Conflict Resolution Quarterly, which we probably all should read but don’t, is retracting a 2010 paper on commercial interactions by a French researcher who combined two other articles into a work he called his own.
But, true to its name, the journal takes a more, shall we say, diplomatic approach to the affair.
Here’s the notice (which, tsk tsk, is behind a paywall): Continue reading Buyer beware: Conflict Resolution Quarterly pulls paper for plagiarism
There’s a story brewing in Belgium that is, as one local newspaper put it, worthy of a TV drama.
Here’s our attempt at a summary: Jacques Donnez, chair of Catholic University of Louvain’s (UCL) gynecology department, and colleagues published two studies in Human Reproduction in 2010. One study claimed to show that a woman had given birth after undergoing chemotherapy for severe sickle cell disease and then getting an ovarian transplant from her sister.
The other of those studies, the authors noted, confirmed “data published earlier as a case report” in 2007. That case report of a woman with another type of anemia — the pregnancy only went as far as an embryo, which did not survive — garnered a good deal of attention, because, as New Scientist reported: Continue reading Fireworks: Belgian dispute over ovarian transplant findings includes claims of theft, arson
Here’s a new one that may stoke the debate about whether a paper deserves retraction merely for being wrong or less than fully right.
The journal Cell Biochemistry and Function, a Wiley title, has retracted an article it published earlier this year by a pair of Chinese authors — or, rather, from one author an an unwitting co-author. That authorship issue alone should be enough to warrant a retraction. But the retraction notice also includes a more interesting matter: Continue reading Biochemistry journal retracts paper for being, well, less than conclusive
A mathematician will be performing subtraction on his CV now that he has had to retract a 2011 paper because his co-authors never agreed to submit it with him.
Kewen Zhao, of Qiongzhou University, Sanya, China, has lost a paper in Discrete Applied Mathematics, a journal for which Zhao claims to review. (Given the circumstances, perhaps he meant Indiscreet Applied Mathematics.)
According to the notice: Continue reading Chinese mathematician forced to retract paper after two co-authors say they had nothing to do with work
Seyed Rasoul Mousavi, assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the Isfahan University of Technology in Khomeynīshahr, Iran, has been working on a way to help biologists assemble genomes with as little information as possible.
Last year, Mousavi submitted a manuscript to the Journal of Theoretical Biology, received acceptance after peer review, and got proofs back to edit.
For technical reasons, Mousavi says his corrections didn’t make it into the final article published on Jan. 12, so the publishers issued a separate corrigendum with the editorial changes. Then, on Feb. 8, the publishers retracted the corrigendum that accompanied the original article. The retraction of the corrigendum reads: Continue reading What happens when a correction is retracted?
We apologize for what must seem like a constant drip, drip, drip, but we have three more retractions from Diederik Stapel to report, all from the European Journal of Social Psychology.
The first, in order of publication date, involves a 2006 paper by Stapel and co-author Camille Johnson — whose name has appeared on several other of Stapel’s retracted papers — titled “When nothing compares to me: How defensive motivations and similarity shape social comparison effects.”
The notice reads: Continue reading Three more retractions for Diederik Stapel
Earlier this year, we reported on the case of Robert Getzenberg of Johns Hopkins, who retracted a 2007 paper in Urology that was “at the center of two 2009 lawsuits brought by a company that funded the work.”
Getzenberg has now retracted a related paper, “Analysis of a serum test for prostate cancer that detects a second epitope of EPCA-2,” published in The Prostate in 2009 and cited nine times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
The notice in The Prostate goes further than the one in Urology, using the word “falsification:” Continue reading Another retraction for potential prostate cancer test from Hopkins
There is apparently a special this week on websites posting news of drug approvals before they actually happen.
On Monday, USA Today inadvertently posted a story about the approval of Qsymia, a weight loss drug, several hours before the FDA made an announcement. Today, Amarin, which makes a compound designed to lower triglycerides, put up a site saying that the drug had been approved by the FDA. Trouble was, that decision isn’t expected until July 26. According to Reuters: Continue reading Amarin pulls a Romney: For the second time in a week, premature news of FDA drug approval posted, then retracted
Last month, we broke the news that Emory chemist Craig Hill and colleagues were retracting two papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and one in Science. At the time, the Science move was pending, but now the journal has officially pulled the article, titled “A Late-Transition Metal Oxo Complex: K7Na9[O=PtIV(H2O)L2], L = [PW9O34]9–”.
The notice reads: Continue reading Closing loop, Science retracts Hill group oxo paper
We’ve seen vigorous debates here on Retraction Watch about when studies should be retracted. Does it require fraud? Just not being reproducible? Somewhere in between?
Given the apparent divergence of opinions on the issue, we thought it would be worth highlighting a case that involves language we haven’t seen before. Here’s the notice for “Apoptosis of CT26 colorectal cancer cells induced by Clostridium difficile toxin A stimulates potent anti-tumor immunity,” which originally appeared online in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications in April: Continue reading Two retractions in biophysics journal, one because article is “too preliminary and potentially misleading”