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Neuroscience group retracts Science paper

A group of neuroscientists in Switzerland have retracted a 2019 paper in Science whose first author they say falsified data in the study.

The article, “Insular cortex processes aversive somatosensory information and is crucial for threat learning,” came from the lab of Ralf Schneggenburger, of the Ecole Polytechniqe Federale De Lausanne (EPFL). The first author was Emmanuelle Berret, then a post-doc in the lab.

EPFL issued a press release about the study when it appeared. According to the release, the research showed that the insular cortex — a region “deep within the lateral sulcus” — is in charge of processing how mice and humans (pace, James Heathers) apparently learn from painful stimuli:

‘The policy of Creativity Research Journal is to consider only original material.’ Prominent Cornell professor has another paper retracted for duplication.

Robert Sternberg, a Cornell psychology professor whose work has earned three retractions for duplication, has had another paper retracted for the same reason.

Here’s the notice:

‘A long and lonely process:’ Whistleblowers in a misconduct case speak out

Last week, we reported on a case at the University of Leiden in which the institution found that a former psychology researcher there had committed research misconduct. In the anonymized report — which we were able to confirm regarded Lorenza Colzato, who is listed as a faculty member at Ruhr University in Bochum and at TU Dresden — the university found a lack of ethics approval for some studies and fabricating results in some grant applications. We asked the three whistleblowers in the case — Bryant Jongkees, Roberta Sellaro, and Laura Steenbergen — to reflect on their experiences. (We should note that they did not confirm it was Colzato named in the report.)

Retraction Watch (RW): What prompted you to come forward?

Authors retract two studies on high blood pressure and supplements after realizing they’d made a common error

A group of researchers from Iran, Italy and the UK have retracted two meta-analyses on supplements and high blood pressure after making what a statistics expert calls a common error.

Both papers were originally published in the Journal of Human Hypertension. Here’s the retraction notice for “Elevated blood pressure reduction after α-lipoic acid supplementation: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials:”

Journal retracts two papers linking exposure to violence to aggressive behavior

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

A journal on adolescent issues has retracted a pair of papers linking exposure to violent media to aggressive behavior in youth after critics questioned the validity of the data.

The studies, which appeared in Youth & Society, were led by Qian Zhang, of Southwest University in Chongqing, China and were published in 2018.

According to the retraction notice, which covers both “Short-term exposure to movie violence and implicit aggression during adolescence,” and “The priming effect of violent game play on aggression among adolescents”:

Psychology researcher committed misconduct, says university

A Dutch university has found a former psychology researcher at the institution guilty of misconduct for several offenses, including lack of ethics approval for some of her studies and fabricating results in grant applications.

In a Nov. 11, 2019, report, officials at the University of Leiden stated that the researcher, whom it does not identify, violated academic integrity in the following ways:

‘We decided to play it safe.’ Journal doesn’t retract paper even though the authors neglected to mention that they didn’t do the experiments themselves.

An eye journal has issued an expression of concern for a paper on glaucoma that, given the litany of problems with the data, could well have been retracted. Not least of the issues: The authors admitted to using an outside firm to conduct experiments they’d tried to pass off as having done themselves.

The article, “Fisetin rescues retinal functions by suppressing inflammatory response in a DBA/2J mouse model of glaucoma,” came from a group at People’s Hospital of Rizhao. It appeared online last February in Documenta Ophthalmologica, the journal of the International Society for Clinical Electrophysiology and Vision.

According to the researchers:

Reviewers asked authors to change their study design. It apparently didn’t go well.

In what the editor of a psychiatry journal says in an unusual case, the authors of a paper on treatments for depression have retracted it after being alerted to “inconsistencies” stemming from a change to their study design that the peer reviewers had requested.

Here’s the retraction notice, in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease:

Two spectrometry papers retracted, one for “intolerable” mistakes. The authors don’t agree.

Saudi researchers have lost a pair of papers in a spectrometry journal for errors the editors found fatal but the authors apparently dismiss as trivial.

The articles appeared in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in the United Kingdom. The principal author on both papers is Mohammad Gondal, of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dharhan. According to his website, Gondal is a highly decorated physicist, with

‘The methodology does not generate the results’: Journal corrects accounting study with flawed methods

What a difference a Yi,t=β0+β1IOˆi,t+β2Xi,t+ωt+εi,t.Yi,t=β0+β1IO^i,t+β2Xi,t+ωt+εi,t. makes.

The authors of a 2016 paper on institutional investing have corrected their article — to include the equation above — in the wake of persistent questions about their methodology. The move follows the protracted retraction earlier this year of a similar article in The Accounting Review by the duo, Andrew Bird and Stephen Karolyi, of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, for related problems.

The bottom line, it seems, is that Bird and Karolyi appear to be unable adequately to explain their research methods in ways that stand up to scrutiny.

The correction involves a paper published in The Review of Financial Studies, from Oxford University Press, titled “Do institutional investors demand public disclosure. According to the statement (the meat of which is behind a paywall):

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