Category: by reason for retraction

“You don’t retract a paper, you retract the results within:” Why one scientist still displays one of his mistakes

lance fortnow
Lance Fortnow

And now, one from the archives.

In 1989, then MIT grad student Lance Fortnow (he’s now chair of the computer science department at Georgia Tech) wrote a mathematical proof and published it as conference proceedings. He later went to publish the proof in a journal.

But he then discovered “unexpected technical challenges” and published a retraction in 1997. Both are still available on his personal website.

Not everyone would be that transparent. We reached out to ask why he left them up for people to see. He gave us his rationale: Continue reading “You don’t retract a paper, you retract the results within:” Why one scientist still displays one of his mistakes

ORI sanctions former University of Chicago and UCSF scientists for faking findings

H. Rosie Xing
H. Rosie Xing

The stories behind several recent inscrutable retraction notices became a bit more clear today when the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) issued findings in cases involving former researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of California, San Francisco.

The ORI found that H. Rosie Xing, a former assistant professor at the University of Chicago, Continue reading ORI sanctions former University of Chicago and UCSF scientists for faking findings

Second former University of Queensland researcher to appear in court to face fraud charges

Bruce Murdoch
Bruce Murdoch

Bruce Murdoch, a neuroscientist formerly of the University of Queensland, will appear in court next week to face fraud charges stemming from an investigation that has already led to three retractions, several corrections, and similar charges for one of his colleagues.

Here’s the notice from the Crime and Corruption Commission: Continue reading Second former University of Queensland researcher to appear in court to face fraud charges

Dentistry student loses travel grant for duplicating his own work

iadrThe International Association for Dental Research has retracted a student travel award after discovering that the recipient had previously published the work he used to secure the grant, including in an abstract he presented at the same conference last year.

The self-plagiarism was uncovered by an anonymous group of students at the Hong Kong University dentistry school, where the student is a PhD student. The unnamed students sent both the IADR and HKU faculty members a color-coded chart showing identical phrases between the 2014 abstract, a 2013 paper published in the Journal of Periodontal Research called “Human umbilical vein endothelial cells synergize osteo/odontogenic differentiation of periodontal ligament stem cells in 3D cell sheets,” and another abstract the authors presented at the 2013 IADR conference.

The paper and both abstracts were written by P.K.C.P. Panduwawala, who lost the travel grant, along with HKU’s former dean of dentistry L.P. Samaranayake; HKU’s associate dean for research L.J. Jin; and C.F. Zhang, part of HKU’s tissue engineering group.

The IADR’s page now lists the winners with a note at the bottom: Continue reading Dentistry student loses travel grant for duplicating his own work

Non-renewable resource: Fuel yanks paper for duplication

fuel30420Fuel, an Elsevier title, has pulled an article on coal pollution because the authors took much of the work from an earlier paper of theirs in another journal.

The article, “Co-firing of coal and biomass: Development of a conceptual model for ash formation prediction,” was published in September by a group from Australia and The Netherlands.

According to the notice: Continue reading Non-renewable resource: Fuel yanks paper for duplication

Rash decision? Duplicate submission of dermatitis paper leads to publishing ban

IJDA trio of skin specialists in Egypt has lost a 2009 paper in the Indian Journal of Dermatology for duplication. And the journal wasn’t happy about it.

The article, “Serum mucosa-associated epithelial chemokine in atopic dermatitis : A specific marker for severity,” came from a group at Ain Shams University in Cairo. According to the abstract: Continue reading Rash decision? Duplicate submission of dermatitis paper leads to publishing ban

Paper on controversial stem cell “stamina therapy” retracted

A Korean stem cell journal has retracted a paper on a controversial Italian treatment that involves harvesting stem cells from bone marrow and injecting them back into the patient.

“Stamina therapy” has been pitched as a treatment for everything from Parkinson’s disease to coma, based on a U.S. patent application filed in 2010. The Italian government pledged about $3.9 million in 2013 to support a clinical trial for stamina therapy. More than 100 people signed up for the trials, with a wide range of neurological ailments; half were children.

However, allegations of fraud led to a criminal investigation into the Stamina Foundation’s leader, psychologist David Vannoni, as well as 17 other members of the organization. Continue reading Paper on controversial stem cell “stamina therapy” retracted

Faking data earns stem cell researcher a ban on federal funding

Screen shot 2014-12-09 at 12.01.19 PMThe Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has sanctioned Kaushik Deb, a former post-doc at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who “engaged in misconduct in science by intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly” fabricating data in papers in both Science and Nature (which ultimately rejected his manuscript).

Deb was big news in 2007, when Science retracted his paper. Articles about the case appeared in many outlets, including The Scientist and USA Today. At the time, Missouri’s research integrity officer, Rob Hall, told the Columbia Tribune that: Continue reading Faking data earns stem cell researcher a ban on federal funding

Italian researcher facing criminal charges notches seventh retraction

proteomicsAlfredo Fusco, a researcher in Italy under criminal investigation, now has a seventh retraction for manipulated images.

Here’s the notice for “Retraction: Identification of new high mobility group A1 associated proteins,” to which not all of the authors agreed: Continue reading Italian researcher facing criminal charges notches seventh retraction

JCI lymphoma paper retracted after authors can’t find underlying data to explain duplicated bands

Screen Shot 2014-11-25 at 5.12.55 PMA paper in the Journal of Clinical Investigation has been retracted for manipulated images, including duplicated bands in a Western blot.

Take a look at figure one to the right and see if you can spot all the doubles.

Click here for a more zoomable image.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading JCI lymphoma paper retracted after authors can’t find underlying data to explain duplicated bands