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:
Continue reading A failure at Renal Failure leads to retraction of duplicate article
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:
Continue reading ‘Reused over and over again:’ Image recycling leads to 5-year funding ban for cancer researcher
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:
Continue reading Former Johns Hopkins postdoc sanctioned by Feds for data fabrication
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:
Continue reading Exclusive: King’s College London finds “poor research practices” but no misconduct in two recent cases
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
Continue reading Feds ban ex-Duke lab tech from funding after she faked data linked to 60 NIH grants
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:
Continue reading Author protests as Elsevier retracts nine papers for fake peer review
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:
Continue reading Hepatitis expert out at Chicago university following misconduct finding
A group of arthritis researchers in China have lost a 2019 paper which was effectively an English-language reprint of an earlier article in a Chinese journal. Two of the authors blamed a “misunderstanding of the academic rules” on the part of their colleagues for the duplication.
The article, “The clinical significance of serum sCD25 as a sensitive disease activity marker for rheumatoid arthritis,” appeared in the Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology. But, as the retraction notice explains, the work wasn’t original:
Continue reading ‘Misunderstanding of the academic rules’ leads to retraction of arthritis paper
A group of physicists in Morocco have lost a 2018 paper over plagiarism and other concerns.
The article, “A 2D fluid motion model of the estuarine water circulation: Physical analysis of the salinity stratification in the Sebou estuary,” appeared in European Physics Journal Plus. The first author, Soufiane Haddout, is listed as being at Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra.
According to the notice:
Continue reading Pass the salt…off as your own? Plagiarism, meet salinity.
People scrolling through Siraj Raval’s Twitter feed, or watching his videos or paying money to hear his insights on “data literacy” likely expect that what they’re hearing are original pearls from an AI expert. Apparently, they shouldn’t.
Raval has admitted to stealing large amounts of text in a recently published paper on “neural qubit,” which he says he has removed from his website (although it seems to still be available), along with a YouTube video related to the work.
In an Oct. 13 tweet Raval copped to the misconduct:
Continue reading Controversial AI expert admits to plagiarism, blames hectic schedule