Category: by reason for retraction

Data in biofuel paper “had either been grossly misinterpreted or fabricated”

A biology journal has retracted a 2011 paper after the University of California, Los Angeles determined that the data in three figures “cannot be supported.”

In February, the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology retracted the paper, which explores efforts to engineer bacteria to convert plant biomass into biofuel.

Claudia Modlin, assistant director of UCLA’s Office of Research Policy and Compliance, told Retraction Watch that the university informed the journal about the issues last October, after reviewing the work. Continue reading Data in biofuel paper “had either been grossly misinterpreted or fabricated”

Caught Our Notice: No retraction for “likely fraudulent” study

Title: Homocysteine as a predictive factor for hip fracture in elderly women with Parkinson’s disease

What Caught Our Attention:  In a letter to the editor, researchers led by Mark Bolland recently outlined the many reasons why a study by Yoshihiro Sato and colleagues in The American Journal of Medicine was “unreliable,” including evidence that the patient numbers were not achievable as described, and inconsistencies and errors in the study data. And let’s not forget a 2016 analysis (co-authored by Bolland) which cast doubt on Sato’s body of work, suggesting that more than 30 of his papers could be problematic. Continue reading Caught Our Notice: No retraction for “likely fraudulent” study

Probe into Carlo Croce reached “defensible and reasonable” decisions, says external review

An independent analysis of how The Ohio State University reviewed allegations of misconduct against a high-profile cancer researcher has found that the institution “complied with applicable law and with relevant institutional policies and reached reasoned and supportable conclusions.”

The review follows numerous allegations of research misconduct against Carlo Croce, described in a March 8 story in the New York Times. According to the Times article, Croce has been the subject of multiple investigations; at least five of those inquiries from OSU cleared him of wrongdoing. 

Croce has denied the allegations, and is now suing the New York Times and an outside researcher who served as a key source in the story. As a result of the story, however, OSU — where Croce is based — told us last year it had “launched an independent review of our systems for ensuring research integrity.”

Continue reading Probe into Carlo Croce reached “defensible and reasonable” decisions, says external review

Retraction count for Italian researcher swells to 15 as five papers fall

A researcher who is facing a criminal investigation in Italy for research misconduct has seen five more papers retracted, for a total of 16 15.

Molecular and Cellular Biology has retracted four papers published between 1987 to 2001 by Alfredo Fusco, a cancer researcher in Italy; the Journal of Virology retracted one 1985 paper. Fusco was first author on two papers and last author on three. Both journals are published by The American Society for Microbiology (ASM), which issued identical retraction notices for all five papers, mentioning “evidence of apparent manipulation and duplication.”

Carlo Croce, a cancer researcher now at the Ohio State University, who has been dogged by misconduct allegations, co-authored one of the papers.  Croce now has eight retractions.

Here’s the notice presented for all five retractions: Continue reading Retraction count for Italian researcher swells to 15 as five papers fall

A “GROSS CASE OF PLAGIARISM:” How did one Elsevier journal plagiarize another?

Nicholas Peppas

When Nicholas Peppas, chair of engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, discovered one of his papers had been plagiarized, he decided to “go public!”

On February 27, Peppas tweeted about a “gross case of plagiarism:” He alleged a 2013 review published in Saudi Pharmaceutical Journal had directly copied sections of his 2011 review in Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews—both published by Elsevier. (The tweet includes a side-by-side image of a section of the two texts.) Continue reading A “GROSS CASE OF PLAGIARISM:” How did one Elsevier journal plagiarize another?

New tool looks for signs of image doctoring

Mary Walsh

One of the most common reasons for retractions is image manipulation. When searching for evidence of it, researchers often rely on what their eyes tell them. But what if screening tools could help? Last week, researchers described a new automated tool to screen images for duplication (reported by Nature News); with help from publishing giant Elsevier, another group at Harvard Medical School is developing a different approach. We spoke with creators Mary Walsh, Chief Scientific Investigator in the Office for Professional Standards and Integrity, and Daniel Wainstock, Associate Director of Research Integrity, about how the tool works, and why — unlike the other recently described automated tool — they want to make theirs freely available.

Retraction Watch: What prompted you to develop this tool?

Continue reading New tool looks for signs of image doctoring

Overlooked virus “generated a mess,” infected highly cited Cell, PNAS papers

When Alexander Harms arrived at the University of Copenhagen in August 2016, as a postdoc planning to study a type of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, he carried with him a warning from another lab who had recruited him:

People said, “If you go there, you have to deal with these weird articles that nobody believes.”

The papers in question had been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2011 and Cell in 2013. Led by Kenn Gerdes, Harms’s new lab director, the work laid out a complex chain of events that mapped out how an E. coli bacterium can go into a dormant state, called persistence, that allows it to survive while the rest of its colony is wiped out.

Despite some experts’ skepticism, each paper had been cited hundreds of times. And Harms told us:

I personally did believe in the published work. There had been papers from others that kind of attacked [the Gerdes lab’s theory], but that was not high-quality work.

But by November 2016, Harms figured out that the skeptics had been right.  Continue reading Overlooked virus “generated a mess,” infected highly cited Cell, PNAS papers

Journal investigating earlier work by author of discredited fish-microplastics paper 

A biology journal is investigating concerns about a 2014 paper by a marine biologist who was found guilty of misconduct last year.

In December, Uppsala University concluded that Oona Lönnstedt had “fabricated the results” of a controversial 2016 Science paper (now retracted), which examined the harms of human pollution on fish. (Lönnstedt’s supervisor Peter Eklöv was also found guilty of misconduct and had a four-year government grant terminated.) Continue reading Journal investigating earlier work by author of discredited fish-microplastics paper 

Cancer researcher under cloud of suspicion wins $300,000 science prize

Carlo Croce

Carlo Croce, who has had numerous papers retracted and corrected for issues including image manipulation, has received an award for more than $300,000 for his achievements in personalized medicine.

The Dan David Prize, awarded earlier this month by a charitable organization based at Tel Aviv University, bestowed $1 million to three researchers who have “made pioneering and ground-breaking discoveries in the field of personalized medicine.”

Croce, chair of the Department of Cancer Biology and Genetics at The Ohio State University, shares this year’s award with two prominent researchers—Mary-Claire King, a professor of genome sciences and medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Bert Vogelstein, a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Continue reading Cancer researcher under cloud of suspicion wins $300,000 science prize

Caught Our Notice: Should publicly funded research tools be free for researchers to use?

Title: Adherence to Adjuvant Neuropathic Pain Medications in a Palliative Care Clinic

What Caught Our Attention: We’ve found a fourth retraction for the unlicensed use of a common research tool, an issue we explored in depth for Science last year. Quick recap: When researchers use a copyrighted questionnaire (MMAS-8) without permission, they get a call from its creator Donald Morisky (or his representative), asking them to pay up — sometimes thousands of dollars. There’s another option: Retract the paper. That was the choice made by a group of researchers in Arkansas, who — in a nicely detailed notice — note that, since the scale was developed using federal funds, “they dispute the validity and reasonableness of Dr. Morisky’s demands in light of the National Institutes of Health’s Principles and Guidelines for Recipients of NIH Research Grants and Contracts on Obtaining and Disseminating Biomedical Research Resources.” Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Should publicly funded research tools be free for researchers to use?