Category: physical sciences retractions

Hydrogen study has “merit” — just not enough to avoid retraction

The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy has retracted a paper by a group from Malaysia and India who, reading between the lines, couldn’t quite get the low notes to overcome what the high notes lacked. Or something like that.

The paper, “Hydrogen production from sea water using waste aluminium and calcium oxide,” appears to have come out of the quaintly named 7th Petite Workshop on the Defect Chemical Nature of Energy Materials, held in March 2011 in Norway.

According to the notice: Continue reading Hydrogen study has “merit” — just not enough to avoid retraction

Authors dispute ethical lapse in case of double physics publication that wasn’t

Plasma Processes and Polymers has retracted a paper it published in March 2012 for what it describes as a “possible breach of ethics.”

That certainly sounds bad — if inconclusive — but the authors maintain the whole thing was a simple misunderstanding.

The article, “Plasma Acid: Water Treated by Dielectric Barrier Discharge,” came from the lab of Gary Friedman, a physicist at Drexel University in Philadelphia. The first, and corresponding, author was Natalie Shainsky, an award-winning graduate student at the school.

As the notice states: Continue reading Authors dispute ethical lapse in case of double physics publication that wasn’t

“Major errors” lead to retraction of Nature Photonics paper on quantum dots

Maybe it’s an occupational hazard of dealing with quantum physics — uncertainty and all that — but a group of Swiss researchers has retracted their paper on quantum dots after discovering “major errors” that undermined their conclusions.

The article, published in 2010 as a research letter in Nature Photonics, was titled “Polarization-entangled photons produced with high-symmetry site-controlled quantum dots,” by Eli Kapon and colleagues.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading “Major errors” lead to retraction of Nature Photonics paper on quantum dots

Updates: Journal of Climate adds info about withdrawn hot temps paper, chemistry journal corrects retraction notice

We have a few updates on stories we’ve covered.

In June, we wrote about the withdrawal of a paper claiming that temperatures in the last 60 years were warmest in the last 1,000 years. At the time, we reported, following posts by others, that the authors had been made aware of errors in their work and were withdrawing it to correct their calculations.

For several months, the page housing the Journal of Climate study read:

The requested article is not currently available on this site.

It still does. But another page that should house the paper now reads, as commenter Skiphil notes: Continue reading Updates: Journal of Climate adds info about withdrawn hot temps paper, chemistry journal corrects retraction notice

Two Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Advances retractions, for unreliable results, surprised author

Authors of two separate studies in RSC Advances — RSC is the Royal Society of Chemistry — have retracted their papers.

Here’s one notice, for “Laser-induced gold/chitosan nanocomposites with tailored wettability applied to multi-irradiated microfluidic channels:” Continue reading Two Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Advances retractions, for unreliable results, surprised author

Did a McLuhan moment lead to retraction in Chemistry — A European Journal?

The authors of a chemistry paper are retracting it after a Columbia University chemistry researcher pointed out a fatal misinterpretation of his own work in it.

Here’s the notice in Chemistry — A European Journal: Continue reading Did a McLuhan moment lead to retraction in Chemistry — A European Journal?

Physics paper retracted because authors wrongfully claimed they got there first — in the same journal

Here’s a tip: If you’re going to claim you were first to discover something, even though you know you weren’t, don’t publish your claim in the same journal where the first finding appeared. Oh, and don’t ask the researchers who made the first discovery for help along the way.

Those, perhaps, are the cynical lessons from a retraction notice that appeared last week in the Journal of Chemical Physics: Continue reading Physics paper retracted because authors wrongfully claimed they got there first — in the same journal

Journal retracts nanoparticle paper, citing widespread misuse of sources

The  International Journal of Nanomedicine is retracting a paper it published in June that appears to contain an impressive amount of misappropriated text and figures.

The article, “Particokinetics: computational analysis of the superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles deposition process,” came from a group at the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, in São Paulo, Brazil, led by Walter Cárdenas. According to the notice: Continue reading Journal retracts nanoparticle paper, citing widespread misuse of sources

Reused figures lead to two chemistry retractions, one correction

Why just have three peer-reviewed publications when you can reuse figures to publish a fourth?

That’s the sort of thinking that got one research group slapped with a retraction of their 2009 study, “Carbon Nanotubes Are Able To Penetrate Plant Seed Coat and Dramatically Affect Seed Germination and Plant Growth.”

The journal ACS Nano, published by the American Chemical Society, issued the retraction on Aug. 20: Continue reading Reused figures lead to two chemistry retractions, one correction

Iranian mathematicians latest to have papers retracted for fake email addresses to get better reviews

It’s tempting to start calling this a trend.

Three Elsevier math journals are among the latest scientific publications to be retracting papers because fake email addresses were used to obtain favorable peer reviews.

The three papers appear in two journals: “On two subclasses of (α,β)-metrics being projectively related,” in the Journal of Geometry and Physics; and “Complex Bogoslovsky Finsler metrics” and “Sasaki–Randers metric in Finsler geometry,” in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications. All three share authors Akbar Tayebi, of the University of Qom, Iran, and Esmaeil Peyghan, of Arak University, also in Iran.

The notices in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications read as follows (the EES refers to the Elsevier Editorial System): Continue reading Iranian mathematicians latest to have papers retracted for fake email addresses to get better reviews