A group of Turkish researchers has retracted a paper purporting to show a method of calculating the thermodynamic properties of certain transition metals, because it was plagiarized from another article. The withdrawn paper, “A simple analytical EAM model for some bcc metals,” was published in 2010 in Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation.
The journal Geology has retracted a paper that, when it was published in May 2010, was hailed as a major step forward in understanding what happened when the Indian and Asian land masses collided millions of years ago. As The Hindu reported when the paper was first published:
Dr. [Anju] Pandey and her colleagues used sophisticated analytical techniques to demonstrate the occurrence of relict majorite, a variety of mineral garnet, in rocks collected from the Himalayas. Majorite is stable only under ultra-high pressure conditions, meaning that it must have been formed very deep down in the Earth’s crust, before surfacing millions of years later.
“Our findings are significant because researchers have disagreed about the depth of subduction of the Indian plate beneath Asia,” said Dr. Pandey.
In fact, the previous depth estimates conflicted with estimates based on computer models. The new results suggest that the leading edge of the Indian plate sank to a depth around double that of previous estimates.
“Our results are backed up by computer modelling and will radically improve our understanding of the subduction of the Indian continental crust beneath the Himalayas,” said Pandey, according to an NOC release.
We have an update to our coverage of the retractions involving papers from a group of researchers in Iran that were published in Computational and Theoretical Chemistry (formerly called the Journal of Molecular Structure: THEOCHEM)
Back in March, we reported that the journal Computational and Theoretical Chemistry (CTC) had retracted a pair of 2006 papers by a group of Iranian researchers. As the notices stated, the scientists had recalled their articles after detecting “serious errors” with the work post-publication.
At the time, the authors still had three other articles in good standing with CTC. No longer.
Last month, we brought you news of two retractions in math journals for duplicate publication and apparent guest authorship. Last week, we learned that the lead author of one of those papers, Amir Mahmood, has retracted another paper, this one in Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications.
According to the retraction notice, the paper was an “accidental duplication of an article that has already been published” in Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation.
The papers share two authors: Mahmood, of the department of mathematics at COMSATS Institute of Information Technology and the Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences of GC University, both in Lahore, Pakistan; and N.A. Khan, of the University of Karachi’s math department. Khan was also on one of the two papers we wrote about last month, but not the one Mahmood co-authored. Those two papers’ shared author was M. Jamil.
Mahmood told Retraction Watch by email that the papers are not duplicates, and that the journal editors could not explain to him why they were.
If a paper that has never been cited is retracted, will it be missed?
Japanese researchers have retracted an obscure 1996 article in an equally obscure physics journal after concluding — some 15 years later — that their fundamental assertion was mistaken.
The paper, “Uptake and excretion of cobalt in the crustacean Portunus trituberculatus,” in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, purported to show that a form of the element cobalt might be helpful in tracing the growth of Portunus trituberculatus, otherwise known as the blue crab.
That’s the world’s most harvested crab species and a particular favorite in Asia. But don’t confuse it with the Chesapeake Bay blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, of William Warner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Beautiful Swimmers.
The problem with such elemental tracers, it seems, is that crabs moult repeatedly, shedding their shells, along with the elements that build up inside them. According to researchers from the Research Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and the Osaka Prefectural Fisheries Experimental Station, however, a volatile form of cobalt, previously undetected, could be a suitable element for tracing the growth of both crabs and prawns — another important aquaculture species in Asia — over time.
Both retraction notices, which appeared within the space of a few weeks in late February and early March, say the same thing — that is to say, nothing at all, really:
This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author(s) and/or editor. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy.
A group of Turkish researchers has retracted a paper purporting to show a method of calculating the thermodynamic properties of certain transition metals, because it was plagiarized from another article. The withdrawn paper, “A simple analytical EAM model for some bcc metals,” was published in 2010 in Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation.
