A gynecologic cancer researcher at Oita University in Japan has retracted three papers by his group after the discovery of duplicated figures and manipulated images.
The three papers by Noriyuki Takai and colleagues all appeared in Gynecologic Oncology: Continue reading Three gynecologic cancer studies retracted for figure duplication, image manipulation
Irony alert: The Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, which really ought to know better, is retracting a 2012 article by an Australian researcher that threatened to run afoul of…privacy law.
The article, “A challenging injury interpretation: Could this be a stab wound?” was written by Les Griffiths, of the Clinical Forensic Medical Unit at University of Queensland in Brisbane. According to the notice: Continue reading Legal medicine journal pulls paper over image goof
Earlier today, we reported on what we thought was the first retraction to appear for Dirk Smeesters, who we noted was “the former Erasmus University social psychology professor investigated for serious irregularities in his work.” It turns out, however, as a Retraction Watch tipster told us, that another retraction had already been published.
The notice appeared in the August 2012 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research: Continue reading We missed one: Make that two retractions for Dirk Smeesters
A paper by Dirk Smeesters — the former Erasmus University social psychology professor investigated for serious irregularities in his work — has been retracted.
The study, “Visual perspective influences the use of metacognitive information in temporal comparisons,” appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology earlier this year. Here’s the notice, which doesn’t quite say “fraud”: Continue reading Retraction appears for paper by social psychologist Dirk Smeesters
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews has retracted a 2008 paper by a group from the United States and Botswana, citing plagiarism and unauthorized use of data.
The article, “Solar chimney power generation project—The case for Botswana,” discussed a project by the Botswanan military to develop a power plant based on the chimney design. The paper is no longer available online, but we found this Wikipedia entry that mentions it: Continue reading Solar energy paper retracted for text, data misuse
A new study out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) today finds that two-thirds of retractions are because of some form of misconduct — a figure that’s higher than previously thought, thanks to unhelpful retraction notices that cause us to beat our heads against the wall here at Retraction Watch.
The study of 2,047 retractions in biomedical and life-science research articles in PubMed from 1973 until May 3, 2012 brings together three retraction researchers whose names may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers: Ferric Fang, Grant Steen, and Arturo Casadevall. Fang and Casadevall have published together, including on their Retraction Index, but this is the first paper by the trio.
Here’s a tip: If you’re going to claim you were first to discover something, even though you know you weren’t, don’t publish your claim in the same journal where the first finding appeared. Oh, and don’t ask the researchers who made the first discovery for help along the way.
Those, perhaps, are the cynical lessons from a retraction notice that appeared last week in the Journal of Chemical Physics: Continue reading Physics paper retracted because authors wrongfully claimed they got there first — in the same journal
The International Journal of Nanomedicine is retracting a paper it published in June that appears to contain an impressive amount of misappropriated text and figures.
The article, “Particokinetics: computational analysis of the superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles deposition process,” came from a group at the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, in São Paulo, Brazil, led by Walter Cárdenas. According to the notice: Continue reading Journal retracts nanoparticle paper, citing widespread misuse of sources
We’ve seen this movie before: Researchers present a study at a scientific meeting, then learn to their surprise (and, sometimes, chagrin) that a journal has published the data in a supplement or other edition.
That’s the case with a group of UK scientists whose abstract for a meeting of the British Toxicology Society wound up in the journal Toxicology — only to be expunged when they complained.
The work was titled “Molecular mechanisms involved in resistance of CLL cells towards ABT-737, a specific BCL-2 inhibitor.” Gerald Cohen, of the University of Leicester, who led the study, told us: Continue reading Journal “mistake” forces removal of toxicology study by leading scientist
A group of researchers from Austria, Canada, Germany, and the U.S. have retracted a 2008 paper in the Journal of Immunology after being unable to verify the contents of some key figures.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Immunology paper retracted because “documents were not archived with due diligence”