Category: by reason for retraction

Post 982 — in which we find plagiarized bone graft paper that grafted from other papers

thesurgeonThe Surgeon has retracted a 2012 article by a group from the U.K. who took text from a previously published article. So, you say? Nu?

Well, we found — through relatively little effort — that the plagiarizees were themselves, shall we say, liberal in their use of material from other sources.

The retracted article was titled “Bone graft substitutes: What are the options?,” and it appeared in August 2012. One of the options, we guess, was to steal text.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Post 982 — in which we find plagiarized bone graft paper that grafted from other papers

Error scuppers paper on treatment for liver fibrosis

pharmbioPharmaceutical Biology has retracted a 2012 paper by a group of liver researchers from China after the discovery of an error that evidently invalidated the results in the paper.

The article, “Antifibrotic effects of protocatechuic aldehyde on experimental liver fibrosis,” purported to show that

protocatechuic aldehyde, the major degradation of phenolic acids … has potentially conferring antifibrogenic effects.

In other words, the compound appears to prevent the formation of liver fibroids.
But it doesn’t — at least, not according to the study — as the retraction notice explains: Continue reading Error scuppers paper on treatment for liver fibrosis

Flu paper duplication earns Expression of Concern

influenzaA six year-old review on bird flu that failed to credit some content from another six year-old review of bird flu is now stamped with an Expression of Concern.

Here’s the notice, from Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses: Continue reading Flu paper duplication earns Expression of Concern

Charge of “scientific yellow journalism” has supervisor seeing red, leads to retraction

small gtpasesLast October, Anica Klockars, a neuroscience researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, and a colleague published a controversial comment in the journal Small GTPases, a Landes Bioscience title.

The title of the letter was meant to provoke: “Scientific yellow journalism.”

As the authors wrote: Continue reading Charge of “scientific yellow journalism” has supervisor seeing red, leads to retraction

The “unintentionality” of being leads to nothingness for paper on protein’s role in cancer

empcoverA group of cancer researchers in Argentina has retracted a paper on the p300 protein in breast cancer that appeared in Experimental and Molecular Pathology.

The article, titled “Intracellular distribution of p300 and its differential recruitment to aggresomes in breast cancer,” was published in 2010 by Maria E. Fermento and colleagues. It has been cited 11 times since, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading The “unintentionality” of being leads to nothingness for paper on protein’s role in cancer

“Considerable overlap” leads to retraction of medical imaging paper

PRL cover313

We have poked fun at Pattern Recognition Letters before for failing to catch blatant plagiarism. We probably should have held off on those jokes for this post.

A group of IT researchers from India has suffered the retraction of a paper in PRL for heavily basing the piece on at least four previous papers written by one of the co-authors without proper attribution (not that such attribution likely would have absolved the sin).

The paper, titled “A robust kernelized intuitionistic fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm in segmentation of noisy medical images,” was published in January of this year by Prabhjot Kaur and colleagues.

Here’s the retraction notice:

Continue reading “Considerable overlap” leads to retraction of medical imaging paper

“[A]ll of Section 3 is wrong until proven otherwise”: Correction of paper on Democrats’ economic policy

gelman
Andrew Gelman

Andrew Gelman, a statistician at Columbia University and a friend of the blog, has corrected a 2008 paper in the blunt way you’d expect him to.

Here’s the notice in the Annals of Applied Statistics:

In the paper, “Should the Democrats move to the left on economic policy?” AOAS 2 (2), 536-549 (2008), by Andrew Gelman and Cexun Jeffrey Cai, because of a data coding error on one of the variables, all our analysis of social issues is incorrect. Thus, arguably, all of Section 3 is wrong until proven otherwise. We thank Yang Yang Hu for discovering this error and demonstrating its importance.

In a post called “Retraction watch” — hey now! — Gelman writes: Continue reading “[A]ll of Section 3 is wrong until proven otherwise”: Correction of paper on Democrats’ economic policy

U Wisconsin neuroscientist who faked images has first paper retracted

jbc315Rao Adibhatla, a University of Wisconsin scientist who was found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have faked data in two papers, has had one of those studies retracted.

Here’s the notice for “CDP-choline significantly restores phosphatidylcholine levels by differentially affecting phospholipase A2 and CTP: phosphocholine cytidylyltransferase after stroke,” by Adibhatla and a number of colleagues in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC): Continue reading U Wisconsin neuroscientist who faked images has first paper retracted

Retraction nine appears for Alirio Melendez

alirio_melendezAn immunologist found by a former employer to have committed misconduct in more than 20 papers has had another paper retracted.

Here’s the notice for “Refining siRNA in vivo transfection: Silencing SPHK1 reveals its key role in C5a-induced inflammation in vivo,” by Alirio Melendez and colleagues in The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology: Continue reading Retraction nine appears for Alirio Melendez