Category: physical sciences retractions

Catalyst for change: grad student catches error in chem experiments, prompts retraction

acscatalysisACS Catalysis has retracted a 2012 research letter from a chemistry lab that discovered an error in their experiments.

According to last author Rory Waterman at the University of Vermont, an undetected reaction caused his lab to mistakenly mischaracterize the products of an iridium catalyst. The diligence of a graduate student brought it all to light, he noted: “In short, it was the ability of one of my group members to be a very good scientist.”

The letter, titled “High Activity and Selectivity for Silane Dehydrocoupling by an Iridium Catalyst,” was published in February. It has only accumulated 5 citations, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Catalyst for change: grad student catches error in chem experiments, prompts retraction

Harvard-Smithsonian space center retracts ruling on asteroid

Image of near Earth astroid Ida, via NASA
Image of main-belt asteroid Ida, via NASA

Between Mars and Jupiter floats a little rock with big dreams.

For three whole weeks in January and February, it was designated as 2015 BS515, a near Earth object, one of the many space rocks that astrophysicists keep an eye on for their potential to strike our planet. But then on February 12 came the announcement: the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics had downgraded the rock to a “routine main-belt object.” That means the asteroid is far enough away that we don’t have to worry about it hitting Earth any time soon.

The MPC gets sent two million observations of asteroids and comets every month. The five staff members then catalog these findings and figure out what’s new and what’s been seen before. The goal is to keep track of all near Earth objects, which make up about 1% of the observations the Center receives. It’s remarkable that there are so few corrections, given the 120 million observations on the MPC’s books.

Here’s a portion of the note that appeared in the most recent Minor Planet Electronic Circular (MPEC), which provides updates about comets, “observable unusual objects,” and other asteroid news: Continue reading Harvard-Smithsonian space center retracts ruling on asteroid

Science chemistry paper earns retraction after expression of concern, marking second for UT group

scienceThe authors of a 2011 Science paper that proposed a new way to direct chemical bonds have withdrawn the paper after concerns about the data prompted an investigation and Editorial Expression of Concern last year from the journal. The retraction is the second for the group, which has also had seven other expressions of concern.

After a reader emailed the editors to raise suspicions about the data, corresponding author Christopher W. Bielawski, then based at the University of Texas at Austin, led an investigation of all the figures. It found substantial problems: “In over 50% of the figure parts, the authors deemed the data unreliable due to uncertainty regarding the origin of data or the manner in which the data were processed,” according to the retraction notice.

UT Austin concluded that there had been misconduct, but did not elaborate.

Continue reading Science chemistry paper earns retraction after expression of concern, marking second for UT group

Several chem journals neutralize papers from Brazil group over figure fraud

quimica novaSeveral journals have retracted or corrected papers from a group at State University of Maringá in Brazil over what one chemistry journal calls “fraudulent use” of figures previously published by the authors.

Química Nova, which is retracting a 2013 paper, issued a notice that taps an additional eight articles with Angelica Lazarin as the corresponding author that reused figures. Specifically, the papers included images “where same trace on the figure was assigned to different conditions and/or compounds.”

A number of the papers mentioned in the Química Nova notice were co-authored by Claudio Airoldi, whose group retracted 11 papers in 2011 following concerns over fraudulent nuclear magnetic resonance images.

Continue reading Several chem journals neutralize papers from Brazil group over figure fraud

Acid studies burned by duplication test in corrosion papers

ldis20.v034.i07.coverPetroleum engineers in Iran have lost a pair of papers in the Journal of Dispersion Science and Technology for duplication and misuse of data.

The authors, whose various and varying affiliations include the National Iranian Oil Company, the Iranian Offshore Oil Company and Karaj Azad University, appear to have plagiarized not once, but twice: Two 2014 papers are both “substantially similar” to a 2013 paper, all published in the same journal. Which says plenty about both parties, we think.

What’s more, both retracted papers lifted data from a 2013 article in another journal, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, “without proper citation.”    Continue reading Acid studies burned by duplication test in corrosion papers

Materials science paper yanked over data pilfering

materials lettersMaterials Letters has withdrawn an article in press after the editor found out the first author, Yan Li, had taken all the data without permission.

According to the notice, the senior author told the journal that the data came from the lab Li used to work in at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, but the P.I. in Italy didn’t know about the paper.

From the notice: Continue reading Materials science paper yanked over data pilfering

Forged author list blows up explosives contamination paper

WWII poster for Ravenna Ordnance Plant, via Wikipedia
WWII poster for Ravenna Ordnance Plant, via Wikipedia

An environmental journal has retracted a paper on a technology that helps degrade explosives released into soil, because the first author never got the permission of his “co-authors” — oh, and used data that were “illegally obtained,” according to one of the slighted co-authors.

According to the EPA, more than 30 sites around the country are contaminated by decommissioned explosives, including weapons plants and army depots. A major source of the pollution was workers washing out old bombs into “evaporation lagoons” and then burning the resulting sludge.

The site used for the retracted paper was Ravenna Army Ammunition Plant, a decommissioned weapons factory that stored explosive waste in unlined landfills. According to the EPA, “open burning was also a common practice.”

The problems with the paper in Water, Air & Soil Pollution were uncovered after the head of the company, University of Georgia (UGA) professor Valentine Nzengung, found the paper on ResearchGate. He discovered that first author Chunhui Luo had used (now out-of-date) data without permission, and added Nzengung’s name to the paper without his knowledge. The other author is another UGA professor, Walter O’Niell, who told us he was also not informed about the paper.

Nzengung gave us further details via email: Continue reading Forged author list blows up explosives contamination paper

Math paper subtracted for plagiarism

Screen Shot 2015-02-10 at 1.02.16 PMISPACS’ Journal of Nonlinear Analysis and Application, whose website promises “very fast publication,” has pulled a paper for ripping off an article posted on arXiv.org.

Their plagiarism wasn’t exactly subtle. Here’s the abstract from the paper on arXiv.org:

We introduce and study the class of weak almost limited operators. We establish a characterization of pairs of Banach lattices E, F for which every positive weak almost limited operator T:E→F is almost limited (resp. almost Dunford-Pettis). As consequences, we will give some interesting results.

And here’s the abstract from the retracted paper:

Continue reading Math paper subtracted for plagiarism

Chem paper retracted because “a significant amount of data” was wrong

Jced_coverThe editors of ACS’s Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data have sunk a paper on halogenated alkanes after realizing that “a significant amount” of the data was “inaccurate,” thereby “invalidating” the paper.

Here’s the notice for “Influence of Solvent Nature on the Solubility of Halogenated Alkanes” (which has only been cited twice, according to Google Scholar): Continue reading Chem paper retracted because “a significant amount of data” was wrong

“The main improvements reported are invalid”: Quantum communication paper retracted

scientificreportsA paper on quantum communication has been retracted for failing to address several important problems, making the conclusions invalid.

Quantum communication involves sending a series of photons in specific quantum states over fiberoptic cables. It’s a little like the 1s and 0s of traditional computing, but much more secure. If the photons are intercepted on their way to the intended target, the quantum states will change, and the recipients can know their information was accessed by other parties. This is especially interesting to governments with a lot of secret information to transmit: both China and the U.S. have programs to develop these networks.

The retracted paper was a discussion of how to efficiently send lots of quantum information from different sources through the same fiberoptic cables at once.

Here’s the notice for “Efficient Quantum Transmission in Multiple-Source Networks”: Continue reading “The main improvements reported are invalid”: Quantum communication paper retracted