by reason for retraction – Page 49

Duo that used legal threats to force scientists to pay for a tool face off in court

Steven Trubow and Donald Morisky made a small fortune through a controversial company that licensed, often at what researchers thought were exorbitant rates, a tool to scientists, wielding the cudgel of costly legal action if they balked at payment.

Now, in what critics of the pair will doubtless find a delicious irony, the pair is embroiled in a lawsuit over … licensing of the licensing business.

Morisky, of UCLA, is the developer of the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS), a proprietary research instrument he rents out to scholars and institutions — often at fees that have, in some cases, exceeded $100,000. Many researchers who don’t obtain permission have been forced to pay up or retract their work.

Exclusive: University of Arizona says former researcher committed misconduct by plagiarizing figure

A former researcher in the University of Arizona’s optics school engaged in “a serious case of research misconduct,” Retraction Watch has learned.

Palash Gangopadhyay, who until 2019 was a research scientist at Arizona, used a figure from a 2003 paper by other authors when he co-authored a 2018 paper in Optics Letters titled “High sensitivity magnetometer using nanocomposite polymers with large magneto-optic response,” Wyant College of Optical Sciences dean Thomas Koch wrote to colleagues in an email obtained by Retraction Watch. The 2003 paper appeared in an obstetrics journal.

The 2018 paper has been cited nine times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

Koch wrote:

PLOS ONE issues expression of concern for study of dog food and heart problems for failure to disclose conflicts of interest, other issues

via Southern California Golden Retriever Rescue

A group of veterinary researchers at the University of California, Davis, has received an expression of concern for their May 2020 study on heart disease in dogs, for failing to adequately disclose conflicts of interest and for other aspects of the article.

The paper, “Development of plasma and whole blood taurine reference ranges and identification of dietary features associated with taurine deficiency and dilated cardiomyopathy in golden retrievers: A prospective, observational study,” appeared in PLOS ONE. The authors, from the lab of Joshua A. Stern, looked at the effects on the animals of “non-traditional” diets — those high in legumes but low in grains, which contain taurine, a key amino acid. Golden retrievers are known to be particularly vulnerable to cardiac problems associated with a lack of taurine. The FDA has been investigating the connection.

According to the authors:

Doing the right thing: Alcoholism researchers retract six-week old paper after finding errors

Oh, those insufferably progressive Scandinavians, always doing the right thing.

A group of alcoholism researchers in Denmark has retracted a 2020 paper on gender and alcohol treatment after finding errors in their results. And they’ve set up a system to avoid similar problems in the future.

The paper, “Gender differences in alcohol treatment,” appeared in Alcohol & Alcoholism in July, with authors from the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. The paper found that:

PubPeer comments prompt Science expression of concern

Science has issued an expression of concern for a paper it published earlier this summer after readers pointed out suspect images in the work.

The July 10 article, titled “Proton transport enabled by a field-induced metallic state in a semiconductor hetero-structure,” came from a group in China and the United Kingdom. The corresponding authors were Bin Zhu and Huaibing Song, of China University of Geosciences in Wuhan. Zhu also is affiliated with the Southeast University School of Energy and Environment in Nanjing.

Shortly after publication, data-sleuth Elisabeth Bik posted on PubPeer that she’d been alerted by a reader to potential problems with two of the figures in the paper:

Going cold turkey: Infectious disease-poultry researcher up to 14 retractions

Nine strikes in a row in bowling is called a “golden turkey.” So what do you call 10 papers on poultry pulled at once for plagiarism?

We first wrote about Sajid Umar in July 2018, when he’d lost a 2016 article in Scientifica for plagiarism and other sins, and then again earlier this summer when he notched two more retractions from Poultry Science for “grave mistakes.”

Now, the World’s Poultry Science Journal, a Taylor & Francis title, has pulled 10 more of Umar’s articles — bringing his total to 14, by our count. According to the retraction notice for the 2017 paper “Mycoplasmosis in poultry: update on diagnosis and preventive measures”:

Researcher republishes paper retracted for fake authorship — with a different co-author

A researcher in Bangladesh who fabricated a list of co-authors — and possibly her data, too — in a paper on dengue fever that was recently retracted has published the same article in a different journal.

In 2019, Farzana Ahmed was a pediatric intensivist at United Hospital Ltd, in Dhaka, when she published a study in the Journal of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University. Titled “Diagnostic value of ferritin for the severity of dengue infection in children,” the article described a study of:

Wait, how did my name end up on that paper?

There’s an “us” in lupus, but no “we” — at least in the case of a 2020 paper whose list of authors was a fabrication.

Published in the journal Lupus, the article, “Antibodies to cellular prion protein and its cognate ligand stress-inducible protein 1 in systemic lupus erythematosus,” was written by a group led by Jozélio F Carvalho, a rheumatologist at the University of São Paulo. Or rather, by Carvalho himself.

According to the notice:

Duke engineering prof corrects seven papers for failures to disclose startup he co-founded

A chemistry journal has issued corrections for seven papers after learning that one of the authors failed to list his ownership of a company with a stake in the research.

The articles, which appeared in Lab on a Chip — a journal “at the interface between physical technological advancements and high impact applications” from the Royal Society of Chemistry — came from the lab of Tony Jun Huang, of Duke University in Durham, N.C. Huang, who holds the William Bevan Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke, is a prominent figure in the field. According to his bio:

Here’s why you shouldn’t try to republish a paper you had retracted for plagiarism

A trio of speech researchers in India has lost a 2020 paper for a trifecta of malpractice: plagiarism, self-plagiarism (of a previously retracted article, no less!) and falsification of data.

The article, “Speech enhancement method using deep learning approach for hearing-impaired listeners,” appeared in January in Health Informatics Journal, a Sage title.

According to the abstract:

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