Two months after Harvard and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital said they were requesting the retraction of more than 30 papers from a former cardiac stem cell lab there, two American Heart Association journals have retracted more than a dozen papers from the lab.
Yesterday, Circulation retracted three papers, and Circulation Research retracted 10. All 13 were among 15 subjected to expressions of concern last month. Continue reading Anversa cardiac stem cell lab earns 13 retractions
A leading journal in ecology and evolution is going through an evolution of its own, following the resignation of its editor in chief and more than half of its editorial board.
The mass exodus at Diversity & Distributions came after Wiley, which publishes the journal, allegedly blocked it from running a letter protesting the company’s decision to make D & D open access (the company disputes the claim, as we’ll detail in a bit). A letter about the issue, signed by scores of researchers worldwide, decried Wiley’s move: Continue reading Majority of journal’s editorial board resigns after publisher’s handling of letter about move to open access
As we’re fond of repeating, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Which doesn’t jibe with the findings in an eye-catching 2018 paper that found people were less fearful of catching a contagious illness if they were in a dark room or were wearing sunglasses.
Fortunately for us, although not for the researchers, we no longer have to live with the cognitive dissonance. The paper, the journal tells us, will be retracted for flaws in the data — which, thanks to the open sharing of data, quickly came to light.
The study, which appeared in May in Psychological Science, reported that: Continue reading Psychology journal to retract study claiming that people fear contagion less in the dark
A researcher in Spain who studies dental implants has had another six papers retracted, for a total of 18.
José Luis Calvo-Guirado‘s latest retraction, which along with the other 17 appeared in Clinical Oral Implants Research, a Wiley title, was for “image discrepancies resulting in unreliable data.” Three appeared in June, and two in July, also for image issues. The researcher also has at least two corrections; one in Annals of Anatomy — Anatomischer Anzeiger and one in Materials. Continue reading Dental researcher in Spain up to 18 retractions
What can studying retractions in business and management journals tell us? Earlier this year, Dennis Tourish, of the University of Sussex, and Russell Craig, of the University of Portsmouth, both in the UK, published a paper in the Journal of Management Inquiry that analyzed 131 such retractions. The duo — who were also two of three authors of a recent paper on retractions in economics — also interviewed three journal editors involved in retractions, two co-authors of retracted papers who were not responsible for the fraud, and one researcher found to have committed fraud. We asked Tourish, the author of an upcoming book on “fraud, deception and meaningless research” in management studies, some questions about the study by email.
Retraction Watch (RW): You found a “large proportion of retractions in high-quality journals.” Would you say that is consistent with findings in other fields? Continue reading Legal threats, opacity, and deceptive research practices: A look at more than 100 retractions in business and management
More than four and a half years after questions were first raised about work in a cardiac stem cell lab at Harvard and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a year and a half after the Brigham and Partners Healthcare paid $10 million to settle allegations of fraud in the lab’s data, a month after Harvard the Brigham disclosed that they were calling for the retractions of more than 30 papers from the lab, and three weeks after the NIH paused a clinical trial based on the work, two leading journals have issued an expression of concern about 15 papers from the lab.
But expressions of concern are not retractions, of course. From the notice, in Circulation and Circulation Research, both of which are published by the American Heart Association: Continue reading Journals stamp expressions of concern on 15 papers from Anversa’s cardiac stem cell lab
A psychiatry journal has retracted a 2015 meta-analysis on the effectiveness of ketamine for depression after readers found that the article double-counted patients in some studies, thereby inflating the apparent benefits of the drug.
The article, “Efficacy of ketamine in bipolar depression: systematic review and meta-analysis,” was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Practice by a group from the United States and England. But a pair of researchers in Sweden noticed the duplication — and what seems to have been a rather slapdash approach to the work — and pushed to have the paper retracted.
According to the results section of the abstract: Continue reading Ketamine for depression? Paper retracted for error that double-counted clinical trial participants
A researcher, formerly of Bath Spa University in the UK, who studies how computer games are designed, has retracted a paper and corrected three others after she said she became aware that they all contained plagiarism.
The common author of the four papers, Dana Ruggiero,
focuses on praxis in design for persuasive technology, multimedia installations, and affective knowledge, including the application of games for social issues such as higher education, homelessness, juvenile offenders, children in care, and healthcare.
The retraction notice for “Project-based learning in a virtual internship programme: A study of the interrelated roles between intern, mentor and client,” a paper which first appeared in Computers & Education in July 2017, reads: Continue reading Games researcher retracts one paper, corrects three others, for plagiarism
In a first for the CDC, the agency’s premier scientific publication has retracted a 2016 article on suicide, five months after a news story pointed out serious errors in the paper.
The article, initially published as “Suicide Rates by Occupational Group — 17 States, 2012,” had purported to find that farmers were at particularly high risk of suicide. That result in particular caught the attention of a website called The New Food Economy (TNFE), which last June called out what it said were errors in the CDC’s analysis. And on June 29, the journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), issued a reader’s note.
As TNFE wrote, the crux of the mistake involves the misclassification of farmer suicides in a way that significantly inflated the rate of these events — errors the website said it first raised with the CDC in April 2018: Continue reading In a first, U.S. CDC retracts, replaces study about suicide risk in farmers
A researcher fired from the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) in 2014 for plagiarizing the work of a Harvard scientist has been barred from receiving Federal U.S. funding for two years.
The sanctions come three years after the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) tried to impose a three-year ban on funding for Rakesh Srivastava, who appealed the move. In September of this year, Department of Health and Human Services administrative law judge Keith Sickendick recommended a two-year sanction.
In his decision, Sickendick noted that there was no evidence that Srivastava had engaged in research misconduct other than in this incident, and that he denied adding the plagiarized passages to the grant application himself. (Srivastava, who had also worked at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, is last author on a 2002 retraction from the Journal of Biological Chemistry for plagiarism, but it is unclear who was responsible.)
ORI tells Retraction Watch that it is “pleased that the ALJ upheld its findings.
An ‘Eminent Scholar’
Srivastava — along with his wife, Sharmila Shankar — joined KUMC in 2009 to great fanfare: Continue reading Former University of Kansas researcher who plagiarized Harvard prof banned from Federal funding for two years