Category: forged authorship

Doctor suspended in UK after faking co-authors, data

Screen Shot 2016-02-24 at 11.04.56 AMA doctor in Manchester, UK has received a year’s suspension by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.

Gemina Doolub admitted that she fabricated research data and submitted papers without the knowledge of her co-authors, including faking an email address for a co-author, a news story in the BMJ reports. The research in question was part of two retractions that Doolub received in 2013, one of which we covered at the time.

Doolub’s research examined ways to treat and avoid microvascular obstruction — that is, blocked arteries. Doolub did the work while at Oxford.

“Intracoronary Adenosine versus Intravenous Adenosine during Primary PCI for ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction: Which One Offers Better Outcomes in terms of Microvascular Obstruction?” was published in International Scholarly Research Notices Cardiology and has not yet been cited, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.

As the BMJ reports, in that paper,

Continue reading Doctor suspended in UK after faking co-authors, data

Paper on the adhesiveness of a material doesn’t stick

1-s2.0-S0169433215X00213-cov150hApplied Surface Science has retracted an article that looks at the structure of thin tungsten-titanium coating, because it was submitted without all of the co-authors’ consent.

According to the introduction of the paper, “Structure adhesion and corrosion resistance study of tungsten bisulfide doped with titanium deposited by DC magnetron co-sputtering,” such thin films are “widely used as a surface treatment for optimizing base material properties.”

Here’s the retraction note in full, published in the September issue of the journal:

Continue reading Paper on the adhesiveness of a material doesn’t stick

17 retractions from SAGE journals bring total fake peer review count to 250

sage-journals-logoOn Monday, we reported on 64 new retractions from Springer journals resulting from fake peer reviews. Yesterday, SAGE — which retracted 60 papers for the same reason just over a year ago — added 17 additional retractions to their list.

The articles were published in five different journals, and one retraction involved authorship fraud in addition to peer review fraud, according to a SAGE spokesperson: Continue reading 17 retractions from SAGE journals bring total fake peer review count to 250

Yup, this happened: “Mystery” writer impersonated cardiovascular pathologist, penned published letter

A 2014 letter in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology has been retracted because editors aren’t sure who wrote it.

“Can Grayscale IVUS Detect Necrotic Core-Rich Plaque?”, a letter on the potential of intravascular ultrasound, was submitted under the name of a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Erling Falk. The paper was sent with a Gmail account (a technique used by some academics to conduct fake peer reviews), and editors communicated with the author through the acceptance process.

Shortly after the letter was published, Erling Falk of Aarhus University contacted the journal and asked who wrote the letter. They discovered that nobody by that name worked at the University of Copenhagen and emails to the author’s Gmail address went unanswered. So the journal issued a retraction.

Here’s the complete notice:

Continue reading Yup, this happened: “Mystery” writer impersonated cardiovascular pathologist, penned published letter

Sub-optimal: Industrial optimization paper crushed by author’s “serious error of judgment”

chemo intell lab systemsChemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, an Elsevier publication, has retracted a 2014 paper by researchers in China and the United Kingdom for data misuse and authorship issues.

The article, “Optimization of fluidized bed spray granulation process based on a multiphase hybrid model,” was purportedly written by Dapeng Niu, of the College of Information Science and Engineering at Northeastern University, in Shenyang, China, Ming Li, of De Montfort University, in Leicester, England, and Fuli Wang, a vice-president at Northeastern.

But Niu apparently didn’t perform any experiments, lifted the data from other sources, and published the paper without his co-authors’ okay.

Here’s more from the retraction notice: Continue reading Sub-optimal: Industrial optimization paper crushed by author’s “serious error of judgment”

Forged author list blows up explosives contamination paper

WWII poster for Ravenna Ordnance Plant, via Wikipedia
WWII poster for Ravenna Ordnance Plant, via Wikipedia

An environmental journal has retracted a paper on a technology that helps degrade explosives released into soil, because the first author never got the permission of his “co-authors” — oh, and used data that were “illegally obtained,” according to one of the slighted co-authors.

According to the EPA, more than 30 sites around the country are contaminated by decommissioned explosives, including weapons plants and army depots. A major source of the pollution was workers washing out old bombs into “evaporation lagoons” and then burning the resulting sludge.

The site used for the retracted paper was Ravenna Army Ammunition Plant, a decommissioned weapons factory that stored explosive waste in unlined landfills. According to the EPA, “open burning was also a common practice.”

The problems with the paper in Water, Air & Soil Pollution were uncovered after the head of the company, University of Georgia (UGA) professor Valentine Nzengung, found the paper on ResearchGate. He discovered that first author Chunhui Luo had used (now out-of-date) data without permission, and added Nzengung’s name to the paper without his knowledge. The other author is another UGA professor, Walter O’Niell, who told us he was also not informed about the paper.

Nzengung gave us further details via email: Continue reading Forged author list blows up explosives contamination paper

Cancer researcher has correction upgraded to retraction

mol endo coverRakesh Kumar, a researcher with six recent corrections and one retraction, has had one of those corrections upgraded to a retraction.

Here’s the unhelpful notice, from Molecular Endocrinology: Continue reading Cancer researcher has correction upgraded to retraction

Forged authorship sinks melanoma paper

ijbcbThe International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology has retracted a 2013 paper by a group from China after learning that only the first author knew about the article.

The paper was titled “Construction of circular miRNA sponges targeting miR-21 or miR-221 and demonstration of their excellent anticancer effects on malignant melanoma cells,” and it was led by Yuchen Liu. Liu’s affiliations include the Institute of Dermatology and Department of Dermatology at No. 1 Hospital, part of Anhui Medical University, and the State Key Laboratory Incubation Base of Dermatology for the Ministry of National Science and Technology.

Here’s the retraction notice:
Continue reading Forged authorship sinks melanoma paper

Heart study retracted because it was submitted without permission of most of the authors

clincardcoverA group of authors in South Korea has lost their 2012 paper in Clinical Cardiology because, well, they weren’t a group after all.

The paper, “Correlation of Electrocardiographic Changes and Myocardial Fibrosis in Patients With Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Detected by Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging,” came from corresponding author of Konkuk University School of Medicine in Seoul, and a half-dozen colleagues. At least, that’s what the manuscript said.

But according to the retraction notice, Yang had nothing to do with the paper — nor did five other co-authors. Continue reading Heart study retracted because it was submitted without permission of most of the authors

Social work researchers lose paper for misuse of data

jhbseIrony alert: If you’re going to publish in the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, you’d better be able to play well with others.

Not so, it seems, with a certain Darrel Montero. Montero, an associate professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University, and his colleagues have lost their 2012 paper in the journal for what appears to be a case of data theft.

As the retraction notice explains:

Continue reading Social work researchers lose paper for misuse of data