A public health journal intends to retract an article that estimated how many unintentional pesticide poisonings happen each year worldwide, Retraction Watch has learned.
In response, the authors hired a lawyer to represent them in contesting the retraction, and maintain the journal’s decision “undermines the integrity of the scientific process.” This is the second time within a few months that the journal retracted an article through a process authors said was problematic.
A researcher who sued the publisher PLOS to prevent it from posting an expression of concern for one of her papers has dropped her suit, and the publisher tells us it will add a correction to the article instead – but may “revisit this case” to deal with “unresolved issues.”
We’ve previously reported on the lawsuit Soudamani Singh, an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Translational Sciences at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, W. Va., filed against PLOS in April, as well as signs of a pending settlement.
According to an order filed November 2, Singh informed the court that she “voluntarily dismisses” the claims in her complaint, without the possibility of re-filing them, and the judge dismissed the case.
A cancer researcher who lost nine papers in one day as a publisher purged articles offered in “authorship-for-sale” schemes told Retraction Watch he and his co-authors “will soon defend ourselves legally.”
Nine of the 38 articles Frontiers retracted listed Mostafa Jarahian, formerly of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, as a co-author.
When we initially reported on the large batch of retractions, one of Jarahian’s co-authors shared an article from Frontiers indicating the publisher had decided to retract the paper after “concerns were brought to our attention from the German Cancer Research Center regarding the authorship of the article.”
The publisher PLOS appears close to an agreement with a scientist who sued to stop the addition of an expression of concern to one of her articles, according to a recent filing in the case.
Soudamani Singh, an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Translational Sciences at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, W. Va., filed suit against PLOS in April, as we previously reported.
According to Singh’s complaint, the publisher planned to place an expression of concern on one of her papers after she and her co-authors had requested a correction.
Singh’s suit sought a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction preventing PLOS from publishing the expression of concern, as well as damages and legal fees.
An education researcher who had four papers flagged for plagiarism and citation issues threatened to sue the publisher and editors who decided to retract one of the articles, Retraction Watch has learned.
We obtained the emails containing legal threats by Constance Iloh, formerly an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine, through a public records request. Iloh, who was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” top figures in education in 2016 and briefly taught at Azusa Pacific University after leaving Irvine, sued to prevent the university from giving us the emails, but after a two-year legal battle, a state appeals court affirmed the records should be released. That battle is described in more detail in this post.
Following our reporting in August 2020 on the retraction of one of Iloh’s articles for plagiarism, the disappearance of another, and the correction of two more, we requested post-publication correspondence between UCI, Iloh, and the journals where the papers had appeared.
The emails UCI released to us in May of this year shed light on the processes three journals took after concerns were raised about Iloh’s work, and how she responded.
In September 2020, we requested records from the University of California, Irvine, regarding four papers by an assistant professor of education that had been retracted, corrected, or taken down.
The retraction and correction notices for the articles, written by Constance Iloh, mentioned plagiarism and misuse of references. After our initial reporting, we wanted to see if we could learn more about what happened.
It took approximately two and a half years for us to obtain the records, detailed in this post. The emails we obtained shed light on the processes three journals took after concerns were raised about Iloh’s work, and how she responded – including with legal threats.
Here, we tell the story of how we fought in court to get the records, represented by Kelly Aviles, who specializes in cases involving the California Public Records Act and has successfully sued on behalf of the Los Angeles Times.
A former researcher at the University of Utah has filed for a temporary restraining order against the U.S. government agency that last week barred her from receiving federal funds.
Ivana Frech – formerly Ivana De Domenico – “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating” images in three different papers whose work was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). ORI barred Frech from receiving federal funding for three years starting on August 21, making no mention of whether she agreed to the sanctions.
But on August 29, Jackson Nichols, an attorney representing Frech, filed for a temporary restraining order against the Department of Health and Human Services. The complaint in the case is under seal, and the summons refer only to a “suit to enjoin further action by U.S. government agency” under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Neither Nichols nor Frech immediately responded to Retraction Watch’s request for comment about the goals of the lawsuit, but the filing is consistent with others aimed at blocking such debarments.
The case dates back to at least 2012, when Frech and colleagues retracted two papers from Cell Metabolism. As we reported at the time, Jerry Kaplan, the senior author of those papers, said “the data were lost when an employee, who was dismissed, discarded lab notebooks without permission.” That employee – who was not a co-author of the paper – was a technician, Kaplan said. “This occurred prior to the identification of errors in the manuscripts and was reported at that time to the University authorities.”
A law firm that holds a mortgage on the house of Carlo Croce, a cancer researcher at The Ohio State University, may foreclose on the property, a judge has ruled.
Croce hired James E. Arnold and Associates to represent him in a libel case against the New York Times and a defamation case against David Sanders, a professor of biological sciences at Purdue University who became something of a public nemesis for the Ohio scientist after pointing out problems in Croce’s published work. Croce also needed representation for Ohio State’s research misconduct investigation, and a suit attempting to stop the university from removing him as chair of the department of cancer biology and genetics.
Croce lost each case. Ohio State’s investigation found problems with how he managed his lab that did not amount to research misconduct.
A professor at the University of Pittsburgh is suing the institution and two administrators, alleging they discriminated against him because he is Black.
The researcher, Moses Bility, an assistant professor of infectious diseases and microbiology in the university’s School of Public Health, alleges the school’s response to a 2020 paper he published and later withdrew that proposed jade amulets may prevent COVID-19 was discriminatory.
He also claims the school discriminated against him by blocking him from transferring his lab to the Pitt-affiliated Hillman Cancer Center, and that one of the named administrators plagiarized his COVID-19 paper, among other allegedly discriminatory acts. Bility says the school denied his application for tenure in June as retaliation for his complaints of discrimination.
Bility is seeking lost wages, compensatory and punitive damages, and attorney’s fees. His complaint states:
An alumna of the lab of Carlo Croce, a high-profile cancer researcher at The Ohio State University with 14 retractions, has sued the institution over the results of its investigation that found she committed research misconduct.
Flavia Pichiorri is now a principal investigator with her own lab researching potential therapies for multiple myeloma at City of Hope – a cancer center that also owns Cancer Treatment Centers of America – in Duarte, Calif.
She worked at Ohio State from 2004-16, first as a postdoctoral researcher in Croce’s lab, then as a research scientist, and finally as an assistant professor of hematology. She has been a PI on grants that garnered millions of dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health since switching jobs.
