Analytical Letters has retracted a 2011 article by a chemistry researcher at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, who seems to have avoided giving credit where credit was due.
The article, “Conducting Polymer Matrix Poly(2,2′-bithiophene) Mercury Metal Incorporation,” was written (so readers were told) by Suzanne Lunsford.
Not so, it seems, with a certain Darrel Montero. Montero, an associate professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University, and his colleagues have lost their 2012 paper in the journal for what appears to be a case of data theft.
The Journal of Pediatric Nursing has retracted a 2013 article (meeting abstract, really) on growth hormone after the drug company that employed the authors cried “take it back.”
The research appears to have been presented at a meeting of the Pediatric Endocrinology Nursing Society, and looked at inefficiency in the use of devices for administering growth hormone. All but one of the authors is listed as working for Novo Nordisk, an international pharmaceutical firm.
Institute of Endocrinology and Experimental Oncology
A leading Neapolitan cancer researcher is under criminal investigation for fraud, the Italian press is reporting.
Although we have only rough translations of the story, it seems the researcher, Alfredo Fusco, of the National Council of Research’s Institute of Experimental Endocrinology and Oncology, has been accused of manipulating images in published studies and to strengthen the case for grants from the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC).
The case covers eight papers published between 2001 and 2012, according to the media reports. We don’t know the specifics of the eight articles, nor why none appears yet to have been retracted. In our experience, the criminal inquiries usually follow the expose of scientific misconduct, not the other way around.
Fusco’s work is highly cited, with some 50 papers cited at least 100 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Nitin Aggarwal, formerly of the Medical College of Wisconsin, faked data in his PhD thesis, grant applications to the NIH and American Heart Association, and in two papers, according to new findings by the Office of Research Integrity.
(The case would have apparently first been published in the Federal Register on October 2, except for the government shutdown.)
A group of authors from Saudi Arabia and Egypt has lost their 2012 paper in the International Journal of Dentistry for what appears to be a case of large-scale lifting of text from a previously published paper.