by reason for retraction – Page 6

A publisher makes an error in a publication about errors

Jennifer Byrne

Publishing a research paper is usually cause for celebration, after what is typically years of effort. Our recent paper in which we found that unexpectedly high proportions of papers in two journals described at least one wrongly identified reagent should have been no exception.

But alas. Any of our celebrations have been tempered by Springer Nature’s bizarre introduction of an unrelated figure into the paper. Here’s what has happened so far.

Publisher parts ways with editor of five journals who published his own studies on Islamic practices

Ten days after retracting nine papers from several journals because they were “lacking scientific base,” a publisher says it has “parted company” with the editor of five of the titles – who had authored or co-authored the papers in question.

As Retraction Watch reported last week, Thieme International retracted the papers, by Hüseyin Çaksen of Necmettin Erbakan University in Turkey, following criticism on social media and at least one story in the Turkish press. Yesterday, a Thieme account on X (formerly Twitter) posted:

Neri Oxman accused of lifting from article whose plagiarism led to downfall of concussion expert

Neri Oxman’s problems may be getting worse.

The researcher, who has become embroiled in plagiarism accusations following her billionaire husband’s push to depose the president of Harvard for plagiarizing in her thesis, appears to have lifted about 100 words in her thesis from an article that has been plagiarized before.

Last week, Business Insider reported that Oxman “plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation…including at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation.” Oxman, who earned her PhD at MIT and was later a professor there until 2020, has since acknowledged some citation errors.

The new allegation is that Oxman’s thesis also lifted about 100 words from a 2000 article in Physics World without quoting or citing the piece. (See a comparison here using the Vroniplag similarity detector set at a minimum of six consecutive words of overlap. The 2000 article text is on the left, and part of the thesis is on the right.) That article was plagiarized in 2005 by a then-leading sports medicine expert, Paul McCrory, who resigned from a key post in 2022 following revelations of that and other pilfering. McCrory has now had more than ten papers retracted.

Journals retract six Didier Raoult papers for ethics violations

Two journals of a leading microbiology society have retracted six articles by Didier Raoult after a university investigation found breaches of research ethics in his work.

A seventh article by authors affiliated with the research institute Raoult formerly led was also retracted for ethical issues.

In comments to Retraction Watch, Raoult, who has filed a criminal complaint against a scientist who found issues in his publications, called the retractions “just another form of science censorship” based on “complete ignorance” of France’s research ethics laws.

Publisher donating author fees from retracted articles to charity

What should happen to the millions of dollars publishers rake in from authors whose work is later retracted?

Guillaume Cabanac, one of the developers of the Problematic Paper Screener, has repeatedly suggested publishers donate such revenue to charity.

And now one is doing just that.

Publisher error claims joke paper, April Fools’ tradition – three years later

A journal says a content management mishap led to the publication, and subsequent retraction, of a gag essay not intended for wide distribution.

Why the retraction happened three and a half years after the paper’s publication remains murky.

This story belongs to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, back when Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics, a Wiley title, used to gather spoof papers for its annual April Fools edition.

As Kristofer Barr, an assistant research integrity auditor at Wiley, told us:

Exclusive: Researcher outs Indian university’s publishing scam after it fails to pay him

On March 12, a senior administrator at a university in India sent a business proposal to a prolific economist in Ethiopia. If he joined the school’s stable of adjunct professors, the administrator promised, easy money could be made.

All the economist had to do was “add our affiliation for incentives in your papers,” explained Lakshmi Thangavelu, dean of international affairs at Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences (SIMATS), in Chennai, in a written exchange.

“Surely I will do that. Not a big deal,” replied Mohd Asif Shah, an associate professor at Kebri Dehar University, in eastern Ethiopia.

But the deal turned sour. Although Shah listed SIMATS as an affiliation on at least two research papers he published this fall, in December he still hadn’t received any payments from the school, he complained. Then he turned to LinkedIn to share his frustration in a post that included screenshots of his conversation with Thangavelu, who is also a professor at Saveetha Dental College, part of SIMATS.

What analyzing 30 years of US federal research misconduct sanctions revealed

A U.S. federal agency that oversees research misconduct investigations and issues sanctions appears to be doling out punishments fairly, according to researchers who analyzed summaries of the agency’s cases from the last three decades.

But the authors of the study also found more than 30 papers the ORI said should be retracted have yet to be.

The researchers looked for associations between the severity of penalties the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) imposed on scientists it found responsible for research misconduct and their race and ethnicity, gender, academic rank, and other qualities. The researchers published their findings in late November in Accountability in Research, as the agency is in the process of revising its key regulations,

According to the new analysis, ORI’s sanctions correlated with factors indicating the seriousness of the misconduct, such as being required to retract or correct publications, but not with demographics.

“We did not find evidence of bias,” Ferric Fang, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and one of the study’s authors, said.

Fang, also member of the board of directors of The Center For Scientific Integrity, Retraction Watch’s parent nonprofit organization, told us:

Guest post: Why I commented on the proposed changes to U.S. federal research-misconduct policies – and why you should, too

Retraction Watch readers may know that the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, which has oversight of misconduct investigations of work funded by the National Institutes of Health, has proposed changes to its regulations. It’s the first such proposal since 2005, and has generated discussion in various quarters. We’re pleased to present this guest post by James Kennedy, a longtime observer of these issues.

One of the most controversial points about the federal policies for research misconduct is the extent to which a laboratory director, principal investigator, or lead author is held responsible for misconduct by others on their research team.

It is surprisingly common in cases of extensive research fraud that the person who committed the offense cannot be identified. Data management in such cases is usually uncontrolled, with no tracking of changes to the data or preservation of the original data. The principal investigator is often at the center of the pattern of misconduct, but should they also be held accountable for it when the only provable fact is that they allowed a work environment that was vulnerable to bad behavior?

The regulations for handling misconduct in research funded by the U.S. Public Health Service are currently being modified, and the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which implements the rules, is asking for public comment. This opportunity to influence the handling of misconduct is all the more important given that the regulations are often used as a model for misconduct policies at universities and research institutions. The comment period was recently extended until Jan. 4, 2024.

Are you responsible for misconduct by others?

‘I felt like a fraud’: A biologist goes public about a retraction

Retractions are the stuff of nightmares for most academics. But they aren’t necessarily a career obstacle, and sometimes may be the only way forward, according to Andrew P. Anderson, a postdoctoral researcher in the biology department of Reed College, in Portland, Ore. Last month, the journal Evolution pulled and replaced a study Anderson had conducted as a PhD student under Adam G. Jones at the University of Idaho, in Moscow. The study’s findings suggested sexual selection shaped the responsiveness of the human genome to male sex hormones. Below is a lightly edited Q&A we did with Anderson about his experience.

Retraction Watch (RW): In the summer of 2022, shortly after your paper was first published, you realized it contained a significant error. What happened?

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