The editor of Desalination has retracted a paper that plagiarized from another article published in the same journal six years earlier. The papers describe desalination systems, of course.
This retraction happened on a relatively quick timeline: The paper, “An integrated optimization model and application of MEE-TVC desalination system,” was published online in June, and pulled in January.
Here’s the retraction note:
A paper on a hybrid algorithm turned out to be a hybrid itself — some original data, plus some from a paper that the authors had published earlier.
According to the retraction note, the overlap was significant enough to pull it from the scientific record.
The retracted paper describes an algorithm that is the combination of a “genetic algorithm” and a “cultural algorithm”– which, as their names sort of suggest, focus on looking at a population of solutions, and the history of which kinds of solutions work, respectively. According to the abstract, results to optimization problems found with a hybrid algorithm are “more accurate and the fast convergence is obvious.”
The retraction note provides a few details about the nature of the duplication:
Continue reading Algorithm paper retracted for “significant overlap” with another
The list of co-authors on a paper about a “bioelectronic composite” was apparently too sparse.
According to its retraction note — posted at the request of the editor-in-chief and the corresponding author — the paper failed to include some of the collaborators.
The Biosensors & Bioelectronics paper looks at a protein complex that could function as part of a “bio-hybrid” device, like a sensor or a solar cell. It has been cited only by its retraction according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
What went wrong in allotting credit for the work pretty straightforward, according to the note for “Monolayers of pigment–protein complexes on a bare gold electrode: Orientation controlled deposition and comparison of electron transfer rate for two configurations.” Here it is in full:
Continue reading Journal retracts bioelectronics paper for lack of credit to collaborators
Authors are retracting a 2014 paper about how liquid-crystalline materials self-organize in low temperature conditions after realizing they had measured the temperatures incorrectly.
The error affected three figures and a table in “Milestone in the NTB phase investigation and beyond: direct insight into molecular self-assembly.” The paper, published in Soft Matter, has been cited three times, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
The retraction note, published in August, offers more detail as to exactly what went wrong:
A paper about combating cyberterrorism is coming under fire after allegations of plagiarism sparked on social media.
Soon after the paper was published by the journal Computer Technology and Application in 2015, Orgnet LLC, a network analysis software company, announced on Twitter that the paper took content from its webpage. The firm tweeted: Continue reading Cyberterrorism paper under attack for plagiarizing from multiple sources
A peer reviewer apparently thought portions of a manuscript he was reviewing were so good he wanted them for himself.
Substantial sections of a paper that Junwei Di reviewed appear in his own paper on a method for making tiny particles of silver to precise specifications. Di is a chemist at Soochow University in China. The journal has banned Di from submitting papers or serving as a peer reviewer “for a certain time.”
The retraction note for the 2015 paper, “Controllable Electrochemical Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles on Indium-Tin-Oxide-Coated Glass” explains how the editors at ChemElectroChem became aware of the plagiarism:
Continue reading Peer reviewer steals text for his own chemistry paper, gets sanctioned by journal
A chemistry journal has issued a retraction after “a thorough and time-consuming analysis” revealed two out of four authors did not agree to submitting an article published in May, which also contains “considerable overlap and redundancy” with another paper published a few weeks prior in a different journal.
Shortly after the paper appeared in Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy, the journal was told “that parts of the manuscript were reused” from an article in the Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers that was published online March 16. That led to the investigation, and the discovery of the additional authorship issues.
Here’s the full notice: Continue reading Author dispute, “considerable overlap” retract chemistry study
A paper on nanoparticles that target cancer cells has been retracted for duplicating figures from three other papers.
The articles all share a first author: Manasmita Das, based at the time of the research at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER). According to her LinkedIn profile, she is currently a postdoc at the University of North Carolina.
The abstract of the 2011 Bioconjugate Chemistry paper explains just what the new nanoparticles would be useful for:
Multifunctional nanoparticles, developed in the course of the study, could selectively target and induce apoptosis to folate-receptor (FR) overexpressing cancer cells with enhanced efficacy as compared to the free drug. In addition, the dual optical and magnetic properties of the synthesized nanoparticles aided in the real-time tracking of their intracellular pathways also as apoptotic events through dual fluorescence and MR-based imaging.
But according to the retraction note, figure duplications “seriously undermine the conclusions presented in the research article.” Here’s more about the source of those duplications from the full note: Continue reading Journal retracts nanoparticles paper for duplicating figures
The Journal of the American Chemical Society has issued an expression of concern over “the presentation of results” in a 2014 paper about a new probe for use in imaging.
We haven’t heard back from the journal nor the authors of the paper, so there’s not much we can officially say about what the journal is investigating.
Here’s the text from the expression of concern:
Continue reading JACS imaging paper “under editorial review”
Stefan Franzen doesn’t give up. Ten years ago, he began to suspect the data behind his colleagues’ research about using RNA to make palladium nanoparticles, a potentially valuable tool that ended up as a Science paper. Recently, the National Science Foundation (NSF) decided to cut off funding for Bruce Eaton and Dan Feldheim — currently at the University of Colorado at Boulder — and last week, Science retracted the paper. We talked to Franzen, based at North Carolina State University (NCSU), about his decade-long efforts, and how it feels to be finally vindicated.
Retraction Watch: How did you first begin to suspect the findings by Eaton and Feldheim?
Stefan Franzen: Starting in early 2005, I was collaborating with Drs. Eaton and Feldheim at NCSU, thanks to two joint grants from the W.M. Keck Foundation and NSF. During a group meeting in December of 2005, a graduate student showed electron microscopy data that were inconsistent with the assignment of the particles as palladium. Over time, we kept producing more data that called their findings into question; in April 2006, a postdoc showed that the hexagonal particles could be obtained without RNA. By then, I could see that there was a significant discrepancy between what was written in the articles and what was done and observed in the laboratory.
RW: How did you report your concerns?
Continue reading After 10 years, a whistleblower is vindicated. Here’s why he kept going.