Category: engineering

Retraction notice for steel manufacturing paper leaves much to the imagination

Screen Shot 2015-04-01 at 4.01.21 PMReading is hard and takes a long time, so it’s nice that the Iron and Steel Institute of Japan didn’t give us too much work to do with this 12 word retraction.

Journal ISIJ International minced no words about why the 2014 paper on steel manufacturing was withdrawn, because there were no words. Here’s the notice for “Microstructure and Properties of Fiber Laser Welded Joints of Ultrahigh-strength Steel 22MnB5 and its Dissimilar Combination with Q235 Steel” in its entirety – half the length of the title!: Continue reading Retraction notice for steel manufacturing paper leaves much to the imagination

Manufacturing paper assembled “almost entirely” from someone else’s 1999 thesis

saeijmmThe SAE International Journal of Materials and Manufacturing has retracted a paper after realizing the authors ripped off a 1999 PhD thesis.

According to the notice, the 2014 paper — about the best ways to set up manufacturing cells in the automobile industry — “is almost entirely taken” from a Durham University, UK student’s PhD thesis. The thesis, “Computer-aided design of cellular manufacturing layout,” was written by Yue Wu. We were unable to track him down after he left the University of Exeter‘s Manufacturing Enterprise Center.

Here’s the notice for “Reengineering the Layout: A CMS Methodological Approach”: Continue reading Manufacturing paper assembled “almost entirely” from someone else’s 1999 thesis

Dead men tell no tales – nor respond to journal’s formatting queries

mamasIn November 2014, Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures withdrew an online-first publication on the grounds that, over the previous two years, the corresponding author has not responded to questions regarding formatting.

There is, apparently, a good reason for that, although the notice for “Analysis of Effective Properties of Three-phase Electro-magneto-elastic Solids” suggests the editors of the journal are unaware of it:

Continue reading Dead men tell no tales – nor respond to journal’s formatting queries

Dentistry student loses travel grant for duplicating his own work

iadrThe International Association for Dental Research has retracted a student travel award after discovering that the recipient had previously published the work he used to secure the grant, including in an abstract he presented at the same conference last year.

The self-plagiarism was uncovered by an anonymous group of students at the Hong Kong University dentistry school, where the student is a PhD student. The unnamed students sent both the IADR and HKU faculty members a color-coded chart showing identical phrases between the 2014 abstract, a 2013 paper published in the Journal of Periodontal Research called “Human umbilical vein endothelial cells synergize osteo/odontogenic differentiation of periodontal ligament stem cells in 3D cell sheets,” and another abstract the authors presented at the 2013 IADR conference.

The paper and both abstracts were written by P.K.C.P. Panduwawala, who lost the travel grant, along with HKU’s former dean of dentistry L.P. Samaranayake; HKU’s associate dean for research L.J. Jin; and C.F. Zhang, part of HKU’s tissue engineering group.

The IADR’s page now lists the winners with a note at the bottom: Continue reading Dentistry student loses travel grant for duplicating his own work

Engineer in South Korea forced to retract ten papers in one fell swoop

metals and materials internationalChang-Suk Han, a member of the engineering faculty at Hoseo University in South Korea, has had ten articles retracted at once because of duplicated data.

Here are the ten studies from Metals and Materials International: Continue reading Engineer in South Korea forced to retract ten papers in one fell swoop

University of Utah investigation fingers chem engineering grad student for misconduct

acs nanoA second retraction has been issued in a case of research misconduct at the chemistry department of chemical engineering at the University of Utah.

The first retraction, in August of 2013, got a lot of attention for how poorly faked the figures were. At the time, an expression of concern was issued on the paper that has just been retracted.

Today, we exchanged emails with Jeffery Botkin, the research integrity officer at the University of Utah, who ran the investigation into the misconduct. He summarized the report for us below. Continue reading University of Utah investigation fingers chem engineering grad student for misconduct

Chemical engineering journal retracts paper with unknowing author

AiChemE-logoAIChemE’s website promises, “Subscribing to the AIChE Journal is like having access to nine topical journals in the field.”

Without a subscription, though, you might miss out on some valuable topical information – like why a paper you want to cite has been retracted, something the Committee on Publication Ethics recommends be freely available.

Here’s the notice for “Flow Structure and Particle Motions in a Gas-Polyethylene Fluidized Bed,” originally published in 2007:

Continue reading Chemical engineering journal retracts paper with unknowing author

Publishing gadfly demands journal editor’s resignation, then has “fairly incomprehensible” paper rejected

sci eng ethicsA scientific publishing gadfly who was banned earlier this year from an Elsevier journal for “personal attacks and threats” has had a paper rejected by a Springer journal after he called for the editor’s resignation because of alleged incompetence.

As detailed in a comment left at Retraction Watch, Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva submitted a manuscript titled “One Conjunction, a World of Ethical Difference: How Elsevier, the ICMJE and Neurology Define Authorship” to Science and Engineering Ethics on November 11, 2012. As of last week, despite a number of messages sent to editors of the journal, he had not had a decision on the manuscript.

As a result, on July 14 of this year, Teixeira da Silva sent this letter to journal editor Raymond Spier and to Stephanie Bird, an editorial board member assigned to the manuscript: Continue reading Publishing gadfly demands journal editor’s resignation, then has “fairly incomprehensible” paper rejected

Boeing engineer has two papers retracted for duplication

j sound vibrationThe editor of the Journal of Sound and Vibration has retracted two papers by a Boeing engineer because the author reused his previous work.

Here’s the notice for “A component-based model for aircraft landing gear noise prediction,” by Yueping Guo: Continue reading Boeing engineer has two papers retracted for duplication

Miłość at first sight: A retraction notice worth emulating from Poland

j polish cimacIf we had a Retraction Watch headquarters (other than the diner where we occasionally meet for breakfast), we would have had to have closed up early today, because we both swooned when we saw a retraction notice from the Journal of Polish CIMAC this morning.

The notice, signed by the journal’s editor-in-chief Jerzy Girtler, of Gdansk University of Technology, reads:

Continue reading Miłość at first sight: A retraction notice worth emulating from Poland