Category: by reason for retraction

A new record? 27-plus years later, a notice of redundant publication

royal society bA 1984 paper in Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B is now subject to a notice of redundant publication because a lot of it had been published in Cell the same year.

Whether 28 years — 27 years and 9 months, to be precise — is any kind of official record is unclear, since we haven’t really kept track of notices of redundant publication. It would, however, beat the record for longest time between publication and retraction, 27 years and one month.

Here’s the notice, which ran in September of last year but just came to our attention: Continue reading A new record? 27-plus years later, a notice of redundant publication

Double-dipping leads to removal of petroleum research paper

pst journalcoverIranian scientists have lost one of two articles they submitted — and published — simultaneously to different journals. Watch as confusion ensues.

The retracted paper, “Permeability Estimation of a Reservoir Based on Neural Networks Coupled with Genetic Algorithms,” appeared online in August 2011  in Petroleum Science and Technology, a Taylor & Francis journal. According to the liner notes, the paper had been received on January 15, 2010 and accepted a few weeks later. It has been cited once since, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, by its authors, in a paper published in the same journal.

Meanwhile, in August 2011 the authors (minus one name) also published “Evolving neural network using real coded genetic algorithm for permeability estimation of the reservoir,”  in Expert Systems With Applications, an Elsevier title.

The standing paper — which has been cited seven times — now carries the following erratum notice (dated far into the future, September 2013): Continue reading Double-dipping leads to removal of petroleum research paper

Paper by Bristol-Myers Squibb researchers retracted for “unsolved legal reasons”

applied micro biotechA group of researchers at Bristol-Myers Squibb has had a paper retracted for reasons we can’t quite figure out.

All the notice for “Simultaneous expression of antibody light and heavy chains in Pichia pastoris: improving retransformation outcome by linearizing vector at a different site,” published in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, says is: Continue reading Paper by Bristol-Myers Squibb researchers retracted for “unsolved legal reasons”

Plagiarism: It’s just an “approach” to writing papers, right?

chemistry coverWe’ve heard a lot of rationalizations for plagiarism on this beat — “I didn’t know I had to cite that text”; “That author said it better than I ever could”; etc. — but here’s a new one for the wall of shame.

Chemistry – A European Journal is retracting a 2012 article, “A New Indicator for Potassium Ions at Physiological pH by Using a Macrocyclic Luminescent Metal Complex,”  by a group of Chinese authors who used the cut-and-paste method to put together their manuscript. That’s not unusual. But the notice is:

Continue reading Plagiarism: It’s just an “approach” to writing papers, right?

Retraction for image issues forces correction of herbal remedies editorial

jmm mayBack in March, we wrote about the case of Chinese researchers who pulled their 2011 paper in the Journal of Molecular Medicine on ginseng’s potential as a heart remedy because a couple of their images were suspect (duplicated was the word they’d used).

Turns out the journal suffered some collateral damage. JMM also has corrected a “Clinical Implications” article by a group of Canadian researchers about the defunct ginseng paper.

The article, “Use of ginseng to reduce post-myocardial adverse myocardial remodeling: applying scientific principles to the use of herbal therapies,”  appeared in the same issue as the original, but for some reason the correction notice appeared online only last week.

It states: Continue reading Retraction for image issues forces correction of herbal remedies editorial

Two Expressions of Concern in Blood for MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, who has threatened to sue Retraction Watch

aggarwalBharat Aggarwal, the MD Anderson researcher who has threatened to sue us while under investigation by his institution for alleged misconduct, now has two Expressions of Concern in addition to two corrections and two unexplained withdrawals.

Both of the papers were published in Blood. The Expression of Concern for “Gambogic acid, a novel ligand for transferrin receptor, potentiates TNF-induced apoptosis through modulation of the nuclear factor-κB signaling pathway,” reads: Continue reading Two Expressions of Concern in Blood for MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, who has threatened to sue Retraction Watch

Heart pulls sodium meta-analysis over duplicated, and now missing, data

heart cover may13The journal Heart has retracted a 2012 meta-analysis after learning that two of the six studies included in the review contained duplicated data.  Those studies, it so happens, were conducted by one of the co-authors.

The article, “Low sodium versus normal sodium diets in systolic heart failure: systematic review and meta-analysis,” came from an eclectic group of authors from the United States, Canada and Italy (the first author is listed as being at a Wegmans pharmacy in Ithaca, N.Y.). The paper, published online in August 2012, purported to find that: Continue reading Heart pulls sodium meta-analysis over duplicated, and now missing, data

Scientists doing the right thing: Malfunctioning lab equipment leads to retraction of neuroscience paper

cerebral cortexFor the second time inside of a week, we come to praise scientists who did the right thing when they realized their lab equipment or reagents weren’t performing as expected.

Here’s the retraction of a 2011 paper in Cerebral Cortex: Continue reading Scientists doing the right thing: Malfunctioning lab equipment leads to retraction of neuroscience paper

One-too-many authors scuttles paper on mouse metabolism

reg pepcoverRegulatory Peptides is retracting a 2010 paper by a group of five authors in China and one in Texas — and the presence of that last one was the problem.

The article, “Erythropoietin as a possible mechanism for the effects of intermittent hypoxia on bodyweight, serum glucose and leptin in mice,” had as its last (dare we say, senior) author Susan T. Howard, a mycobacterium expert at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Tyler. Trouble was, Howard disavowed any role in the paper.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading One-too-many authors scuttles paper on mouse metabolism

“Unfinished business”: Diederik Stapel retraction count rises to 53

stapel_npcTwo more papers by Diederik Stapel — who was profiled by The New York Times Magazine this weekend — have been retracted, both in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

The notice for “Hardly thinking about close and distant others: On cognitive business and target closeness in social comparison effects,” by Stapel and David Marx, and cited six times: Continue reading “Unfinished business”: Diederik Stapel retraction count rises to 53