Category: engineering

A paper finding kids did worse in school following the Flint water crisis is “severely flawed and unreliable,” according to critics who were deeply involved in exposing the crisis.

The paper has now earned an addendum from the authors, but the critics say it should be retracted.

The authors of the article investigated whether the water crisis in Flint – a period when the drinking water in the Michigan city was contaminated with lead – affected the academic capability of children living there. The authors concluded children in Flint did worse in math after the crisis and more needed special education than before the episode. 

The article was published in Science Advances in March and referenced by major news outlets like ProPublica and The Washington Post.

Continue reading Did Flint water crisis set kids back in school? Paper saying so is ‘severely flawed,’ say critics

Just over a decade ago, in the second year of Retraction Watch’s existence, we wrote a column in the now-defunct Lab Times urging journal editors to stop ignoring complaints from anonymous whistleblowers. The Committee on Publication Ethics didn’t think anonymity was a problem as long as the complaints were evidence-based, so why should editors? 

And journals have come a long way over the last decade in this regard. Some retraction notices even credit anonymous – and even pseudonymous – correspondents. 

Guido Schmitz, however, appears not to have gotten the memo. 

Continue reading An editor on why he ignores anonymous whistleblowers – and why authors are free to publish ‘bullshit and fiction’

A civil engineering researcher will soon have 12 retractions to his name after a data sleuth notified journals of issues with image reuse in the papers. 

Jorge de Brito, a professor at the University of Lisbon, has lost four papers in Construction and Building Materials, two in the Journal of Building Engineering, of which he had been editor-in-chief, and another in Engineering Structures since we reported in March on retractions for a pair of researchers in Iran with whom de Brito had coauthored papers. 

Editors of the Magazine of Concrete Research have decided to retract another paper, “Improved bending behaviour of steel-fibre-reinforced recycled aggregate concrete beams with a concrete jacket,” we learned from a staffer who copied Retraction Watch on an email to the data sleuth who raised concerns. The paper has been cited eight times, and this retraction would bring de Brito’s total to 12. 

Continue reading Engineering researcher who cast blame on co-author will soon have 12 retractions

A group of structural engineering researchers based in Iran has lost at least five papers for problems with the data – and a data sleuth says more look shaky, too. 

Four of the articles appeared in Construction and Building Materials between 2018 and 2020 and were written by a changing cast of characters with two constants: Mansour Ghalehnovi and Arash Karimipour, both of the Department of Civil Engineering at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Karimipour’s LinkedIn profile lists an affiliation with the University of Texas at El Paso from 2019 to January of this year. 

The journal, an Elsevier title, says it began investigating the papers after a whistleblower raised questions about the integrity of the data. In some cases, for example, data in one article were found in other papers but were represented as demonstrating different materials. The authors also used images from other researchers or the internet without proper attribution. 

Here’s the notice for “Experimental study on the flexural behaviour and ductility ratio of steel fibres coarse recycled aggregate concrete beams,” from 2018: 

Continue reading Engineers’ research starts to look shaky as retractions mount

A construction researcher is watching his publishing edifice crumble, as more upcoming retractions of his papers will bring his total to 61. 

Ali Nazari is believed to be a member of a ring of authors whom a whistleblower has claimed are churning out unreliable research — hundreds of papers, according to the sleuth, who goes by the pseudonym Artemisia Stricta. Nazari lost his job at Swinburne University, in Australia, following a misconduct investigation in 2019. 

According to the whistleblower (who laid out the case in a recent email to a journal editor): 

Continue reading Researcher to overtake Diederik Stapel on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard, with 61

An engineering researcher alleged to be part of a four-group ring of authors who have “repetitively published their own work in ways that call into serious question” the validity of hundreds of papers has had a paper retracted.

As we reported in August, Mostafa Jalal, a postdoc at Texas A&M, is alleged to have “engaged in some manner of collaboration or communication” with three other researchers, including Ali Nazari, who has now had 52 papers retracted. Those retractions came after the whistleblower, the pseudonymous Artemisia Stricta, called attention to problems in Nazari’s work.

The newly retracted paper, originally published in 2013 in Science and Engineering of Composite Materials, is one of five publications in which Artemisia Stricta said Jalal’s group had misrepresented electron microscopy images.

Here’s the retraction notice for “Assessment of nano-TiO2 and class F fly ash effects on flexural fracture and microstructure of binary blended concrete”:

Continue reading Researcher linked to author with 52 retractions loses a paper for duplication