Another busy week at Retraction Watch, with a lot of media attention to a story about 60 retractions at a single journal for peer review fraud, and our op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Peer review unreliable? Merck retracts legal threats over criticism
Category: Legal Threats
Author who threatened to sue Retraction Watch has another paper withdrawn
Benjamin Jacob Hayempour, the researcher who threatened to sue us for asking questions about a retraction for plagiarism, has had another paper withdrawn.
The paper, published online in the journal Cureus, was titled “Novel Determinants of Tumour Radiosensitivity Post-Large-Scale Compound Library Screening” and had been available at http://www.cureus.com/articles/2394-novel-determinants-of-tumour-radiosensitivity-post-large-scale-compound-library-screening since January 13, but that URL now redirects to Cureus’s homepage.
We asked Cureus editor-in-chief John Adler for details, and he responded: Continue reading Author who threatened to sue Retraction Watch has another paper withdrawn
Retraction prompts letter of explanation by co-author — and a legal threat against Retraction Watch
The European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging has an interesting exchange of retraction-related notices in its pages.
The article, “Neuroradiological advances detect abnormal neuroanatomy underlying neuropsychological impairments: the power of PET imaging,” appeared in 2011 and was written by Benjamin Hayempour and Abass Alavi, one of the pioneers in PET imaging.
According to the retraction notice:
This article has been withdrawn at the request of the Editor-in-Chief of European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging owing to the unexplained close similarity of some passages to parts of a previous publication [Rushing SE, Langleben DD. Relative function: Nuclear brain imaging in United States courts. J Psychiatry Law 2011; 39 (winter): 567–93].
Continue reading Retraction prompts letter of explanation by co-author — and a legal threat against Retraction Watch
Two Expressions of Concern in Blood for MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, who has threatened to sue Retraction Watch
Bharat Aggarwal, the MD Anderson researcher who has threatened to sue us while under investigation by his institution for alleged misconduct, now has two Expressions of Concern in addition to two corrections and two unexplained withdrawals.
Both of the papers were published in Blood. The Expression of Concern for “Gambogic acid, a novel ligand for transferrin receptor, potentiates TNF-induced apoptosis through modulation of the nuclear factor-κB signaling pathway,” reads: Continue reading Two Expressions of Concern in Blood for MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, who has threatened to sue Retraction Watch
Retraction Watch threatened with legal action…again
For the second time this month, Retraction Watch has been slapped with the threat of a lawsuit, this time Ariel Fernandez, whose work in BMC Genomics became the subject of a recent expression of concern.
Today, Fernandez emailed one of us (Adam) the following message:
Continue reading Retraction Watch threatened with legal action…again
MD Anderson’s Bharat Aggarwal inquiry still ongoing; center uninvolved in legal threats
When we learned earlier this week that Bharat Aggarwal, the MD Anderson researcher under investigation there for possible misconduct, had directed his attorneys to send us a pull-all-your-posts-about-our-client-or-we’ll-sue-you letter, we wondered if he’d included the Houston institution in that decision.
Turns out he’d been acting on his own. Continue reading MD Anderson’s Bharat Aggarwal inquiry still ongoing; center uninvolved in legal threats
MD Anderson’s Bharat Aggarwal threatens to sue Retraction Watch
Bharat Aggarwal, an MD Anderson researcher under investigation by his institution, has threatened to sue us.
Today, we received a letter from the Houston firm of Paranjpe & Mahadass LLP telling us to pull every post related to their client off our site within 20 days, or they’d “file a lawsuit against” us on his behalf.
On what grounds? According to the March 26 letter, which we have posted here in its entirety: Continue reading MD Anderson’s Bharat Aggarwal threatens to sue Retraction Watch
Plagiarism spat over scientific poster prep advice escalates to legal threats
Colin Purrington has developed something of a niche in the research world. While teaching evolutionary biology at Swarthmore College, Purrington began developing a how-to manual for putting together poster presentations for meetings — a pursuit that has earned him a little money and some attention.
The result is a website, Designing conference posters, that, by his reckoning, has received some 2 million hits over the years (actually, there was a previous iteration of the site called “Advice on designing scientific posters”).
Not surprisingly, Purrington, who has copyrighted the material on his site, likes to protect his intellectual property. According to Purrington‘s site:
Continue reading Plagiarism spat over scientific poster prep advice escalates to legal threats
Another correction for Rui Curi, whose legal threats helped force shutdown of Science Fraud site
The Journal of Endocrinology has run a correction for a paper by Rui Curi, the Brazilian scientist whose lawyers threatened Science-Fraud.org after the site ran a number of posts critical of Curi’s work.
Here’s the notice for “Non-esterified fatty acids and human lymphocyte death: a mechanism that involves calcium release and oxidative stress”: Continue reading Another correction for Rui Curi, whose legal threats helped force shutdown of Science Fraud site
Author whose lawyers threatened Science Fraud corrects another paper
Rui Curi, the Brazilian scientist whose lawyers’ threats helped force the shutdown of Science-Fraud.org, has corrected another paper criticized by the site.
Here’s the correction for “Effects of moderate electrical stimulation on reactive species production by primary rat skeletal muscle cells: Cross-talk between superoxide and nitric oxide production,” in the Journal of Cellular Physiology: Continue reading Author whose lawyers threatened Science Fraud corrects another paper