by reason for retraction – Page 56

Pitt researchers sue journal for defamation following retraction

A pair of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are suing the Journal of Biological Chemistry for defamation after the publication retracted one of their papers for problematic images.

Raju Reddy and Aravind Reddy Tarugu, who are not related, claim the JBC and its publisher, the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, defamed them by retracting their 2014 paper on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Reddy is a visiting associate professor of medicine at Pitt and chief of pulmonology at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. Aravind Targugu, also identified as Aravind T. Reddy, is employed by Pitt.

According to the suit, filed in August and first reported by the The Pennsylvania Record, the researchers say the retraction “severely” harmed their reputations and caused:

Political science prof up to five retractions after she “carelessly uses parts of diverse sources”

A professor of political science at the University of Porto in Portugal has had at least five papers retracted for plagiarism.

Or, as one journal put it, Teresa Cierco “carelessly uses parts of diverse sources.”

Cierco’s areas of research include Kosovo, Macedonia, and Timor-Leste. The retractions, for papers published in 2013 and 2014, began in 2013, with three happening this year.

Cierco told Retraction Watch that she now realizes that she “did things wrong and tried to correct them.”

Food poisoning researcher up to four spoiled papers

The Journal of Food Safety has retracted two papers by a group from Iran over concerns that the work was tainted by problems with peer review and bad data.

The articles, both of which appeared in 2018, came from the lab of Ebrahim Rahimi, of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Tehran. Rahimi, by our count, has now lost four papers for questionable peer review and findings.

For Rahimi’s article, “Antibiotic resistance properties and genotypic characterization of enterotoxins in the Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from traditional sweets,” the retraction notice reads:

A failure at Renal Failure leads to retraction of duplicate article

A kidney journal has retracted a 2019 paper by a group of researchers in China for an unfortunate own-goal.

The article, “The relationship between hemodialysis mortality and the Chinese medical insurance type,” was first published in January in Renal Failure, a Taylor & Francis title. It appeared again in the journal nine months later.

According to the retraction notice:

‘Reused over and over again:’ Image recycling leads to 5-year funding ban for cancer researcher

A former researcher at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Nebraska has agreed to a five-year ban from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) on receiving federal science funding after being found guilty of having fabricated data in numerous grant applications and articles.

According to the ORI, Sudhakar Yakkanti, a Harvard-trained cancer specialist who from 2004 to 2012 held the post of Director of the Cell Signaling, Retinal & Tumor Angiogenesis Laboratory at Boys Town:

Former Johns Hopkins postdoc sanctioned by Feds for data fabrication

A former postdoc at Johns Hopkins University has been hit by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) with a four-year ban on receiving federal research funding after being found guilty of misconduct in several studies and her doctoral dissertation.

We covered problems with several of Deepti Malhotra’s papers in February of 2016. At the time, Hopkins refused to tell us if the issues stemmed from misconduct. But nearly four years later, the ORI has announced that Deepti Malhotra, while at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:

Exclusive: King’s College London finds “poor research practices” but no misconduct in two recent cases

King’s College London (KCL) found evidence of poor research practices by three of its faculty, but “no intention to deceive” and no misconduct, according to documents obtained by Retraction Watch.

One case involves work by cancer biologists Farzin Farzaneh and Ghulam Mufti, while the other involves work by Mahvash Tavassoli, also a cancer researcher. Both involve problems with images and were brought to the attention of KCL in January of this year by pseudonymous whistleblower Claire Francis.

In the Farzaneh and Mufti case, writes Tim Newton, KCL’s dean of research governance, ethics and integrity in an October 31 letter:

Feds ban ex-Duke lab tech from funding after she faked data linked to 60 NIH grants

Erin Potts-Kant, who lost her job as a researcher at Duke University in 2013 for embezzling more than $25,000 from the institution, has received a rare permanent Federal funding ban from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) after investigators concluded that she had used fabricated data in nearly 120 figures.

The case has been ongoing since 2013. Potts-Kant and a former colleague, William Michael Foster, were named in a 2015 whistleblower lawsuit which alleged that they, with the knowledge of their institution, had used bogus data to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants. Earlier this year, Duke settled the case for $112.5 million, of which nearly $34 million went to the whistleblower, Joseph Thomas.

According to an ORI finding issued today, investigators determined that Potts-Kant

Author protests as Elsevier retracts nine papers for fake peer review

An agriculture researcher has lost nine papers from Elsevier journals for “illegitimate reviewer reports.”

The researcher, Christos Damalas, is, well, irked.

The journals included Chemosphere, Crop Protection, Land Use Policy, and Science of the Total Environment, and the papers were all published in 2017 and 2018, with Damalas as corresponding author and co-authors from Iran and Pakistan. Together, the nine papers have been cited about 75 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Knowledge.

Here’s a typical notice, this one from Crop Protection:

Hepatitis expert out at Chicago university following misconduct finding

A researcher who is now up to six retractions has left his faculty position at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science following a finding of research misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned.

Gulam Waris, who studies hepatitis, has reused images across multiple papers, according to a retraction notice published this week in the Journal of General Virology:

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