We’ve learned about two more retractions we missed for Diederick Stapel, the Dutch social psychology researcher who has now racked up a total of 57 retractions by our count.
Both retractions were issued after a committee released a report which established fraud in dozens of papers co-authored by Stapel.
Stapel is still #4 on our leaderboard.
Continue reading Diederik Stapel retraction count updated to 57
The editor-in-chief of a theology journal has retracted a paper on South African Christian groups because of “unsubstantiated statements with potential defamation of character.”
The article, published in 2007 in HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, discusses “demanding Christian religious movements” where the group “isolates itself from the outside world,” and leaders influence their followers to “commit to the high demands of the group under the guise that this is the will and purpose of God,” according to the paper.
The author calls out several groups and leaders by name:
Continue reading Defamation concerns prompt theology journal to pull paper
A federal investigation into a paper on prostate cancer has now led to a retraction. In an unusual twist, it happened following a request from the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
In January, the Office of Research Integrity reported that corresponding author Dong Xiao “intentionally fabricated data” in an Oncotarget study of how a steroid inhibits the growth of prostate cancer. Xiao, a former cancer researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, claimed that he had tumor data from more mice than he did, and falsified several figures.
In July, after no sign of the retraction, a researcher at PETA followed up with the journal, Oncotarget, on behalf of the organization “and our more than 3 million members and supporters to request the immediate retraction.”
Last month, they received a reply from the publisher, which they forwarded to us:
Continue reading Prostate cancer paper flagged by ORI is retracted following PETA prompt
The author of a paper that looked at how the geographical spread of research and development sites has impacted innovation has posted a four-page list of corrections that fixed “empirical anomalies” in the paper.
A group of PhD students raised concerns about the paper’s findings, according to the editor-in-chief of The Academy of Management Journal, Gerard George. The journal formed a committee that worked with the author to reproduce the results. That ended with a correction to two of the paper’s three hypotheses, and corresponding parts of the text.
The four-page notice — (the details of which are paywalled, unfortunately) — includes notes from the journal’s editor and the author:
Continue reading Mega-correction for “empirical anomalies” in management paper
A retired obstetrics and gynecology professor under federal investigation for misconduct has notched his ninth retraction.
The latest retraction stems from an investigation by the University of Florida, where Nasser Chegini worked until 2012, which found fabricated data in three figures in a paper on the muscle cells that line the uterus.
The paper, “Differential expression of microRNAs in myometrium and leiomyomas and regulation by ovarian steroids,” was published in The Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. It’s been cited 74 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Here’s the note:
Continue reading Former ob-gyn prof notches ninth retraction; investigation still underway
A study on chronic liver inflammation was pulled from the journal Hepatology because of “insufficient permission by the authors’ funding institution to submit and publish the manuscript.”
The paper, which was published in July, looked into how steatosis, the abnormal retention of fat in the liver, turns into steatohepatitis, also known as fatty liver disease. Researchers found that Treg cells play a central role in controlling the disease.
Unfortunately, the journal’s managing editor didn’t provide any information about the nature of the permission problems, and the notice doesn’t give any details.
Here it is, in full:
Continue reading “Insufficient permission” from funder resects liver disease paper
After receiving additional data from the government, an activist group has retracted an analysis that suggested energy companies were not taking steps to cut back on a controversial practice.
The Bakken analysis — named for North Dakota’s gigantic underground deposit of oil and natural gas — was published by the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC). It focused on a practice known as “gas flaring” — burning natural gas instead of using or selling it. The analysis, released last month, found that hundreds of wells in North Dakota had not filed the necessary plans for saving excess gas produced in the course of extracting oil from wells. But after the Department of Mineral Resources provided more data — we’re not sure what kind of data, specifically — the ELPC retracted that conclusion.
The group posted the retraction notice on September 25, just four days after they presented the analysis at a news conference. It states why their recent evaluation of companies’ plans to capture excess gas might be wrong — and what they’re doing next:
Continue reading Activist group retracts warnings about midwest oil wells
A group of Chinese cancer researchers has retracted a paper in Medical Oncology after they discovered that “several key experiments” were not reproducible.
The paper, “Decreased Warburg effect induced by ATP citrate lyase suppression inhibits tumor growth in pancreatic cancer,” was published in March. It found that suppressing the enzyme ATP citrate lyase could be used to treat pancreatic cancer.
However, the authors decided to pull the paper when some of the findings couldn’t be reproduced.
Continue reading Failure to reproduce key experiments retracts cancer study
The first author of a paper that discussed sample sizes in clinical research is appealing the journal’s decision to retract it for plagiarism, arguing the article is “entirely different.”
The Journal of Human Reproductive Sciences‘s editor-in-chief told us that they first contacted the author about the allegations more than two years ago, and finally issued the notice in September, saying the paper “directly copied” from another article on randomization. “Thus owing to duplicity of text, the article is being retracted,” according to the notice.
That doesn’t jibe with first author K. P. Suresh, based at the National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics in India. He told us that the “two articles are entirely different concept.” In subsequent emails, he added Continue reading Author appeals retraction for plagiarism in clinical research paper
A journal has retracted a duplicate version of a case report about a patient with Parkinson’s disease after mistakenly publishing the paper twice.
The Journal of Movement Disorders initially published the report — which detailed the case of an elderly woman with Parkinson’s disease whose symptoms worsened during drug treatment — in 2010. But it ended up printing it again in 2011 because of “a mistake of the editorial office and the publisher.”
The notice reads:
Continue reading Journal mistakenly publishes Parkinson’s case report twice