In baseball, it’s three strikes and you’re out. In Nature, apparently, you can stay at the plate after three swings-and-misses.
That’s what we concluded from a Corrigendum in last week’s issue, for “CD95 promotes tumour growth,” originally published in May 2010 and now corrected not once, not twice, but three times.
Here was the first Corrigendum, from March 2011: Continue reading The Nature paper that required three corrections
Canada’s University of Waterloo is racking up the retractions, with one in July for plagiarism, another earlier this month for faked data from a graduate student who had her master’s degree revoked, and now a third for duplication.
Here’s the notice, for “The influence of friends, family, and older peers on smoking among elementary school students: Low-risk students in high-risk schools,” which appeared in Preventive Medicine in March 2006: Continue reading Another retraction from University of Waterloo, this time for duplication
In June of last year, the Archives of Internal Medicine yanked a paper just 12 minutes before it was scheduled to publish, to
…allow time for review and statistical analysis of additional data not included in the original paper that the authors provided less than 24 hours before posting…
A year later, the lead author told us the paper was still under review. Now, as Larry Husten of CardioBrief reports today, it has finally been published — but in a different journal altogether: Continue reading Transcendental meditation paper pulled minutes before publication appears in a new journal
A group of Dutch researchers has retracted a paper they published in March after apparently learning that they’d bungled their statistical analysis in the study.
The article, “Effects of a pre-visit educational website on information recall and needs fulfilment in breast cancer genetic counselling, a randomized controlled trial,” was published in Breast Cancer Research by Akke Albada of the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research and colleagues.
But according to the notice, Utrecht, we have a problem: Continue reading Intent was there, but not the intention-to-treat analysis: Breast cancer study retracted
European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry has retracted a 2003 paper on the treatment of alcoholism for a vague “copyright violation.” But the reason appears to be that the article was largely identical to a 2002 report from one of the authors and other colleagues.
The offending paper, “Acamprosate and its efficacy in treating alcohol dependent adolescents,” appeared in June 2003 and has been cited 51 times, according to Google Scholar. The authors were Helmut Niederhofer and Wolfgang Staffen, of the Christian Doppler-Klinik, in Salzburg.
According to the rather uninformative notice: Continue reading Make it a double: Alcohol treatment study pulled for duplication
As we’ve noted before, we generally let duplication retractions make their way to the bottom of our to-do pile, since there’s often less of an interesting story behind them, duplication is hardly the worst of publishing sins, and the notices usually tell the story. (These are often referred to — imprecisely — as “self-plagiarism.”)
But that skews what’s represented here — boy, are there a lot of duplication retractions we haven’t covered! — and we might as well be more comprehensive. Plus, our eagle-eyed readers may find issues that we won’t see on a quick scan.
So with this post, we’re inaugurating a new feature here at Retraction Watch, “You’ve been dupe’d.” Every now and then, we’ll gather five of these duplication retractions at a time, and post them so they get into the mix, and into our category listing (see drop-down menu in right-hand column if you haven’t already). Here are the first five: Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Catching up on authors who liked their work enough to use it again
Achtentwintig.
That’s 28 in Dutch, and is the number of retractions so far racked up by Diederik Stapel, according to our count.
The latest two to come to our attention are in the British Journal of Social Psychology, where Stapel has already had a retraction.
Here’s one notice: Continue reading And then there were 28: Two more retractions for Diederik Stapel
PLOS ONE has retracted an article it published earlier this year by a group from Australia who failed to receive adequate ethics approval for their study.
The paper, “Late Complications of Clinical Clostridium Histolyticum Collagenase Use in Dupuytren’s Disease,” came from Warren M. Rozen, Yasith Edirisinghe and John Crock (sorry, irony machine not working today). Dupuytren’s causes thickening of the fascia in the hands and often requires surgery. In 2011 the FDA approved a treatment for the ailment that involves injections of an enzyme — Clostridium Histolyticum Collagenase, or CHC — into the affected area.
The Aussie article looked at the effects of CHC injections in 12 patients over one year, finding that two of the patients suffered Continue reading PLoS ONE retracts paper on treatment of tissue disease for lack of ethical approval, erroneous data
Pfizer has retracted a 2009 Journal of Clinical Oncology study purporting to show a benefit of their experimental drug for lung cancer figitumumab after discovering that its clinical lead on the project had done analyses improperly.
Here’s the text of the notice: Continue reading Pfizer retracts study of experimental cancer treatment figitumumab for incorrect analyses
The retraction counts keep mounting for two Retraction Watch frequent flyers.
First, Diederik Stapel’s 26th retraction, according to our count. Psychologist Stapel admitted to making up data in dozens of studies, and is also facing a criminal inquiry for misuse of funds.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Lemus, Stapel each rack up another retraction