Category: by subject

Another retraction for former record holder Joachim Boldt

bjaWith all the fuss about Yoshitaka Fujii, the current record holder for most retractions, you can be forgiven for forgetting that Joachim Boldt once owned that title, at least for about a year.

Well, Boldt has another retraction, although he’d need to double his tally (which is in the range of 90) to match Fujii’s “impressive” haul.

The new paper is, well, old, having been published in 1996, some 14 years before Boldt’s tribulations began. The article was titled “Influence of different volume therapy regimens on regulators of the circulation in the critically ill.” It appeared in the British Journal of Anaesthesia, and has been cited 45 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

According to the notice: Continue reading Another retraction for former record holder Joachim Boldt

Journal editor defends retraction of GMO-rats study while authors reveal some of paper’s history

food and chemical toxicologyThe debate over the retraction of a highly controversial paper on the effects of GMOs on rats continues unabated. This week, Adriane Fugh-Berman and Thomas Sherman wrote on the Hastings Center website that Continue reading Journal editor defends retraction of GMO-rats study while authors reveal some of paper’s history

Surgery journal adds detail to retraction notice following Retraction Watch coverage

j surg oncLast month, we wrote about the retraction of a study in the Journal of Surgical Oncology (JSO) for duplication. But we were a bit frustrated by the lack of information in the notice. As we wrote at the time:

It would be nice to know a couple of things here. For example, when and where was the duplicated paper published? And who were the authors?

Well, we’ve heard from the journal, and have some updates. Brittany White, managing editor of the JSO, tells us, on behalf of editor-in-chief Stephen F. Sener, that: Continue reading Surgery journal adds detail to retraction notice following Retraction Watch coverage

Psychology researcher explains how retraction-causing errors led to change in her lab

jperssocpsychLast month, we brought you the story of two retractions by Yale’s Laurie Santos because the team discovered errors in the way the first author had coded the data. That first author, Neha Mahajan, took full responsibility for the coding problems, according to the retraction notices, and a university investigation cleared her of any “intentional, knowing, reckless, or grossly negligent action.”

But a few of our readers noted that the papers refer to a second coder on some of the experiments, and have questioned whether that’s compatible with Mahajan being solely responsible for the errors.

We asked Santos earlier this week to explain the apparent discrepancy, which she did along with a description of how her lab has made changes to prevent such errors in the future: Continue reading Psychology researcher explains how retraction-causing errors led to change in her lab

“Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction

grondelle
Rienk van Grondelle, via VU

More than two years ago, we wrote about a retraction for duplication in Biophysical Journal prompted by an email from pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis. That post generated a robust discussion, including one comment from someone calling himself or herself “Double Dutch.”

This past weekend, the last author of that paper, Rienk van Grondelle, left a lengthy response to that comment in which he explained how the duplication happened. We’ve confirmed that it was van Grondelle who left the comment, which we reproduce here in full (we’ve added paragraph breaks for readability): Continue reading “Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction

Fraud topples second neuroscience word processing paper

neuroimageWe have a second retraction from a group of neuroscience researchers in Belgium who discovered fatal errors in their work on how the brain sets about the task of reading written language. Spoiler alert: Turns out those errors weren’t errors after all.

As we reported back in May, the group, from the University of Leuven, was unable to replicate certain fMRI findings in a November 2012 article in Neuroscience. At the time, Hans P. Op de Beeck, who led the group, told us: Continue reading Fraud topples second neuroscience word processing paper

Weekend reads: Waste in research, a praise-worthy swift correction in NEJM, and more

booksThe first full week of 2014 featured a slew of stories and commentary about scientific publishing and related issues. Here’s a sampling: Continue reading Weekend reads: Waste in research, a praise-worthy swift correction in NEJM, and more

Doing the right thing: Authors retract protein paper after finding experimental errors

embo reportsA group of researchers in the Netherlands has retracted a paper once they realized that the findings weren’t reproducible and that there had been an error in the experiments.

Here’s the notice for “Ubiquitin‐specific protease 4 is inhibited by its ubiquitin‐like domain,” by MP Luna‐Vargas, AC Faesen, WJ van Dijk, M Rape, A Fish, and TK Sixma: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Authors retract protein paper after finding experimental errors

A retracted retraction: Backsies for an anti-terrorism paper

Nasrullah Memon
Nasrullah Memon

The other day, we wrote about a puzzling situation that appeared to involve the ninth retraction for an anti-terrorism researcher. A book chapter by Nasrullah Memon, of the University of Southern Denmark, was marked “Retracted,” both in the abstract’s title and on the PDF. But Memon forwarded us an email from Springer, the book’s publisher, saying that they had decided to publish an erratum rather than retract.

And indeed, sometime after we published our post, the retraction was changed to an erratum, with the following notice: Continue reading A retracted retraction: Backsies for an anti-terrorism paper

Karel Bezouška, who broke into lab to tamper with investigation, has JACS paper retracted

jacsat_v136i001.inddKarel Bezouška, who, as we noted last year “broke into a lab refrigerator so he could tamper with samples being used to try to replicate the experiments during the investigation,” has had his fourth paper retracted.

Here’s the notice, for “Synthesis of Multivalent Glycoconjugates Containing the Immunoactive LELTE Peptide: Effect of Glycosylation on Cellular Activation and Natural Killing by Human Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells,” in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS): Continue reading Karel Bezouška, who broke into lab to tamper with investigation, has JACS paper retracted