A neurosurgeon in the UK has lost his 2013 paper on spinal surgery in the British Journal of Neurosurgery for doing what appears to have been an end-run around the folks that did the work.
The article, “The management of spinal dural fistulas: a 13-year retrospective analysis,” was written by Denosshan Sri, of Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge.
Here’s the abstract:
Continue reading Neurosurgery journal retracts spine paper for lack of attribution
A suggestion: If you’re going to use the words “overestimated accuracy” in the title of your paper, you’d better make sure you aren’t guilty of the same yourself.
A group of authors in China has lost their June 2013 paper in the European Biophysics Journal because they appear to have misinterpreted their data. The paper, “Overestimated accuracy of circular dichroism in determining protein secondary structure,” came from chemists at Fudan University in Shanghai, and purported to find that:
Continue reading “Unable to dispel the doubts,” authors lose protein structure paper
Dipak Das, the former University of Connecticut researcher found to have committed more than 100 counts of misconduct, and who passed away last year, has had another retraction appear.
Here’s the notice, for “Dynamic Action of Carotenoids in Cardioprotection and Maintenance of Cardiac Health,” from Molecules:
Continue reading Late resveratrol researcher Dipak Das up to 20 retractions
The Nordic Journal of Migration Research has retracted a 2012 paper by a Swedish researcher who lifted text from another author.
The article, “Swedish Employers and Trade Unions, Varieties of Capitalism and Labour Migration Policies,” was written by Jesper Johansson, of Linnaeus University in Växjö. It’s available as a PDF here, but not on the website of the publisher, De Gruyter — nor is it listed on Johnansson’s own site.
We chose a sentence a random from the abstract:
Continue reading Scholar in Sweden appears to face inquiry for plagiarism retraction
Evidently the editors of the Journal of Religion and Health were a tad distracted when they published a paper earlier this year by Australian theologian Joseph Lee and his “colleague,” M. Theol.
M. Theol, of course, is a degree, not a person — as a correction notice explains:
Here’s a suggestion: If you’re going to plagiarize someone else’s work, don’t draw attention to it by including “fiction” in your title.
That lesson was brought home to us by a recent retraction in the Italian Journal of Pediatrics for “Infantile colic, facts and fiction:”
Continue reading Pro tip: Don’t use “facts and fiction” in your title if you plan to plagiarize
Last month, we brought readers the story of a retraction in December from Psychiatric Times, of an essay by Richard Noll that included this passage:
Despite the discomfort it brings, we owe it to the current generation of clinicians to remember that an elite minority within the American psychiatric profession played a small but ultimately decisive role in the cultural validation, and then reduction, of the Satanism moral panic between 1988 and 1994. Indeed, what can we all learn from American psychiatry’s involvement in the moral panic?
That essay was republished on March 19, along with an editor’s note:
Continue reading Psychiatric Times reinstates retracted essay on “satanic ritual abuse”
The Journal of Biology and Life Science, published by the Macrothink Institute, has retracted a paper that claimed “fossil does not provides [sic] the convincing and direct evidences for evolution,” for reasons that they left to us to figure out.
The entire notice for “Fossils Evidences (Paleontology) Opposite to Darwin’s Theory,” allegedly written by Md. Abdul Ahad, of Hajee Mohamed Danesh Science and Technology University in Bangladesh, and Charles D. Michener, of the University of Kansas, reads:
The editorial board announced that this article has been retracted on February 25, 2014. If you have any further question, please contact us at: [email protected]
In a case whose irony is not lost on those involved, an article about publishing ethics has been retracted because one of the authors re-used material he’d written for an earlier piece. But the authors and the journal’s editors have turned the episode into a learning opportunity.
Here’s the notice for “Ethics and Integrity of the Publishing Process: Myths, Facts, and a Roadmap,” published in 2011 by Marshall Schminke and Maureen L. Ambrose: Continue reading Oh, the irony: Paper on “Ethics and Integrity of the Publishing Process” retracted for duplication
On Wednesday, we reported on a Nature retraction of a paper whose corresponding author had also had a Cell paper retracted, and had been found to have committed a “violation of academic integrity” by Utrecht University. Today, we present the back story of how those retractions came to be, from another co-author of both papers, Ben Scheres, of Wageningen University: Continue reading “I am deeply saddened and disturbed:” Co-author of retracted Nature paper reveals how problems came to light