ranging from duplicated images, to tweaking an image to conceal particular bands, to including unreliable data.

Three of the papers had already been flagged by the journal with expressions of concern. The last author on all the papers is Anil Jaiswal, a professor in the pharmacology department. He has issued four previous retractions.

Bruce Jarrell, the Chief Academic and Research Officer and Senior Vice President at the University of Maryland, told us at least two more retractions are forthcoming:

Continue reading Cancer researcher logs 6 retractions, bringing total to 10

Researchers submit two similar papers 8 days apart; one is retracted

After a research group submitted two similar papers only days apart to different journals, one journal has retracted the paper — and told the other it should do the same.

The papers, by a group of authors based in Romania, describe a new polymer to stop the formation of biofilms. After a reader flagged the papers — which were submitted within eight days of each other in September, 2015 — as being similar, a journal has retracted one, and recommended the other journal retract the second. Although the second journal told us it planned to flag the paper with a notice alerting readers to the duplication, the notice has not yet appeared online.

The journal that issued the retraction — the International Journal of Polymer Analysis and Characterization (IJPAC) — called it a “a clear case of self-plagiarism,” according to the notice:

Continue reading Researchers submit two similar papers 8 days apart; one is retracted