Doing the right thing: Team finds data merge error in depression paper, retracts

bbicover114A team of neuroscientists from Sweden has retracted their 2013 paper in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity after discovering that they’d made a mistake while merging their data.

According to the abstract, the study, “Lower CSF interleukin-6 predicts future depression in a population-based sample of older women followed for 17 years,” purported to find that: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Team finds data merge error in depression paper, retracts

Dutch economist Nijkamp embroiled in plagiarism and duplication scandal

nijkamp
Peter Nijkamp

The Dutch papers are reporting that Peter Nijkamp, one of the leading economists in The Netherlands, has been embroiled in what looks like a self-plagiarism scandal following the cancellation of a thesis defense by one of his graduate students because of plagiarism.

We say “what looks like” because it’s tough to figure out what’s alleged here, given our reliance on translations. Best we can tell, the allegations against his graduate student are for plagiarism, while those against Nijkamp are for duplication, a.k.a. self-plagiarism.

According to the Google translation of this piece in our friends at the Volkskrant: Continue reading Dutch economist Nijkamp embroiled in plagiarism and duplication scandal

Anti-terrorism researcher notches ninth retraction — or does he?

Nasrullah Memon
Nasrullah Memon

A year ago, we wrote about eight retractions by Nasrullah Memon, an anti-terrorism researcher at the University of Southern Denmark, for plagiarism.

He seems to has another retraction, although that may be in dispute. As Debora Weber-Wulff reports, Memon’s chapter in Advanced Data Mining and Applications, which “constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications, ADMA 2007, held in Harbin, China in August 2007,” is now marked “retracted.” Continue reading Anti-terrorism researcher notches ninth retraction — or does he?

First retraction appears in case of cardiologist Poldermans

EBPOM_00219_M3Don Poldermans, the cardiology researcher in the Netherlands whose prominent career came to disgrace in a rather confusing scandal, finally has a retraction.

Poldermans, formerly of Erasmus Medical Center, copped to charges of misconduct but not of fraud in the case — which, if you speak Dutch, you can read about in detail here.

As we wrote in 2012: Continue reading First retraction appears in case of cardiologist Poldermans

Doing the right thing: Authors retract brain paper with “systematic human error in coding”

fronthumneuroA group of Swiss neurologists have lost their 2013 article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience after reporting that their data were rendered null by coding errors.

The article, “Spontaneous pre-stimulus fluctuations in the activity of right fronto-parietal areas influence inhibitory control performance,” purported to find that: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Authors retract brain paper with “systematic human error in coding”

Journal dumps grain paper for controversial data

productionThe journal Tropical Animal Health and Production has retracted a 2013 paper by a group from India whose data on feeding young cows special wheat wasn’t quite what it was cracked up to be.

The article, “Nutritional evaluation of wheat straw treated with Crinipellis sp. in Sahiwal calves,” found that: Continue reading Journal dumps grain paper for controversial data

Another retraction for sex researcher Weijmar Schultz

Weijmar Schultz
Weijmar Schultz

Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, the Groningen sex researcher (and Ig Nobel winner) who misused the 1985 thesis of an American scholar, and the work of another researcher, in at least five published articles, has tallied another retraction in the affair, his sixth.

As we reported earlier, Schultz had been cleared of plagiarism but found to have abused the work (in an “unintended and unknowing” fashion, we’re told) of one Diana Jeffrey, by taking passages from her dissertation without acknowledgement. These articles are pretty long in the tooth, having been published in the 1990s.

The latest, in the Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, appeared in 1992. Titled “Sexual rehabilitation after gynecological cancer treatment,” Schultz wrote it with a colleague H.B.M. Van de Wiel, whose name shows up on the other retractions, too.

According to the notice: Continue reading Another retraction for sex researcher Weijmar Schultz

Fourth retraction results from Cardiff investigation

mol immResearchers have retracted a fourth paper following an investigation at Cardiff University that found evidence of image manipulation by a researcher named Rossen Donev.

Here’s the notice for “The mouse complement regulator CD59b is significantly expressed only in testis and plays roles in sperm acrosome activation and motility,” a paper first published in Molecular Immunology in 2008: Continue reading Fourth retraction results from Cardiff investigation

Jonah Lehrer’s German publisher will release adjusted version of Imagine sans fabricated quotes

imagineAn edited version of Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine, the book withdrawn from shelves in 2012 by his publisher Houghton Mifflin because he had fabricated quotes by Bob Dylan, will be released in Germany next month, according to a report in the German media.

In a story titled “Free ride for the falsifier” (“Freie Fahrt für den Fälscher”), Buchreport.de reports (via Google Translate) that despite the known fabrications, “the publisher wants to keep the book on creativity:” Continue reading Jonah Lehrer’s German publisher will release adjusted version of Imagine sans fabricated quotes

Zero dark thirty for Al-Qaeda article

ftpv20.v026.i01.coverAn Israeli terrorism scholar has lost a review of a 2011 book on Al-Qaeda because he published it twice in different outlets.

The researcher, Isaac Kfir, is with the International Institute for Counter- Terrorism, where he studies

issues relating to post-conflict reconstruction (security issues) and transitional justice (restorative and retributive justice). His other research looks at the effect of Islamic radicalism within the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The book in question is Al-Qaeda: From Global Network to Local Franchise, by Christina Hellmich of the University of Reading in the UK. The offending article appeared in Terrorism and Political Violence, a Taylor & Francis title. According to the notice: Continue reading Zero dark thirty for Al-Qaeda article