A former postdoc at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) made up data for 59 experiments that never happened, according to new findings by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.
The ORI found that Rahul Agrawal “knowingly, intentionally, and/or recklessly falsified and/or fabricated:”
Continue reading Former NCI postdoc faked data from nearly 60 experiments
A year ago today, Jennifer Powers, a co-author of a 2009 paper wrote to Springer Nature to alert the publisher to the fact that Tropical Dry Deciduous Forest: Research Trends and Emerging Features, a 2017 textbook by J. S. Singh and R.K. Chaturvedi, had plagiarized her work, and the work of others. A publisher representative responded six days later, saying they would look into the matter.
Then, for five months, crickets.
On January 23 of this year, Powers, of the University of Minnesota, sent another message asking for a progress report. Several days later, a Springer Nature staffer wrote to say they would provide an answer by mid-February.
Mid-February came and went, and the co-author sent another reminder, as did Jesse Lasky, of Penn State, another of the authors who said his work had been plagiarized. Back from Springer came this message:
Continue reading Springer Nature took eleven months to retract a plagiarized book, then made it disappear without a trace
We always hesitate to call retraction statements “models” of anything, but this one comes pretty close to being a paragon.
Psychology researchers in Germany and Scotland have retracted their 2018 paper in Acta Psychologica after learning of a coding error in their work that proved fatal to the results. That much is routine. Remarkable in this case is how the authors lay out what happened next.
The study, “Auditory (dis-)fluency triggers sequential processing adjustments:”
Continue reading Doing the right thing: Psychology researchers retract paper three days after learning of coding error
On February 23, 2018, Stephen Barrett — a physician in the United States perhaps best known for his work at Quackwatch — sent Dove Press this message:
I believe you have published 20 articles in 6 of your journals in which the lead author did not make a full conflict-of-interest disclosure. Please email me directly with the name and email address of an individual to whom I should report.
The lead author in question was Marty Hinz. As Barrett writes in a summary of the case:
Continue reading Conflicts of disinterest: Why does it take a publisher 18 months, and counting, to correct papers?
A materials scientist in Australia, by way of Iran, has recently had five papers retracted for duplicating his prior work, and the reader who brought the issue to publishers’ attention says it could affect some 100 articles.
Ali Nazari, now of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, was at Islamic Azad University in Iran when he published the five papers in Energy and Buildings, an Elsevier title, in 2010 and 2011. The retractions came sometime after January of this year, when an anonymous reader contacted Elsevier about dozens of Nazari’s papers.
A typical notice, for “Physical, mechanical and thermal properties of concrete in different curing media containing ZnO2 nanoparticles,” reads:
Continue reading Materials scientist up to five retractions as publishers investigate dozens of his papers
An article claiming to uproot the evolutionary tree of leeches has received an expression of concern after a reader notified the journal about potential problems with the data.
The article, “Phylogenomic analysis of a putative missing link sparks reinterpretation of leech evolution,” appeared online in Genome Biology and Evolution, an Oxford University Press title, on June 19 of this year. According to the authors — an international team that includes researchers at the National Museum of Natural History, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Florida State University and University of Gothenburg in Sweden — their results:
Continue reading Leech paper nets expression of concernWant to be a first author on a scholarly paper? A Russian company has you covered — starting at about $500. The company claims to have added the names of more than 10,000 researchers to more than 2,000 published articles in scholarly journals over the past three years. Think eBay — or perhaps StubHub — for unscrupulous scientists.
Although we can’t verify the numbers, at least one major journal indexer, from whom we recently learned of the scheme, is concerned enough about the site that it has demanded that it stop doing business.
According to the Russian outfit’s site (through Google Translate):
Continue reading Exclusive: Russian site says it has brokered authorships for more than 10,000 researchersA week after news that the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) would have a new interim director shortly comes news that the agency will also have a new director of its investigative division as of early next month.
Starting August 4, Alexander Runko will be the director of the ORI’s Division of Investigative Oversight (DIO). He is already working at the agency as an investigator.
According to the ORI:
Continue reading U.S. government watchdog names investigative director
A surgeon in Turkey has won a court case in which he argued that he deserved to be named in a list of authors from his institution who’d published a paper. But even that doesn’t appear to have satisfied the aggrieved medic, as you’ll see.
The article, “Late onset traumatic diaphragmatic herniation leading to intestinal obstruction and pancreatitis: two separate cases,” was written by a group from the Department of General Surgery at Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital. The list of authors comprised Tolga Dinc, Selami Ilgaz Kayilioglu and Faruk Coskun … but not Baris Yildiz, a colleague in the department.
The paper appeared in Case Reports in Emergency Medicine, a Hindawi title, which has issued a rather byzantine expression of concern about the article:
Continue reading No delight for Turkish surgeon in authorship dispute over case studyThe U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has a new director.
Elisabeth (Lis) Handley, currently deputy operations director of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) Center for Program Integrity, will become interim director of the ORI on August 26. (CMS and ORI are both part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)). Wanda Jones, formerly interim director and now deputy director, will remain at the agency in her current role.
Handley, according to an announcement sent to HHS employees,
Continue reading US government watchdog gets new director
