Category: by reason for retraction

Journal retracts bioelectronics paper for lack of credit to collaborators

S09565663The list of co-authors on a paper about a “bioelectronic composite” was apparently too sparse.

According to its retraction note — posted at the request of the editor-in-chief and the corresponding author — the paper failed to include some of the collaborators.

The Biosensors & Bioelectronics paper looks at a protein complex that could function as part of a “bio-hybrid” device, like a sensor or a solar cell. It has been cited only by its retraction according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.

What went wrong in allotting credit for the work pretty straightforward, according to the note for “Monolayers of pigment–protein complexes on a bare gold electrode: Orientation controlled deposition and comparison of electron transfer rate for two configurations.” Here it is in full:

Continue reading Journal retracts bioelectronics paper for lack of credit to collaborators

Poll: If authors don’t address mistakes, is that misconduct?

cover_natureIn an interesting letter printed in today’s Nature, biologists Sophien Kamoun and Cyril Zipfel suggest that “failure by authors to correct their mistakes should be classified as scientific misconduct.”

They note that this policy is already in place at their institute, The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL).

We contacted Kamoun to ask what constituted a mistake, given that numerous papers have received queries, such as on sites like PubPeer, but it’s not clear whether those are legitimate mistakes. He told us: Continue reading Poll: If authors don’t address mistakes, is that misconduct?

More retractions bring total to 7 for neuroscience pair, 2 more pending

JOCNAuthors have retracted two papers about visual perception and working memory from the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, after the first author admitted to falsifying or fabricating data in four other papers.

The authors have requested another two retractions, as well, which will bring the total for Edward Awh and his former graduate student David Anderson to nine retractions. (Earlier in 2015, they lost a paper due to an error in the analytic code, which Awh told us was unrelated to the misconduct.)

The retraction notice attached to both articles cites a 2015 settlement agreement between the Office of Research Integrity and first author Anderson (the “respondent”), who admitted to misconduct while working as a graduate student in the lab of Awh at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Since then, “additional problems” were discovered in the newly retracted articles, such as removed data points.

Awh, who has since moved to the University of Chicago, sent us a lengthy statement, explaining the concerns about each article: Continue reading More retractions bring total to 7 for neuroscience pair, 2 more pending

Journal bans 8 authors for plagiarism

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A medical journal has banned eight authors after discovering that they had published plagiarized work.

We don’t see official author bans as often as we see plagiarism (occasionally, and all the time, respectively). That’s why we’re flagging this case, which is a little old — the International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health announced the ban in March 2015, after it retracted three of the authors’ papers for plagiarism.

All three papers — about recovering from orthopedic problems — have a first author in common: Rajesh Valjibhai Chawda, who was affiliated with the CU Shah Medical College and Hospital in India at the time of the research. (We couldn’t find a webpage for him.)

After an author on one of the original articles alerted the journal of one instance of plagiarism, the journal launched an in-house inquiry, the retraction note explains:

Continue reading Journal bans 8 authors for plagiarism

Authors retract striking circadian clock finding after failing to replicate

Screen Shot 2016-03-02 at 9.29.28 AMThe authors of a paper showing a “striking and unanticipated” relationship between light and temperature in regulating circadian rhythms are retracting it when the results couldn’t be replicated.

After being contacted by another group who couldn’t reproduce the data, the authors failed to, as well. They “have absolutely no explanation for the discrepancies with the original results,” according to the note in PLOS Biology.

It’s an unfortunate turn of events, but Continue reading Authors retract striking circadian clock finding after failing to replicate

Popular paper by famous longevity researcher gets mega-correction

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Leonard Guarente

A highly cited paper by a well-known scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies longevity could have aged better: The ten-year-old paper has earned its second correction.

It’s one of multiple papers by lead author Leonard Guarente that have been questioned on PubPeer. Guarente has already retracted one, and plans to address another. Continue reading Popular paper by famous longevity researcher gets mega-correction

Whistleblower removed from Macchiarini’s Lancet author list

Paolo Macchiarini
Paolo Macchiarini

Last week, The Lancet honored a co-author’s request to remove his name from Paolo Macchiarini’s seminal 2011 paper, which described the first transplant of an artificial trachea seeded with autologous stem cells but has since come under fire.

On March 3, the journal posted this notice:

The Lancet has been contacted by Dr KH Grinnemo who was an author on the paper. Dr Grinnemo no longer wishes to be an author and asks for his name to be removed. This correction has been made to the online version as of March 3, 2016.

The paper has been cited 187 times, designating it “highly cited” by Thomson Reuters Web of Science.

As The Scientist reports, Karl-Henrik Grinnemo is one of the four surgeons at Karolinska Hospital who filed a complaint against Macchiarini in 2014 — alleging, for instance, Continue reading Whistleblower removed from Macchiarini’s Lancet author list

Let’s not mischaracterize replication studies: authors

Brian Nosek
Brian Nosek

Scientists have been abuzz over a report in last week’s Science questioning the results of a recent landmark effort to replicate 100 published studies in top psychology journals. The critique of this effort – which suggested the authors couldn’t replicate most of the research because they didn’t adhere closely enough to the original studies – was debated in many outlets, including Nature, The New York Times, and Wired. Below, two of the authors of the original reproducibility project — Brian Nosek and Elizabeth Gilbert – use the example of one replicated study to show why it is important to describe accurately the nature of a study in order to assess whether the differences from the original should be considered consequential. In fact, they argue, that one of the purposes of replication is to help assess whether differences presumed to be irrelevant are actually irrelevant, all of which brings us closer to the truth. Continue reading Let’s not mischaracterize replication studies: authors

Stem cell researcher in Spain dismissed following investigation

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Susana González

A promising early career researcher has been dismissed from her post at the National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) in Spain, following “an alleged ongoing fraud,” according to El Pais.

We don’t know what exactly the internal investigation into Susana González’s work found; El Pais relied on anonymous sources, and the CNIC confirmed only that they dismissed her on February 29th. There are allegations against her work on PubPeer, but we don’t know what role those played in the investigation.

(We had the story translated; here’s a PDF of the article in English.)

González denies that she committed misconduct, the paper reports:

Continue reading Stem cell researcher in Spain dismissed following investigation

We’re using a common statistical test all wrong. Statisticians want to fix that.

ASA-newlogoAfter reading too many papers that either are not reproducible or contain statistical errors (or both), the American Statistical Association (ASA) has been roused to action. Today the group released six principles for the use and interpretation of p values. P-values are used to search for differences between groups or treatments, to evaluate relationships between variables of interest, and for many other purposes.  But the ASA says they are widely misused. Here are the six principles from the ASA statement:  Continue reading We’re using a common statistical test all wrong. Statisticians want to fix that.