Category: physical sciences retractions

Obfuscation watch: Self-plagiarism (we think) leads to retraction of nanorod paper in Applied Physics Letters

C. P. Snow famously bemoaned the gulf between science and the humanities. The following retraction might be the sort of thing that would have given the physicist-cum-author fits for its estrangement from the English language.

Writing in the latest issue of Applied Physics Letters, a team from China Singapore and MIT appear to be confessing a case of self-plagiarism in their 2005 paper, “Growth of single crystal ZnO nanorods on GaN using an aqueous solution method: (we added a link to the earlier paper)” Continue reading Obfuscation watch: Self-plagiarism (we think) leads to retraction of nanorod paper in Applied Physics Letters

ORI comes down (hard) on Bengu Sezen, Columbia chemist accused of fraud

The Office of Research Integrity has thrown a heavy book at Bengu Sezen, a former chemist at Columbia University, alleging that school and agency investigators turned up 21 instances of research misconduct by the disgraced scientist.

According to the agency: Continue reading ORI comes down (hard) on Bengu Sezen, Columbia chemist accused of fraud

Leading cancer scientist retracts two papers, one 14 years old, but journal won’t say why

One of the world’s leading cancer researchers, Axel Ullrich of Germany, has retracted two papers published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Ullrich, director of microbiology at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, has been a central figure in many groundbreaking discoveries, from the development of genetically engineered insulin to the identification of the breast cancer gene HER2. The founder of several biotech firms, he also runs an international consortium, the Singapore Oncogenome Project, looking for other so-called oncogenes linked to protein-tyrosine kinase, or PTK, an enzyme that regulates cell growth and which, when run amok, is implicated in a variety of tumor types.

The retractions involve two articles, published eight years apart, on protein-tyrosine. The first, from 1996, was titled Continue reading Leading cancer scientist retracts two papers, one 14 years old, but journal won’t say why