Category: faked data

Bugging out: An opaque retraction notice reveals why an entomology journal only looks dark

We hope it doesn’t bug Retraction Watch readers that we’ve been writing about entomology more than usual this week. That’s because a reliable tipster has been sending us material that checks out.  Here’s another case, of a retraction that appeared some months ago in Entomological News. The retraction notice itself revealed little, but we did learn why the journal hasn’t published an issue in more than a year.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Bugging out: An opaque retraction notice reveals why an entomology journal only looks dark

Retraction comes as death of PI leads to lost records

The Journal of Experimental Medicine has retracted a 2011 article after the principal investigator’s home institution suggested that the PI might have manipulated his data. Complicating matters, the PI in this case died two weeks after the paper appeared and his notes have gone missing — making an affirmative declaration of fraud or honest error difficult.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Retraction comes as death of PI leads to lost records

Science expresses “concern” about Stapel paper

A day after Tilburg University released its preliminary report on psychologist Diederik Stapel, Science has issued an “expression of concern” about one of his papers.

The 2011 article, titled  “Coping with Chaos: How Disordered Contexts Promote Stereotyping and Discrimination,” was written by Stapel and Siegwart Lindenberg, a Tilburg colleague with an appointment at the University of Groningen.

Here’s the notice, signed by Science editor Bruce Alberts: Continue reading Science expresses “concern” about Stapel paper

Stapel report finds faked data in at least 30 papers, possibly more

Our comment threads lit up today with news that the interim report on the misconduct investigation into Diederik Stapel has arrived — and what it says ain’t pretty. Continue reading Stapel report finds faked data in at least 30 papers, possibly more

Retracted retraction leaves Genomics paper intact — but authors wonder if anyone will know

Last March, the journal Genomics retracted a paper, “Discovery of transcriptional regulators and signaling pathways in the developing pituitary gland by bioinformatic and genomic approaches,” for reasons that don’t really fit into a tight lede sentence. Let’s just say that at times the problems involved both questions of authorship and the validity of the research. More on all that in a moment.

Meanwhile, things change. Now the journal, an Elsevier title, is un-retracting (that can’t be a real word, can it?) the retraction. You’d think that would please the authors, and it does to an extent. But they also wonder, legitimately, whether the original retraction will refuse to relinquish its grip on the resurrected article and consign it to database oblivion.

First, some background. Continue reading Retracted retraction leaves Genomics paper intact — but authors wonder if anyone will know

Nursing researcher Scott Weber draws penalties from ORI in plagiarism, fraud scandal

Scott Weber, the nursing researcher whose publishing misconduct has cost him posts at the University of Pittsburgh and Walden University, has been sanctioned by the Office of Research Integrity for his misdeeds.

According to a link posted today on the ORI website: Continue reading Nursing researcher Scott Weber draws penalties from ORI in plagiarism, fraud scandal

Stapel inquiry widens to the University of Groningen, University of Amsterdam

The University of Groningen (UG) has launched an investigation the conduct of Diederik Stapel, the social psychologist accused of fabricating his research.

According to a Google translation of a UG press release: Continue reading Stapel inquiry widens to the University of Groningen, University of Amsterdam

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see fraud in sexual selection infanticide commentary

From the, No Further Explanation Required files:

The journal Animal Behaviour has retracted a 2009 article by an international group of researchers who, well, did just about everything one could do wrong with a paper.

Here’s the notice, res ipsa loquitur: Continue reading Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see fraud in sexual selection infanticide commentary

Did Diederik Stapel tip his pitches in a paper about a plagiarism scandal?

Do fraudsters, like bad pitchers or poker players, have “tells”?

Diederik Stapel might. Last week we reported that Stapel, an internationally recognized social psychologist from The Netherlands, had been accused of fabricating his data. An alert Retraction Watch reader has pointed us to a 1999 paper by Stapel with the impossibly ironic title: “Framed and misfortuned: identity salience and the whiff of scandal.”

In the article, which appeared in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Stapel and two colleagues reported the results of survey they’d conducted of Dutch psychologists in the wake of a major plagiarism scandal involving an unidentified Dutch clinical psychologist (“we decided to use neither the name of the person who was accused of plagiarism nor the university to which he was affiliated,” they wrote).

Put briefly, the researchers claimed to have found (rather unsurprisingly) that how psychologists identified themselves professionally dictated how strongly they were affected personally by the scandal. Money quote: Continue reading Did Diederik Stapel tip his pitches in a paper about a plagiarism scandal?

Dutch university investigating psych researcher Stapel for data fraud

Tilburg University in the Netherlands has suspended the prominent social psychologist Diederik Stapel over concerns that he fabricated data in his published studies. According to a translation of a press release from the school, Stapel, professor of cognitive social psychology and dean of Tilburg’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, “has committed a serious breach of scientific integrity by using fictitious data in his publications.”

The release says the rector of Tilburg has set up a committee to investigate Stapel’s manuscripts and report back by October. Heading the panel is W.J.M. Levelt, former* president of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and professor emeritus at the Radboud University in Nijmegen.

What the release does not specify, however, is which of Stapel’s many publications — a Medline search comes up with at least 45 bearing his name — are implicated. Continue reading Dutch university investigating psych researcher Stapel for data fraud