Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere around the web in science publishing and research integrity news: Continue reading Weekend reads: “Too much success” in psychology, why hoaxes aren’t the real problem in science
Category: by subject
Plagiarism makes renewable energy paper unsustainable
Here’s a lesson for would-be authors of papers on power supplies:
Energy = Renewable; Journal articles = Not renewable
Too late for a group of engineers in Iran who borrowed too liberally from previously published work in their 2013 article in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
The paper, “A review of energy storage systems in microgrids with wind turbines,” reported that: Continue reading Plagiarism makes renewable energy paper unsustainable
Humbert, Humbert: Duplication topples matrix function paper
A pair of mathematicians from Egypt has lost their 2012 article in the Journal of the Egyptian Mathematical Society because they reused some of the material from a previous publication.
The article, with the Nabokovian title, “On Humbert matrix functions,” was written by A. Shehata and M. Abul-Dahab. According to the introduction: Continue reading Humbert, Humbert: Duplication topples matrix function paper
Penkowa-Pedersen paper retracted nearly three years after being subjected to Notice of Concern
We have an update on the complicated story of Milena Penkowa and Bente Klarlund Pedersen.
Two papers coauthored by the pair — who have both been found guilty of scientific dishonesty by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty — have been retracted by the FASEB Journal.
Here’s one notice (both are unfortunately behind a paywall): Continue reading Penkowa-Pedersen paper retracted nearly three years after being subjected to Notice of Concern
Authors of “just make up an…analysis” Organometallics paper issue mega-correction
Back in August we — and others — wrote about a paper in Organometallics for which one member of the study team appeared to have instructed a co-author to pad the article with artificial results. From the supplemental information (SI) of that paper:
Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis…
Now comes a correction statement from the group that can only be described as “mega.” First reported last month by Chemical & Engineering News, the lengthy notice begins: Continue reading Authors of “just make up an…analysis” Organometallics paper issue mega-correction
Doing the right thing: Journal clears unknowing author of plagiarism
Here’s a nice case of a journal taking pains to clear the name of an author.
Last summer we wrote about a case of plagiarism involving two authors from India who’d published a paper on biometrics in the Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences.
Now — seven months later, we’ll note — one of those authors has gotten a reprieve. A notice in the journal states that the researcher had nothing to do with the misconduct.
At the time, the notice for the paper, “Multiple facial soft biometrics for person identification system,” read: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Journal clears unknowing author of plagiarism
Nobel Prize winner calls peer review “very distorted,” “completely corrupt,” and “simply a regression to the mean”
Sydney Brenner has been talking about what’s wrong with the scientific enterprise since long before he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002.
And in a new interview, Brenner doesn’t hold back, saying that publishers hire “a lot of failed scientists, editors who are just like the people at Homeland Security, little power grabbers in their own sphere.”
In a King’s Review Q&A titled “How Academia and Publishing Are Destroying Scientific Innovation,” Brenner says: Continue reading Nobel Prize winner calls peer review “very distorted,” “completely corrupt,” and “simply a regression to the mean”
Weekend reads: How much can one scientist publish? And more stem cell misconduct
Another busy week at Retraction Watch, including a ScienceOnline 2014 session Ivan facilitated on post-publication peer review. Here’s a selection of what was happening elsewhere on the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: How much can one scientist publish? And more stem cell misconduct
Hip disjoint: Dysplasia paper lacks proper attribution, earns retraction
A suggestion: When you title your paper “Joined at the hip?”, better make sure it’s not too close for comfort to someone else’s work.
Alas, an Idaho anthropologist failed to heed that lesson when she published “Joined at the hip? A paleoepidemiological study of developmental dysplasia of the hip and its relation to swaddling practices among indigenous peoples of North America,” in the American Journal of Human Biology last October.
The article, by Samantha Blatt, of Boise State University, found that: Continue reading Hip disjoint: Dysplasia paper lacks proper attribution, earns retraction
Clone call for bird gene bar-coding paper
A group of bird researchers in Korea has lost their 2006 paper on DNA barcoding of that country’s avian species because they feathered the article with material from others.
The paper, “DNA barcoding Korean birds,” appeared in Molecules and Cells, published by Springer for the Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology and has been cited 88 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the abstract: Continue reading Clone call for bird gene bar-coding paper