A Japanese web site is reporting that Yoshitaka Fujii, a Japanese anesthesiologist suspected of widespread data fabrication, did indeed fake his results in at least 172 published studies.
According to the article, on a site called Jiji Press: Continue reading Report: Fujii faked data in at least 172 papers
Two more papers from Dutch fraudster Diederik Stapel have been retracted. Both appeared in the journal Psychological Science in 2008, with the same, evidently unwitting co-author, Kirsten Ruys, of Tilburg University.
Here is the notice: Continue reading Withdraw that emotion: Psych journal retracts two Stapel papers on mood
The body count has reached three for a group of German tissue engineers who appear to have cloned their data in many of their publications.
Tissue Engineering Part A has retracted one of the papers from the investigators, titled “Clinically established hemostatic scaffold (tissue fleece) as biomatrix in tissue- and organ-engineering research,” which was published in 2003.
The notice states: Continue reading Reverse tissue engineering: data reuse causes retractions of three papers from German organ researchers
In the beginning, there was Scott Reuben.
Well, not quite. Reuben, a Massachusetts anesthesiologist who fabricated data and briefly topped our list of most-retracted authors, didn’t invent research fraud, although he did spend six months in federal prison for his crimes. But his case was in no small measure responsible for the birth of this blog, and, well, the rest of human history that followed.
Although Reuben’s retractions are behind him now — his count ends at 22 — and other scientists, including two anesthesiologists, Joachim Boldt and Yoshitaka Fujii, have or likely soon will dramatically eclipsed his mark, a new paper has revisited his publications with an eye toward seeing if they could identify statistical evidence of data manipulation. It’s the same kind of effort that Ed Yong highlighted as noteworthy about the Dirk Smeesters case, which we covered yesterday and which involved an anonymous statistically inclined whistleblower.
Before we get to whether there was evidence of such manipulation Continue reading Is post-hoc statistical analysis the new fraud detection tool? A new review looks at fraudster Reuben’s work
The social psychology community, already rocked last year by the Diederik Stapel scandal, now has another set of allegations to dissect. Dirk Smeesters, a professor of consumer behavior and society at the Rotterdam School of Management, part of Erasmus University, has resigned amid serious questions about his work.
According to an Erasmus press release, a scientific integrity committee found that the results in two of Smeesters’ papers were statistically highly unlikely. Smeesters could not produce the raw data behind the findings, and told the committee that he cherry-picked the data to produce a statistically significant result. Those two papers are being retracted, and the university accepted Smeesters’ resignation on June 21.
The release also takes pains to say that the university has no reason to doubt the work of his co-authors. You can read the complete report in Dutch, with Smeesters’ co-authors’ names blacked out, in an NRC Handelsblad story.
Erasmus tells Retraction Watch that these are the two papers being retracted: Continue reading Following investigation, Erasmus social psychology professor retracts two studies, resigns
Edward Shang, the weight loss surgeon who lost his job at the University of Leipzig in May after it was revealed that he had made up most, if not all, of the patients in his research studies at the University of Mannheim, has retracted three more papers.
Here’s the notice, which is a bit, um, lean, given what we know about the case: Continue reading Three more retractions for weight loss surgeon Edward Shang for making up data
Are drug company R&D departments reading blogs?
In a recent paper, “Translational evaluation of JNJ-18038683, a 5-HT7 receptor antagonist, on REM sleep and in major depressive disorder,” researchers with New Jersey-based Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. tested whether a potential drug code-named JNJ-18038683 that binds to a receptor linked to depression could actually help patients.
Turns out, the drug was a flop, but Continue reading JPET corrects Janssen antidepressant paper after neuroscience blogger notes errors
Last August, we brought you the news that the Indian Journal of Dermatology had banned a group of Tunisian researchers from publishing in the journal for five years, because they had plagiarized in a 2009 study.
Well, the journal’s editors found another case in which the authors have plagiarized, and now they’re banned from the journal for good. Here’s the notice, which describes both cases: Continue reading Serial plagiarizers banned from dermatology journal forever
PLoS ONE has issued an expression of concern over a 2010 paper by Chinese scientists about how the immune system responds to the vaccine against the swine flu.
The article, “Protection Induced on Day 10 Following Administration of the 2009 A/H1N1 Pandemic Influenza Vaccine,” claimed to study 58 subjects given the inoculation (more on that below) and that Continue reading PLoS ONE expresses concern over flu vaccine paper
The European Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery has retracted a 2007 article by Chinese researchers after the senior author decided he liked the data so nice he’d publish them twice. And he appears to have done so without the knowledge of the corresponding author.
Here’s the notice for the paper, titled “Open-heart surgery in patients with liver cirrhosis”: Continue reading Tell-tale hearts: Cardiology journals retract redundant articles