Category: china retractions

Wasted breath: Cribbing earns retraction of anesthesia paper

cbandbThe authors of a paper on anesthetic waste gases in the operating room have pulled the article for plagiarism.

The paper, titled “Further Pieces of Evidence to the Pulmonary Origin of Sevoflurane Escaping to the Operating Room During General Anaesthesia,” appeared in Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics and came from a group at various institutions in Harbin, China.

But according to the retraction notice, the further pieces weren’t really further, after all:
Continue reading Wasted breath: Cribbing earns retraction of anesthesia paper

Sampling the wrong part of the aorta sinks aneurysm paper

plosoneA paper on an experimental treatment for abdominal aneurysms has been retracted after it was discovered samples had been taken from the wrong part of the aorta.

Here is the PLOS ONE notice for “Inhibition of Rho-Kinase by Fasudil Suppresses Formation and Progression of Experimental Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms:” Continue reading Sampling the wrong part of the aorta sinks aneurysm paper

I know you are but what am I? School program paper pulled for duplication

sciworldjrnlAn article on youth development programs in Hong Kong has been retracted for its similarity to another article on youth development programs by the same authors.

The paper, “Process Evaluation of a Positive Youth Development Program in Hong Kong Based on Different Cohorts,” appeared in 2012 in The Scientific World Journal, and was written by a pair of researchers with appointments in Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, and the United States. It has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

According to the abstract: Continue reading I know you are but what am I? School program paper pulled for duplication

Serial figure fakers have expression of concern upgraded to a retraction

Another retraction has appeared up for frequent fliers Jun Li, Kailun Zhang and Jiahong Xia at Huazhong Science and Technology University in Wuhan, China.

We’ve covered them twice before, for a variety of retractions, corrections, and expressions of concern.

The retraction, in Clinical and Experimental Immunology, upgrades an expression of concern published earlier this year, and is the team’s fourth.

Here’s the notice for “CCR5 blockade in combination with rapamycin prolongs cardiac allograft survival in mice”: Continue reading Serial figure fakers have expression of concern upgraded to a retraction

“Authors, please call us. Pretty please? OK, we’re going to retract your paper!”

dovelogoThe title of this post isn’t exactly how the one-sided conversation between the editors of Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment and a group of researchers went. But it seems likely it was pretty close.

Here’s an expression of concern for “A cross-sectional study on perception of stigma by Chinese schizophrenia patients:” Continue reading “Authors, please call us. Pretty please? OK, we’re going to retract your paper!”

“Lack of experience and understanding” forces duplication retractions of liver cancer paper

dovelogoA group of researchers in China has lost their paper on liver cancer after the first author admitted to duplication, also known, inelegantly, as self-plagiarism.

The paper, “Glycyrrhetinic acid-modified chitosan nanoparticles enhanced the effect of 5-fluorouracil in murine liver cancer model via regulatory T-cells,” appeared in the July 2013 issue of the Journal of Drug Design, Development and Therapy, a Dove Press title.

According to the abstract: Continue reading “Lack of experience and understanding” forces duplication retractions of liver cancer paper

Rice researcher in ethics scrape threatens journal with lawsuit over coming retraction

Guangwen Tang, a rice researcher at Tufts University, landed in hot water in 2012 after her team was accused of feeding Chinese children genetically modified Golden Rice without having obtained informed consent from the parents.

Now, she’s suing both Tufts and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which reportedly is retracting a paper, “ß-carotene in Golden Rice is as good as p-carotene in oil at providing vitamin A to children,” based on the federally funded research, claiming that the retraction would constitute defamation. (That retraction hasn’t happened yet.)

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard the retraction = defamation line. Readers might remember Ariel Fernandez, who threatened to sue us for writing about an expression of concern. Maybe a course on the Streisand Effect should be mandatory for PhD students?
Continue reading Rice researcher in ethics scrape threatens journal with lawsuit over coming retraction

Recursive plagiarism? Researchers may have published a duplicate of a study retracted for plagiarism

acta physica sinicaSometimes plagiarism, like an onion, has layers.

That appears to be the case in a paper brought to our attention by sharp-eyed reader Vladimir Baulin, whose work was copied in a 2006 paper that Journal of Biological Physics retracted for plagiarism.

But you can’t keep a good thief down: the plagiarizing authors just popped up in a new journal with a Chinese-language version of their retracted paper, that looks an awful lot like a knock-off. Here’s a note from Baulin: Continue reading Recursive plagiarism? Researchers may have published a duplicate of a study retracted for plagiarism

Misconduct prompts retraction of prostatectomy paper

jsrcoverA group of urologists in China has lost their 2012 paper in the Journal of Surgical Research because one of the authors was evidently rather naughty.

The article, “Is the impact of the extent of lymphadenectomy in radical prostatectomy related to the disease risk? A single center prospective study,” purported to show that: Continue reading Misconduct prompts retraction of prostatectomy paper

Author steps in to clarify vague tuberculosis retraction

You’ve got to love when an author is willing to detail the specifics of an unhelpful retraction notice.

This May, a paper came out in Journal of Thoracic Diseases about drug-resistant tuberculosis. It was retracted in June, for “some misconduct in the manuscript.”

Here’s the notice:

The article “Application status of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry in the identification and drug resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis” (doi: 10.3978/j.issn.2072-1439.2014.02.19) that appeared on page 512-516 of the May 2014 issue of the Journal of Thoracic Disease needs to be withdrawn due to some misconduct in the manuscript. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Since that’s pretty vague and unhelpful, we reached out to corresponding author Jiayun Liu, who gave us a thorough rundown:

Continue reading Author steps in to clarify vague tuberculosis retraction