Category: physical sciences retractions

Spat between physicists hits Italian courts for the second time

IgnazioCiufolini
Ignazio Ciufolini

The long-running feud between Italian physicists Ignazio Ciufolini and Lorenzo Iorio (which we’ve covered here and here) turned up a notch in November, when Ciufolini filed a defamation lawsuit against Iorio.

You can read the full lawsuit here (in Italian). The gist is this: Iorio accused Ciufolini of criticizing the work of other physicists on ArXiv.org under two separate pseudonyms (in a letter which the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, which published his claims, later retracted, saying it was a matter better handled locally). Iorio later left critical comments on articles about Ciufolini on the Science blog, Neuroskeptic, and an Italian newspaper La Repubblica‘s website.

This fight has a long history, despite the two having published articles together in the past. In 2004, Ciufolini’s lawyer sent Iorio a vaguely threatening letter (also in Italian) that had no specifics about what Iorio was doing wrong. Iorio described to us what the letter referred to:
Continue reading Spat between physicists hits Italian courts for the second time

Chemists Bielawski and Wiggins up to eight expressions of concern, one retraction

bielawski
Christopher Bielawski

Two researchers who already had three expressions of concern under their belts have five more, plus a retraction.

Kelly Wiggins and Christopher Bielawski share authorship on all the papers in question. After the first set of EoCs, Bielawski, at the time a PI at UT Austin, told Chemistry and Engineering News that a “former lab member” had admitted to faking the data. The recent retraction indicates that University of Texas at Austin’s Office of Research Integrity formally investigated the lab, and determined that Bielawski was telling the truth about a former lab member being to blame.

Bielawski has since taken a post at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. He told us that move was unrelated to anything that happened at UT Austin, but declined to answer other questions. Wiggins got a postdoc at the University of Illinois, which an Illinois spokesperson confirmed lasted from July 1 2013 to January 22 2014; we’re waiting to hear back on our question about whether her departure had anything to do with misconduct.

Here’s the retraction notice for “A Mechanochemical Approach to Deracemization,” in Wiley journal Angewandte Chemie: Continue reading Chemists Bielawski and Wiggins up to eight expressions of concern, one retraction

Researchers retract Science paper claiming to have detected a single proton

science jan 2015Less than three months after publishing a paper in Science which they claim to have been able to detect the spin of a single proton, the authors have retracted it for “a potentially serious issue with the main conclusion.”

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Researchers retract Science paper claiming to have detected a single proton

“You don’t retract a paper, you retract the results within:” Why one scientist still displays one of his mistakes

lance fortnow
Lance Fortnow

And now, one from the archives.

In 1989, then MIT grad student Lance Fortnow (he’s now chair of the computer science department at Georgia Tech) wrote a mathematical proof and published it as conference proceedings. He later went to publish the proof in a journal.

But he then discovered “unexpected technical challenges” and published a retraction in 1997. Both are still available on his personal website.

Not everyone would be that transparent. We reached out to ask why he left them up for people to see. He gave us his rationale: Continue reading “You don’t retract a paper, you retract the results within:” Why one scientist still displays one of his mistakes

Phantom authorship forces retraction of electron paper

ULTRAMICUltramicroscopy has retracted a paper it published earlier this year after the corresponding author admitted to submitting the paper without the consent of his colleagues.

The article, “The post-peak spectra in electron energy loss near edge structure,” came from a group led by one Feng Tian, a materials scientist at Shanghai University for Science and Technology. The other authors were Peter Shattschneider and Micheal Stoger-Pollach, of the Vienna University of Technology. Except that they weren’t.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Phantom authorship forces retraction of electron paper

Nanoparticle paper earns retraction for lack of reproducibility

issue 1 - RSC Advances_2012.inddA nanoparticle article published earlier this year has been retracted by RSC Advances for lack of reproducibility, although we haven’t been able to get more details about what happened.

Here’s the notice for “Sonochemical synthesis of poly(methyl methacrylate) core–surfactin shell nanoparticles for recyclable removal of heavy metal ions and its cytotoxicity” (freely available but requires sign-in): Continue reading Nanoparticle paper earns retraction for lack of reproducibility

Physics paper sinks amid accusations of unacceptable “overlap”

prl-bannerA paper in Physical Review Letters has been retracted for “overlap” with two other previously published papers.

The notice isn’t available online yet, so we got in touch with American Physical Society (APS) editorial director Dan Kulp for more information. Here’s what he told us about “Anomalous melting scenario of the two-dimensional core-softened system”: Continue reading Physics paper sinks amid accusations of unacceptable “overlap”

It’s happened again: Journal “cannot rule out” possibility author did his own peer review

ijkcThomson Reuters’ online peer review system ScholarOne is having quite a year.

This summer, a scientist exploited basic security flaws in how the system accepts author suggestions for peer reviewers to review a whole pile of his own manuscripts, ultimately resulting in the retraction of 60 papers and the resignation of the Taiwan minister of education.

Now, another journal that uses the system, Wiley’s International Journal of Chemical Kinetics, has retracted a paper because the authors provided their own peer reviewers and “the identity of the peer reviewers could subsequently not be verified.”

We asked editor Craig A. Taatjes if he was concerned the authors had conducted their own peer review. His response is reflective of many of the breaches we’ve seen so far for these online systems: Continue reading It’s happened again: Journal “cannot rule out” possibility author did his own peer review

A tale of two notices as Tunisian chemists lose two papers for duplicated data

molecules-logoMolecules has pulled a 2010 article by a trio of chemists from Tunisia who tried — and succeeded, for a while, at least — to publish the same data twice. The article was titled “An Expeditious Synthesis of [1,2]Isoxazolidin-5-ones and [1,2]Oxazin-6-ones from Functional Allyl Bromide Derivatives.” And indeed it was expeditious. Here’s the notice: Continue reading A tale of two notices as Tunisian chemists lose two papers for duplicated data

Asking for a retraction was “an overbearing response, though I agree that the student screwed up big time”

celluloseJust two months after a PhD student at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia published a paper in August without the knowledge of his co-author, a professor at the university, the paper was retracted by Cellulose.

Here’s the notice for “Corrosion protection of steel sheets by chitosan from shrimp shells at acid pH,” by graduate student Ubong M. Eduok and professor Mazen M. Khaled (well, not really by Khaled): Continue reading Asking for a retraction was “an overbearing response, though I agree that the student screwed up big time”