Category: by reason for retraction

Hopkins scientists retract prostate cancer screening study at center of 2009 lawsuits

The authors of a study in Urology that was at the center of two 2009 lawsuits brought by a company that funded the work have retracted the paper.

The idea behind the research — by Robert Getzenberg and colleagues at Johns Hopkins — was to find an alternative to the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test, which many urologists recommend, but which many groups — including the US Preventive Services Task Force — find wanting. The work gave rise to a company, Onconome, Science reported in a 2009 story about the lawsuits: Continue reading Hopkins scientists retract prostate cancer screening study at center of 2009 lawsuits

A tsunami of plagiarism in Serbia, but hardly any retractions

Today, we have the pleasure of presenting a guest post from Mico Tatalovic, who wrote in October aboutretractions in journals in his home country, Croatia. Here, he describes what appears to be an alarming rate of plagiarism in Serbian journals.

A report for the Serbian science ministry by the Centre for Evaluation in Education and Science (CEON) found that whopping 11% of scientific journal articles by Serbian authors published in English language but in Serbian journals were plagiarised. The proportion was similar across all sciences (natural, medical, technical and social).

Apart from widespread plagiarism, they also found that 0.35% of the articles in the the Serbian citation index and journal database (SCIndeks) were published twice in identical form, often in the same journal.

Forgetful editors who still track manuscripts ‘manually’ may forget to mark them as ‘published’, which can result in duplicates in the same journal, according to Pero Sipka, director of CEON.

Interestingly, editors and publishers were less likely to deem a paper plagiarised than were outside analysts, according to the report, and not all editors and publishers openly cooperated.

Given the shocking amount of plagiarism you might also expect to see a flurry of retractions, but it’s not so.

Continue reading A tsunami of plagiarism in Serbia, but hardly any retractions

Plagiarism kills weed paper

The January 2012 issue of Biosystems Engineering has a commendably thorough retraction notice regarding a case of plagiarism in its pages.

The notice, regarding the article “Advanced techniques for Weed and crop identification for site specific Weed management,” by Karan Singh, K.N. Agrawal, and Ganesh C. Bora, of North Dakota State University, speaks for itself: Continue reading Plagiarism kills weed paper

Blood retracts stem cell paper from Amy Wagers’ Harvard lab after 14 months of concern

More than 14 months after Blood issued a notice of concern about a paper by a Harvard stem cell scientist and her former post-doc, the journal has retracted the article.

Here’s the notice for the paper, “Osteolineage niche cells initiate hematopoietic stem cell mobilization,” by Shane Mayack and Amy Wagers: Continue reading Blood retracts stem cell paper from Amy Wagers’ Harvard lab after 14 months of concern

Another shoe drops as authors retract PNAS chronic fatigue syndrome-virus paper

Just days after the retraction of a paper in Science that had claimed a link between chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and the virus XMRV, the authors of a similar paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) have retracted theirs.

The PNAS paper, “Detection of MLV-related virus gene sequences in blood of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and healthy blood donors,” was published online on August 23, 2010 by Shyh-Ching Lo, Harvey Alter, and colleagues. Here’s the notice, which PNAS says will be available on its site sometime this week: Continue reading Another shoe drops as authors retract PNAS chronic fatigue syndrome-virus paper

Chronic fatigue syndrome-XMRV paper retracted by Science, completely this time

The editors of Science have fully retracted a study they published in 2009 alleging a link between chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and the virus XMRV.

The notice begins with a nod to the reasons that the paper has already been partially retracted:

Science is fully retracting the Report “Detection of an infectious retrovirus, XMRV, in blood cells of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome” (1). Multiple laboratories, including those of the original authors (2), have failed to reliably detect xenotropic murine leukemia virus–related virus (XMRV) or other murine leukemia virus (MLV)–related viruses in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients. In addition, there is evidence of poor quality control in a number of specific experiments in the Report. Fig. 1, table S1, and fig. S2 have been retracted by the authors (3).

It also refers to evidence of image manipulation that was described by blogger Abbie Smith and then reported in the Chicago Tribune:

Continue reading Chronic fatigue syndrome-XMRV paper retracted by Science, completely this time

Multiple retractions as brazen plagiarist victimizes orthopedics literature

Several journals in the field of orthopedics and related disciplines have been victimized by an apparent serial plagiarist.

The author, Bernardino Saccomanni, of Gabriele D’ Annunzio University, in Chieti Scalo, Italy—across the boot and up a bit from Rome—appears to have lifted significant amounts of text in several articles.

Last January, for example, Current Reviews in Musculoskeletal Medicine, a Springer title, retracted a 2010 article by Saccomanni, “Painful os intermetatarseum in athletes: a literature review of this condition is presented,” after determining that it plagiarized a 2007 article in the Archives of Orthopaedic Trauma Surgery, also from Springer, with a very similar title, “Painful os intermetatarseum in athletes: report of four cases and review of the literature.”

Osteoporosis International, another Springer publication, has retracted a 2011 paper by Saccomanni titled “Vertebroplasty: an international point of view on this “minimally invasive” surgical technique,” after evidently learning that the point of view wasn’t exactly Saccomanni’s to begin with. Continue reading Multiple retractions as brazen plagiarist victimizes orthopedics literature

Retraction by reason of insanity? A look at a 60-year-old entomology paper

By now, Retraction Watch readers are familiar with papers that are withdrawn because of faked data. Those cases may involve pressure cooker environments, bad seeds, or both, but they’re usually intentional. But what if a researcher fabricated findings without even knowing it?

That’s the idea behind a provocative paper just published online in Science and Engineering Ethics. In it, Matan Shelomi, a graduate student in entomology at the University of California, Davis, describes the case of Jay Traver, an entomologist who, in 1951, published a description of her experiences with “a mite infestation of her scalp that resisted all treatment and was undetectable to anyone other than herself” in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington (PESW). As Shelomi notes: Continue reading Retraction by reason of insanity? A look at a 60-year-old entomology paper

Another Hattori retraction over reused figure from cardiology pub

Another paper in Diabetologia by Yoshiyuki Hattori has been retracted for image duplication, marking the second of his articles in the journal to be pulled for that reason.

The notice for the article, “A glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogue, liraglutide, upregulates nitric oxide production and exerts anti-inflammatory action in endothelial cells,” states: Continue reading Another Hattori retraction over reused figure from cardiology pub

Cardiff University misconduct investigation leads to Journal of Immunology retraction

The senior author of a Journal of Immunology paper has retracted it after a university investigation found that he had inappropriately manipulated images, Retraction Watch has learned.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Cardiff University misconduct investigation leads to Journal of Immunology retraction