Category: physics retractions

Ghost authorship? Two Meccanica retractions as an author’s work is plagiarized by disappearing scientists

About two years ago, Marc Duflot, a research engineer at Cenaero, heard a disturbing tale from a collaborator. The collaborator, it seemed, had been asked to review a paper submitted to a journal, and noticed that it was remarkably similar to a paper by Duflot. Duflot’s collaborator recommended that the journal reject the paper, and it did. Duflot tells Retraction Watch (we added a link to the paper in question):

Then, several months later, I discovered that the…paper had been submitted and accepted in Meccanica. If I remember correctly, I discovered it by searching the web with Google Scholar with terms related to my field of expertise.

So in January 2010, Duflot wrote to the editors of Meccanica to alert them to the plagiarism by the authors, M. Garzon and D. Sargoso of the University of Madrid. He concluded his email:

I am deeply disappointed by the fraudulent behaviour of M. Garzon and D. Sargoso. Strangely, I cannot find any mention of these two people on the web neither of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Madrid. Otherwise, I would have reported this to the head of their department.

An editorial assistant got back to him: Continue reading Ghost authorship? Two Meccanica retractions as an author’s work is plagiarized by disappearing scientists

Physics paper in Science retracted after Vanderbilt facility closes

If the facility you need to reproduce your experiments closes after you’ve discovered questions about your original findings, what do you do?

If you’re a group of physicists that published a 2006 paper in Science, “Desorption of H from Si(111) by Resonant Excitation of the Si-H Vibrational Stretch Mode,” you retract your study. Here’s the notice, from today’s Science: Continue reading Physics paper in Science retracted after Vanderbilt facility closes

Ties that don’t bind: Group retracts parathyroid hormone crystallography paper

The authors of a 2008 paper alleging to have described how a particular protein binds to the parathyroid hormone have retracted it. The paper, “Structure of the Parathyroid Hormone Receptor C Terminus Bound to the G-Protein Dimer Gβ12,” has been cited 12 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the notice: Continue reading Ties that don’t bind: Group retracts parathyroid hormone crystallography paper

A quick Physical Review Letters retraction after author realizes analysis was “performed incorrectly”

One of the authors of a paper in Physical Review Letters has withdrawn it, after someone pointed out an error.

The paper, “Coulomb Forces on DNA Polymers in Charged Fluidic Nanoslits,” was written by Brown University’s Derek Stein and one of his graduate students, Yongqiang Ren. It was published in February of this year, and the retraction ran on July 20.

The notice is forthright: Continue reading A quick Physical Review Letters retraction after author realizes analysis was “performed incorrectly”

Plagiarism forces retraction of mathematical modeling paper

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.

Here’s the notice (we added a link to the plagiarized paper): Continue reading Plagiarism forces retraction of mathematical modeling paper

Physics paper retracted “on ethical grounds” — aka the data had already been published

There was a curious retraction published online last month in Physica Scripta, an Institute of Physics journal. The notice, for “Response of Cu 0.5 (Tl 0.5-y Hg y)Ba 2 Ca 3 Zn 2 Cu 2 O 12-δ (y =0, 0.15, 0.25 and 0.35) superconductors in electric and magnetic fields,” reads as follows: Continue reading Physics paper retracted “on ethical grounds” — aka the data had already been published

Another unofficial record? Authors walk back arcane blue crab paper — 15 years later

Portunus trituberculatus, courtesy NOAA

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.

But that turned out to be a (shell)fish tale. Per the retraction notice, which appears in the May 15, 2011 issue of the journal: Continue reading Another unofficial record? Authors walk back arcane blue crab paper — 15 years later

Physics Letters A paper gets retracted twice, but the issues remain “unsettled”

A retraction with a complex and yet unclear narrative appears in the April 25, 2011 issue of Physics Letters A. According to the notice, for “Nuclear spin magnetic resonance force microscopy using slice modulation:”

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editors of Physics Letters A because there are unsettled issues on how the research was carried out, how the data were acquired and analyzed. The article was removed from the journal issue before printing although it appeared online. In addition, the article was accidentally published online twice in the same journal.

As the notice suggests, this was actually the second retraction, of the same paper. Here was the first, in 2008, shortly after the paper was published. And here is a removal notice, from later that year. We haven’t come across such an occurrence before, although we’ve been writing Retraction Watch for less than a year.

There are six editors of Physics Letters A, and we tried them all for comment on the “unsettled issues.” A few pointed to Burkhard Fricke, the communicating editor for the paper, who is no longer with the journal. He didn’t respond to requests for more information.

A few referred us to Karine van Wetering, a publisher at Elsevier: Continue reading Physics Letters A paper gets retracted twice, but the issues remain “unsettled”

Crystal myth: 11 more retractions from crystallography journal after 2010 fakery

About a year ago, Acta Crystallographica Section E issued a bombshell editorial. The journal was pulling 70 papers from two groups of researchers at the same Chinese university after discovering that the structures they reported had been fakes.

As the editorial explained, the fraud was detected during a routine review of the structures by Ton Spek, of Utrecht University in The Netherlands. According to the editorial: Continue reading Crystal myth: 11 more retractions from crystallography journal after 2010 fakery

“Biologist realizes he’s been studying Cadbury egg”: Mislabeled bottle leads to Phys Rev B retraction

The quote in the title of this post is a potential Onion headline that didn’t make it into print. It was part of an episode of This American Life that aired last week, and it seemed apropos, even though the subject here is superconductors rather than biology.

After all, we’ve written about a retraction that resulted from ordering the wrong mice. Today, we bring you the tale of a retraction caused by a mislabeled bottle. According to a retraction notice that appeared online last month in Physical Review B: Continue reading “Biologist realizes he’s been studying Cadbury egg”: Mislabeled bottle leads to Phys Rev B retraction