by reason for retraction – Page 47

University recommends retraction of two computing papers for plagiarism

Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, via Wikimedia

Following an investigation prompted by a whistleblower, a university in Australia has recommended that one of its researchers retract two papers, Retraction Watch has learned.

The reviews, “Cryptography and State-of-the-art Techniques” and “An Advanced Survey on Cloud Computing and State-of-the-art Research Issues,” were both published in 2012 in the International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI). In a May 20 letter to the whistleblower in the case, the research integrity officer at Edith Cowan University in Perth wrote:

NEJM, Lancet place expressions of concern on controversial studies of drugs for COVID-19

[See update on this story.]

As controversy swirls around two papers that used data from Surgisphere, the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet have placed expression of concerns on the relevant papers.

Here’s the NEJM expression of concern:

An attempt at a triple play seems likely to result in a retraction

A group of researchers in China is teetering on the edge of losing a paper because they have apparently tried to publish it three times.

Our story starts in Turkey, home to Taner Kemal Erdag, the editor in chief of Turkish Archives of Otorhinolaryngology. In August 2018, Erdag received a submission titled “Increased maternal serum placental growth hormone variant in pregnancies complicated by otosclerosis.” The corresponding author on the work was Ruiying Chen, an ear, nose and throat specialist at The First Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University.

Three weeks later, Chen contacted Erdag and asked to withdraw their article. Request denied. Erdag told us:

‘[A] disappointing situation’: Stem cell group retracts with ‘rectitude’ after error

A team of stem cell researchers at the University of Maryland has lost a 2020 paper after failing to correct an error that they’d caught prior to submission.

The paper, “Endothelial/mesenchymal stem cell crosstalk within bioprinted coculture,” appeared in Tissue Engineering Part A, a Mary Ann Liebert publication. The senior author of the article was John Fisher, who holds an endowed chair in bioengineering at Maryland and also is one of the journal’s co-editors.

According to the retraction notice:

Former grad student faked cancer research data, says federal watchdog

A former graduate student at the University of Cincinnati falsified data in a published article, since retracted, and an unpublished manuscript, according to government investigators.

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) said Logan Fulford doctored images while working at the university on experiments supported by two federally funded grants. Fulford, who is now a senior clinical research associate at IQVIA, a health care consulting company, entered into a voluntary settlement with the agency but neither denied nor admitted to the misconduct.

The published paper, titled “The transcription factor FOXF1 promotes prostate cancer by stimulating the mitogen-activated protein kinase ERK5,” appeared in Science Signaling in 2016. Fulford was first author on the article, which the journal retracted in 2018, after initially flagging it with an expression of concern.

Another whodunit: The author no one can find

Readers, meet Beatriz Ychussie. Or don’t meet Beatriz Ychussie.

Ychussie is a co-author of three recently retracted math papers. Or maybe not.

The three articles — in the Journal of Inequalities and Applications, Advances in Difference Equations, and Fixed Point Theory and Applications, all Springer Nature titles — had an overlapping set of problems, including plagiarism and faked peer review. But they all had one particular problem when it came to Ychussie:

Materials science group loses four papers, has four more flagged

A Springer Nature journal has retracted four papers by a group of materials scientists in France, Spain and Tunisia, and slapped expressions of concern on four more.

All eight papers, from Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics, share three common authors: Abdelmajid Lassoued, Salah Ammar, and Abdellatif Gadri, of Université de Gabès in Tunisia. The retractions and expressions of concern all relate to duplicate publication of other work by papers that include various members of the team as authors.

A typical retraction notice, for “Synthesis and characterization of Ni-doped α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles through co-precipitation method with enhanced photocatalytic activities”:

Former U Maryland researcher faked data in seven papers, two Federal grants: ORI

A former veterinary scientist at the University of Maryland has been found guilty of misconduct, including fabrication of data, by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

According to ORI:

Covid-19 and sex? Rapid-fire acceptance leads to hasty withdrawal of paper

The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology has taken down a letter on whether people should abstain from sex during the coronavirus pandemic, but the editor says the article is not being retracted.

Meanwhile, researchers in France have retracted a paper in which they’d claimed to have found replication of the virus that causes Covid-19 in the dialysis fluid of a patient with kidney disease. Again, hasty publication appears to be involved. We’ve been tracking retractions of Covid-19 articles on our website, and, let’s just say, the list is almost certainly a trailing indicator of the robustness of the science here — as it is with retractions during any period.

Back to the letter. “COVID-19: Should sexual practices be discouraged during the pandemic?” was written by ZhiQiang Yin, of the Department of Dermatology at the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, in China. Yin submitted the article on April 14. The journal accepted it on the 16th and published it on April 30th.

According to the notice:

The circle of life, publish or perish edition: Two journals retract more than 40 papers

Talk about the publish-or-perish version of the circle of life.

A Springer Nature journal has retracted 33 articles — 29 from one special issue, and four from another — for a laundry list of publishing sins, from fake peer review to plagiarism to stealing unpublished manuscripts.

And an Elsevier journal has retracted ten papers recently for duplication — of ten of the Springer Nature journal’s papers.

A typical notice from the Springer Nature journal, Multimedia Tools and Applications (MTAP):

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