Category: psychology

A journal has issued an expression of concern about five papers by a psychology researcher whose studies related to women’s sexual behavior and perceived attractiveness have raised eyebrows. 

As we’ve previously reported, sleuths have identified seemingly impossible and likely fabricated results in the work of Nicolas Guéguen, a professor of marketing at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France, leading to the retraction of four of his papers.  

The latest expression of concern relates to five articles in Perceptual and Motor Skills, a SAGE title, which has published eight studies of Guéguen’s, including several on which he is listed as the sole author.

The notice applies to:

Continue reading “Bust Size and Hitchhiking” author earns five expressions of concern

A psychologist whose controversial publications on human behavior have attracted scrutiny for their implausible workload and impossible statistics has lost a third paper – seven years after sleuths first began questioning it. 

The 2012 article, “Color and Women Attractiveness: When Red Clothed Women Are Perceived to Have More Intense Sexual Intent,” was published in the Journal of Social Psychology, a Taylor & Francis title. It has been cited 53 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

Nicolas Guéguen of the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France is listed as the paper’s sole author. We’ll let him describe the article, as he did in its abstract: 

Continue reading Paper about “sexual intent” of women wearing red retracted seven years after sleuths raised concerns

A psychology professor has lost a paper for failing to disclose a crucial conflict of interest about one of the subjects of the work, which critiqued various blogs.

That’s because one of those blogs was written by none other than the author of the paper, Peter Kinderman, a professor at the University of Liverpool and a former president of the British Psychological Society. 

The paper’s comments about Kinderman’s Blog ‘F’ were generally positive, with phrases such as: 

Continue reading What happened when a psychology professor used a peer-reviewed paper to praise his own blog – and slam others’

Ronald Reagan was president and James Wyngaarden was director of the National Institutes of Health when a division of the agency found 10 papers describing trials of psychiatric drugs it had funded had fake data or other serious issues. 

Thirty-five years later, one of those articles has finally been retracted. 

A 1987 report by the National Institute of Mental Health found that Stephen Breuning, then an assistant professor of child psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, had made up results in 10 papers purportedly describing research funded by two grants the institute had funded.

The recent retraction came through the efforts of psychologist Russell Warne, who unearthed the report with the help of a couple librarians, posted it on his blog, and contacted journals about its findings. 

In a blog post about the report, Warne summed up the case: 

Continue reading In 1987, the NIH found a paper contained fake data. It was just retracted.

Joe Hilgard’s son wasn’t even a twinkle in his father’s sharp eye for bad data when an Elsevier journal notified the social psychologist that it intended to retract a 2015 article he’d flagged on the link between exposure to violent media and aggression in adolescents. 

Well, the journal has finally retracted the paper – but not before Hilgard’s son was born and started speaking (more on that in a moment). 

Hilgard’s ability to spot bad data, and his tenacity at holding journals accountable for their publications, has now led to five retractions. Four of those papers belong to a researcher in China named Qian Zhang, of Southwest University in Chongqin. As readers of this blog might recall, Zhang lost a pair of papers in 2019 after Hilgard and others raised questions about the integrity of the data. 

As Hilgard, who also notified Southwest University about his findings, told us back in 2019 about Zhang’s previously retracted papers: 

Continue reading Which takes longer to produce: An infant who can sit on his own, or a retraction?

Two years after a psychology researcher in The Netherlands was found guilty of  misconduct, including manipulating data and cutting co-workers out of publications, a new report says she deserves more retractions. 

In November 2019, as we reported, Lorenza Colzato was found guilty by an investigation at Leiden University of having failed to obtain ethics ethics approval for some of her studies, manipulating her data and fabricating results in grant applications. 

At the time, the institution – which Colzato had left for TU Dresden – called for the retraction of two of the researcher’s papers. Both were pulled, and we spoke to the three whistleblowers about lessons of the case.

However, the Leiden University weekly newspaper Mare has learned that a subsequent inquiry – a report on which appeared without announcement in November 2021– concluded that 15 of Colzato’s articles appeared to contain evidence of misconduct:

Continue reading University recommends seven more retractions for psychology researcher

A journal has issued an expression of concern for a nine year old paper, which purported to find that people associate morality with brightness (that’s light, not smarts), after a data sleuth found problems with the results. 

The article, “Is It Light or Dark? Recalling Moral Behavior Changes Perception of Brightness,” appeared in Psychological Science in 2012 and was written by a group of marketing researchers at the Winston-Salem State University, in North Carolina, the University of Kansas and the University of Arizona. 

Aaron Charlton, a marketing researcher at Illinois State University who’s involved in replication efforts in his field, told us that he decided to take a closer look at the data in the paper, which he noted had been the subject of two previous attempts to replicate the key findings, after seeing this post on PubPeer. 

Continue reading ‘I have zero complaints about the process’: Post-publication analysis earns perception paper a flag

The publishing firm Wiley says it is investigating a pivotal paper about a controversial public health tool after Retraction Watch reported on a robust critique of the article which highlighted a number of potentially serious flaws with the research.

We’re talking about the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS), whose developer, Donald Morisky, has been hitting researchers with hefty licensing fees — or demands to retract — for nearly two decades. 

One of the key papers supporting the validity of the MMAS-8 (the second iteration of the MMAS) was a 2008 article by Morisky and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension. 

Continue reading Publisher investigating paper a lucrative scale is based on following Retraction Watch reporting

As long-time readers of this blog know, we’ve spilled more than a few pixels on the work of Donald Morisky. His Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS) has been a financial boon to himself — and the bane of many researchers who have been forced to either retract papers or pay Morisky what they consider to be exorbitant fees to retroactively license the instrument.  

But lately things have been a bit rocky for Morisky. Last year, he and his former business associate (read, legal enforcer) found themselves embroiled in a lawsuit which claims, as we reported, that Morisky used: 

their company as a personal piggy bank and taking steps to starve the business of clients and funnel money to his family. 

And now, a researcher has questioned the validity of the MMAS, arguing that his review of a foundational paper underpinning the instrument shows serious flaws. 

Continue reading Scale whose copyright owner defends zealously falls under scrutiny — and journal takes two years to publish a critique