Last March, a PhD student at Harvard filed a misconduct allegation against his mentor, a prominent stem cell researcher. Three months later, he was taken from his home by police in the middle of the night for a forced psychiatric evaluation.
How did this happen? Continue reading A Harvard whistleblower was subjected to a forced mental exam. Here’s why.
Last year, Pfizer fired one of its scientists following an investigation that ended with requests for retraction of five of her studies. Now, two of the five papers, which were first flagged on PubPeer, have been retracted.
One notice cites the Pfizer investigation, which found that cancer researcher Min-Jean Yin had included duplicated images in all five papers. Yin is the last author on both retracted papers.
Here’s the first notice from Clinical Cancer Research, which says most or all of the questioned images appear to be duplicates, and Pfizer — who sponsored the study and requested the retraction — can’t find the originals:
Continue reading Breast cancer studies by fired Pfizer employee retracted
A 2016 study was retracted from a Frontiers journal after editors realized the authors had omitted experiments that didn’t support the hypothesis.
Gearóid Ó Faoleán, ethics and integrity manager at Frontiers, which publishes Frontiers in Plant Science, told us:
In accordance with our complaints protocol, the Field Chief Editor led the investigation that resulted in the decision to retract the paper.
Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading “Crucial experiments” missing from retracted plant study
Researchers in China have retracted two 2016 papers about the possible use of a cholesterol-lowering agent to treat bleeding on the brain.
One of the retracted papers in the Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS) had multiple problems that were “too extensive to revise,” according to the lengthy retraction notice, relating to issues with authorship, data analyses, and patient enrollment. The notice is signed by first author Hua Liu of the Nanjing Medical University in China.
Liu is also the first author of another recently retracted paper in Frontiers in Neuroscience, pulled for incorrectly categorizing patients.
The JNS retraction notice begins: Continue reading Authors retract two statin papers, one with problems “too extensive to revise”
An oncology journal has decided to retract a 2012 paper on gastric cancer after discovering duplicated data in multiple figures.
According to the retraction notice, the journal’s editorial board received a tip from a reader regarding the potential figure issues. Oncology Reports launched an investigation, which confirmed the allegations. The authors failed to respond to the journal’s multiple requests for more information.
Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Journal retracts gastric cancer study with multiple duplications, authors MIA
Researchers have agreed to pull a 2015 study exploring whether a plant extract can safeguard tanners from ultraviolet exposure after not obtaining formal approval from an ethics committee.
According to the first author, the problem lay in a misunderstanding – when they originally applied for approval six years ago, the researchers believed they didn’t need to go through a formal approval process, since the compound was commercially available without a prescription. Once they realized their mistake, they chose to retract the paper.
Here’s the retraction note for “Oral Polypodium leucomotos increases the anti-inflammatory and melanogenic responses of the skin to different modalities of sun exposures: a pilot study,” published in Photodermatology Photoimmunology & Photomedicine. Continue reading Authors retract tanning-UV radiation study for lacking approval
A journal has retracted a surgery study by researchers at Brown University after noticing it included data that was not intended for research purposes. (Incidentally, the data were collected by the publisher of the journal.)
Ingrid Philbert, managing editor of the Journal of Graduate Medical Education — which published the paper — told Retraction Watch that senior staff at the publisher alerted the journal that they suspected the authors had used data from a confidential source:
This is a fairly new set of case log data, and as the collector [of] the data, the [Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)] gets to determine the use and it has decreed that this data be used solely for accreditation decisions.
Philbert said the journal asked the authors where they got the data:
Continue reading Journal retracts surgery study with data “not intended for use in research”
Researchers in Japan have issued their fourth retraction, noting that the same figures were used to depict different experimental conditions.
The group lost two papers in 2015 for the same reason, following a misconduct investigation at Oita University in Japan. Last year, the same group notched another retraction, and pegged the responsibility for the problematic figures on first author Satoshi Hagiwara.
Now, the group has published a fourth retraction in the European Journal of Pharmacology; the latest notice doesn’t identify a culprit. All four retracted papers list Hagiwara as first author.
Here’s the latest retraction notice: Continue reading Japan group earns 4th retraction following investigation
A journal has issued an expression of concern (EOC) for a recently published study after a probe identified “problems with the figure presentation.”
According to the EOC notice in New Phytologist, two figures in the paper contained “some anomalies,” and the corresponding author has acknowledged that there are problems with the images.
Here’s the EOC notice: Continue reading Plant journal flags fungus paper amid investigation
After researchers in China included the same images in two papers published online one month apart, one paper has been retracted, and the other flagged with an expression of concern.
According to the retraction notice in the International Journal of Molecular Medicine (IJMM), the authors intended that the two different papers offered “different research perspectives.”
Meanwhile, the Chinese Medical Journal — which published the same images one month later — has issued an expression of concern (EOC), noting it “should not be considered as a statement regarding the validity of the work.” Both papers describe how cells regulate blood flow to the retina.
Normally, journals choose to retract the most recent paper containing duplicated images, but in this case, the IJMM paper was published online in February 2016, and the Chinese Medical Journal in March.
Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Authors use same images in two studies — one is retracted, the other flagged by journal