physical sciences retractions – Page 3

30 years later, physics journal retracts paper that blamed feminism for many of society’s ills

For those of you who think that critiques of feminism have no place in journals about physics, the Canadian Journal of Physics agrees. But it took them 30 years to get there.

The journal has retracted a 1990 article by a notorious male chauvinist who claimed, among other things, that feminism was responsible for an increase in cheating in school, psychological damage in young children and an overall decay in society.

The case has echoes of the controversy over Thomas Hudlicky, another Canadian chemist who recently lost a ~~30-year-old~~ paper for sexism and anti-diversity views.

This time, the author was Gordon Freeman, a now-emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Alberta, in Canada. Its title is one of those science-y-sounding strings of words that say both very little and, on reflection, quite a lot: “Kinetics of nonhomogeneous processes in human society: Unethical behaviour and societal chaos.”

Exclusive: University of Arizona says former researcher committed misconduct by plagiarizing figure

A former researcher in the University of Arizona’s optics school engaged in “a serious case of research misconduct,” Retraction Watch has learned.

Palash Gangopadhyay, who until 2019 was a research scientist at Arizona, used a figure from a 2003 paper by other authors when he co-authored a 2018 paper in Optics Letters titled “High sensitivity magnetometer using nanocomposite polymers with large magneto-optic response,” Wyant College of Optical Sciences dean Thomas Koch wrote to colleagues in an email obtained by Retraction Watch. The 2003 paper appeared in an obstetrics journal.

The 2018 paper has been cited nine times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

Koch wrote:

Publisher retracts nearly two dozen articles, blocks nearly three dozen more, from alias-employing author who plagiarized

IOP Publishing has retracted nearly two dozen conference proceedings which had been cribbed from other articles, translated into English and festooned with citations to the authors’ own work.

According to the publisher, 12 of the 29 authors on the papers come from the same institution, Universidad de la Costa, in Barranquilla, Colombia. IOP says the institution is investigating.

The first author on most of the papers is Jesus Silva, who appears to be affiliated with the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, in Lima, Peru — and has now joined our leaderboard with 23 retractions. For some, the first author is Amelec Viloria, of Universidad de la Costa.

Except, according to IOP Publishing, Silva and Viloria are the same person, using an alias on some of the articles.

Top chemistry journal retracts paper for faked data

A leading chemistry journal has retracted a 2019 paper by a pair of researchers in Switzerland after determining that it contained fabricated data.

The article, “The manganese(I)‐catalyzed asymmetric transfer hydrogenation of ketones: disclosing the macrocylic privilege,” was written by Alessandro Passera and Antonio Mezzetti, of the ETH Zurich in Switzerland. It appeared in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Readers might remember Angewandte Chemie from this post in June about a controversial article it published — and then removed — in the wake of a mass outcry that prompted much of its editorial board to resign and led to the suspension of two of its editors. Fallout from the scandal — in the form of “the journal’s interim Editor-in-Chief Committee” — is evident in the retraction notice, which reads:

A physics paper claimed the Koran had predicted the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Now it has an expression of concern.

A paper on how the Koran anticipated the discovery of the Higgs Boson — aka the “God particle” — has been hit with an expression of concern.

The article, “God particles in the perspective of The AlQuran Surah Yunus: 61 and modern science,” appeared in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series, which in 2017 published submissions to the 2016 International Conference on Science and Applied Science (Engineering and Educational Science), held in Indonesia. It was authored by Sri Jumini, of the Physics Department Program of Sains AlQuran University in Java.

Being neither particle physicists nor scholars of world religions, we’re not well-equipped to summarize Jumini’s theory, so here’s how he describes the work in the abstract:

Controversial essay at German chemistry journal leads to suspensions, mass resignations

Facing a storm of criticism on social media, a chemistry journal in Germany has suspended two editors who handled a controversial essay that it said “highlights the bias displayed in our field and many others” to women and minority researchers.

And the 16 members of the journal’s international advisory board — which includes Nobel Laureates — resigned while denouncing the essay.

The article, “Organic synthesis-where now?’ Is thirty years old. A reflection on the current state of affairs,” by Tomas Hudlicky, of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, had appeared in Angewandte Chemie, the flagship publication of the German Chemical Society. Hudlicky’s argument included several statements that suggested a hostility to efforts on university campuses to promote diversity.

The journal initially removed the essay without a notice, which isn’t best practice for retractions. It has since issued this statement from Neville Compton, the editor-in-chief:

Following outrage, chemistry journal makes a paper decrying diversity efforts disappear

The New York Times isn’t the only outlet that has walked back a commentary this week amid reader outrage.

Following a flood of criticism on social media, a chemistry journal in Germany has disappeared an essay by Canadian researcher who argued that efforts to promote diversity in the field were hurting science. [See an update on this post.]

Another whodunit: The author no one can find

Readers, meet Beatriz Ychussie. Or don’t meet Beatriz Ychussie.

Ychussie is a co-author of three recently retracted math papers. Or maybe not.

The three articles — in the Journal of Inequalities and Applications, Advances in Difference Equations, and Fixed Point Theory and Applications, all Springer Nature titles — had an overlapping set of problems, including plagiarism and faked peer review. But they all had one particular problem when it came to Ychussie:

Peer review bandits purloin again, this time in chemistry

A pair of researchers in India have lost a 2017 paper published by the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry after an inquiry found that they’d stolen the guts of the work from an unpublished manuscript one of them had reviewed for another journal.

The article in question, “Tri-s-triazine (s-heptazine), a novel electron-deficient core for soft self-assembled supramolecular structures,” appeared in Chemical Communications was submitted on August 4, 2017 and published on September 25, 2017, and was written by Irla Kumar and Sandeep Kumar, of the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore.

Sandeep Kumar, who is now retired, was a leading figure in the field of liquid crystals. The Royal Society of Chemistry feted him as one of the “most cited” researchers in Chemical Communications and another of its journals in 2006 and 2007. He also served on the editorial boards of several journals, including Liquid Crystals — a post that is particularly relevant in light of what follows.

According to the retraction notice:

If articles about a Schrödinger equation are retracted, do they still exist?

Can two articles about aspects of Schrödinger’s work exist in the literature at the same time if they have plagiarized from other papers about the same subjects?

The first paper, “Fixed point theorems for solutions of the stationary Schrödinger equation on cones,” appeared in 2015 and was written by Gaixian Xue, of Henan University of Economics and Law in China, and Eve Yuzbasi, of Istanbul University. According to the retraction notice, from Fixed Point Theory and Applications:

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