Category: by subject

Another retraction for sex researcher Weijmar Schultz

Weijmar Schultz
Weijmar Schultz

Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, the Groningen sex researcher (and Ig Nobel winner) who misused the 1985 thesis of an American scholar, and the work of another researcher, in at least five published articles, has tallied another retraction in the affair, his sixth.

As we reported earlier, Schultz had been cleared of plagiarism but found to have abused the work (in an “unintended and unknowing” fashion, we’re told) of one Diana Jeffrey, by taking passages from her dissertation without acknowledgement. These articles are pretty long in the tooth, having been published in the 1990s.

The latest, in the Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, appeared in 1992. Titled “Sexual rehabilitation after gynecological cancer treatment,” Schultz wrote it with a colleague H.B.M. Van de Wiel, whose name shows up on the other retractions, too.

According to the notice: Continue reading Another retraction for sex researcher Weijmar Schultz

Fourth retraction results from Cardiff investigation

mol immResearchers have retracted a fourth paper following an investigation at Cardiff University that found evidence of image manipulation by a researcher named Rossen Donev.

Here’s the notice for “The mouse complement regulator CD59b is significantly expressed only in testis and plays roles in sperm acrosome activation and motility,” a paper first published in Molecular Immunology in 2008: Continue reading Fourth retraction results from Cardiff investigation

Weekend reads: Most scientific fraudsters keep their jobs, random acts of academic kindness, and more

booksA bumper crop of material about misconduct, peer review, and related issues came to our attention this week, so without further ado: Continue reading Weekend reads: Most scientific fraudsters keep their jobs, random acts of academic kindness, and more

Jonah Lehrer’s German publisher will release adjusted version of Imagine sans fabricated quotes

imagineAn edited version of Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine, the book withdrawn from shelves in 2012 by his publisher Houghton Mifflin because he had fabricated quotes by Bob Dylan, will be released in Germany next month, according to a report in the German media.

In a story titled “Free ride for the falsifier” (“Freie Fahrt für den Fälscher”), Buchreport.de reports (via Google Translate) that despite the known fabrications, “the publisher wants to keep the book on creativity:” Continue reading Jonah Lehrer’s German publisher will release adjusted version of Imagine sans fabricated quotes

Gut instinct: Intestinal flora paper yanked for plagiarism

frontcellinfectmicroA group of researchers in China has lost a paper on the human microbiome in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology for cannibalizing much of it from previously published work by other scientists.

The article, titled “Human gut microbiota: dysbiosis and manipulation,” appeared on Sept. 27, 2012, and was written by a team from the Beijing Genomics Institute-Shenzhen. It has been cited just once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, by another paper in the same journal.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Gut instinct: Intestinal flora paper yanked for plagiarism

University of Luxembourg investigation leads to neuroscience retraction

gliaA study published in Glia is being retracted following a university investigation that found “incorrect and, therefore, misleading” results in a number of figures.

Here’s the notice for  “Jagged1 regulates the activation of astrocytes via modulation of NFκB and JAK/STAT/SOCS pathways” by Eleonora Morga, Laila Mouad-Amazzal, Paul Felten, Tony Heurtaux, Mike Moro, Alessandro Michelucci, Sebastien Gabel, Luc Grandbarbe, and Paul Heuschling: Continue reading University of Luxembourg investigation leads to neuroscience retraction

St. Louis Krokodil paper reappears

ajmedEarlier this month, we reported on the unexplained withdrawal of a case report from the American Journal of Medicine whose authors said they had treated a man in St. Louis who used krokodil, a homemade mixture of prescription painkillers heroin and flammable contaminants that has proven deadly in Russia.

At the time, all the journal’s publisher, Elsevier, would say about why the article was removed was that there was “a permission problem that the originating institution is working to resolve.”

The paper has now reappeared. And contrary to the notice that appeared on the withdrawal Continue reading St. Louis Krokodil paper reappears

Punked 2.0: Indian engineer uses “My Cousin Vinny” to publish fake paper, expose “science” conference

Joe Pesci, engineering scholar, by Yausser via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/yausser/
Joe Pesci, engineering scholar, by Yausser via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/yausser/

A technology entrepreneur from Pune named Navin Kabra has pulled back the sheets on a local conference, the International Conference on Recent Innovations in Engineering, Science & Technology, by submitting two bogus manuscripts for presentation — both of which were accepted.

Although the conference organizers were charging 6,000 rupees — about $100 — apiece for submission, Kabra bargained them down to half that amount

by haggling with them in the same way we haggle with vegetable vendors.

Kabra, in an illuminating post on his blog titled “How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system” that was first covered by mid-day.com, says Continue reading Punked 2.0: Indian engineer uses “My Cousin Vinny” to publish fake paper, expose “science” conference

Urology researcher in Iran has third paper retracted

safarinejadMohammad Reza Safarinejad, a urologist in Iran, has had three papers retracted recently for reasons that are not entirely clear.

Here’s the most recent notice, from the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, of a paper that has been cited 23 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Urology researcher in Iran has third paper retracted

Simulation slip-up leads to retraction of explosives paper

applsci-logoApplied Sciences has retracted a 2012 article by a researcher whose efforts to model a particular kind of explosion called a shaped charge proved to be a dud.

The paper, “Steady State Analytical Equation of Motion of Linear Shaped Charges Jet Based on the Modification of Birkhoff Theory,” was written by Seokbin Lim, a mechanical engineer in the Energetic Systems Research Group at  New Mexico Tech, in Socorro.

According to the abstract:  Continue reading Simulation slip-up leads to retraction of explosives paper