Category: physical sciences retractions

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published by the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry after an inquiry found that they’d stolen the guts of the work from an unpublished manuscript one of them had reviewed for another journal.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: 

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

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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: 

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

Nobel winner retracts paper from Science

Frances Arnold

A Caltech researcher who shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has retracted a 2019 paper after being unable to replicate the results.

Frances Arnold, who won half of the 2018 prize for her work on the evolution of enzymes, tweeted the news earlier today:

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Two spectrometry papers retracted, one for “intolerable” mistakes. The authors don’t agree.

Saudi researchers have lost a pair of papers in a spectrometry journal for errors the editors found fatal but the authors apparently dismiss as trivial. 

The articles appeared in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in the United Kingdom. The principal author on both papers is Mohammad Gondal, of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dharhan. According to his website, Gondal is a highly decorated physicist, with 

Continue reading Two spectrometry papers retracted, one for “intolerable” mistakes. The authors don’t agree.

After ten years of being in limbo, a chemistry paper is retracted

In May of this year, François-Xavier Coudert, a chemist at PSL University in Paris, had a question about a paper in Chemistry: A European Journal.

Several days later, he had an answer — sort of — along with an apology for readers from Haymo Ross, the journal’s editor in chief.

Continue reading After ten years of being in limbo, a chemistry paper is retracted

A researcher with 30 retractions and counting: The whistleblower speaks

Via U.S. SEC Office of the Whistleblower

Retraction Watch readers who have been following our coverage of retractions by Ali Nazari may have noticed that an anonymous whistleblower was the person who flagged the issues for journals and publishers. That whistleblower uses the pseudonym Artemisia Stricta, and we’re pleased to present a guest post written by him or her.

Something is seriously out of place with the roughly 200 publications by Ali Nazari, a scientist at Swinburne University who studies structural materials. Some of these problems have been known by journals and publishers for years — some since 2012 — yet their response has been mixed. Some have retracted papers. Some have decided not to, so far. And others have been mum.

Continue reading A researcher with 30 retractions and counting: The whistleblower speaks

Materials scientist will soon be up to 30 retractions

A researcher at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia will soon add three more retractions to his burgeoning count, making 30.

Ali Nazari has lost 27 papers from several journals, as we’ve reported over the past few months. According to an upcoming notice obtained by Retraction Watch, the International Journal of Material Research (IJMR) will be retracting three more:

Continue reading Materials scientist will soon be up to 30 retractions

‘Miracle’ on ice as chemists pull nanocatalyst paper that fizzled

Image by Fathromi Ramdlon from Pixabay

God giveth miracles … and it seems she taketh them away as well.

A group of chemists in China has lost a 2018 paper which described a “miraculous” discovery that wasn’t. 

The paper was titled “A miraculous chiral Ir–Rh bimetallic nanocatalyst for asymmetric hydrogenation of activated ketones,” and it appeared in Organic Chemistry Frontiers, a publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry.  

The authors, from the State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals at Dalian University of Technology, purported to show that: 

Continue reading ‘Miracle’ on ice as chemists pull nanocatalyst paper that fizzled

Chemistry researcher who studies oil wells is up to seven retractions

via Wikipedia

A chemistry researcher in India is up to seven retractions and one correction for problematic images and other issues. 

The researcher, Mahendra Yadav, was the first author on an article titled “Corrosion inhibition of tubing steel during acidization of oil and gas wells,” which appeared in 2013 in the Journal of Petroleum Engineering (JPE). Yadav, who also has a correction for similar concerns, and who has a fairly extensive entry in PubPeer, is listed as being affiliated with the Department of Applied Chemistry at the Indian School of Mines, in Dhanbad. 

According to the notice: 

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Chaos as Chaos retracts paper it apparently never should have published in the first place

Apologies in advance for the headache that might come your way after reading this post, but the journal Chaos has a mindbending retraction.

The editors have pulled an article they published in January 2019 over concerns about contaminated peer review and other problems. The paper, “Neglecting nonlocality leads to unrealistic numerical scheme for fractional differential equation: Fake and manipulated results,” was a broadside against an article that had appeared in a different journal.

According to the author, Muhammad Altaf Khan, of the City University of Science and Information Technology in Peshawar, Pakistan:

Continue reading Chaos as Chaos retracts paper it apparently never should have published in the first place