Category: china retractions

“Personal rivalry” leads to retraction of nut-health paper

ejpcHere’s a retraction that leaves us itching to know more:

The authors of a recent paper in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology on nut intake and the risk of high blood pressure and diabetes have pulled their article from publication for an undisclosed conflict of interest.

Now, you wouldn’t know this unless you were willing to pony up the $32 to read the notice, which is behind a pay wall — something that drives us, well, nuts. But here it is:

Continue reading “Personal rivalry” leads to retraction of nut-health paper

Sensing a pattern? Pattern Recognition Letters misses rampant plagiarism in modeling paper

prlcoverIt really isn’t fair to pick on Pattern Recognition Letters, but, well, if the shoe fits…

We had fun at the expense of the journal the last time we found that a duplicate publication had escaped the editors. This time, plagiarism is to blame.

A group of authors from the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences published, then promptly lost, their September 2013 article in PRL titled “Model-based 3D tracking of an articulated hand from single depth images.”

The abstract: Continue reading Sensing a pattern? Pattern Recognition Letters misses rampant plagiarism in modeling paper

Plant journal withdraws paper — or does it?

mol plantThe temporary withdrawal of a Molecular Plant paper had us scratching our heads, but the issue seems to be explained by a glitch.

If you click on this version of “Application of the CRISPR–Cas System for Efficient Genome Engineering in Plants” (subscription required), you see this:

This paper has been withdrawn pending a decision by the Editorial Board

But that page also says that the latest version of the paper was published on October 3. Clicking on that version sends you to the paper, which begins: Continue reading Plant journal withdraws paper — or does it?

Chemist loses two papers, one each for plagiarism and duplication

chem phys lettersA researcher at Shanxi Normal University in China has notched two retractions, once for plagiarism and one for duplication.

Here’s the most recent notice, which appeared in Chemical Physics Letters on September 25: Continue reading Chemist loses two papers, one each for plagiarism and duplication

Journal withdraws diabetes paper written by apparently bogus authors

BBRCTalk about a Trojan Horse.

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications has withdrawn a paper it published earlier this year on metabolic proteins linked to diabetes, not because the article was bogus but because the authors appear to have been. The work itself is accurate — indeed, it likely belongs to a Harvard scientist, Bruce Spiegelman, who’d presented his data on the subject several times recently and was in the process of preparing his results for publication. We’ve written about researchers trying to punk journals with faked articles, and about a researcher who apparently made up a co-author, but here’s something new!

Nature has the story. According to Nature, in July Spiegelman: Continue reading Journal withdraws diabetes paper written by apparently bogus authors

Big trouble in little China: Two looks at what warps scientific publishing there

economistThe press corps has turned its attention to scientific publishing in China this week.

Here’s Naomi Ching’s lede — that’s how we spell it in journalism — from Nautilus:

You may have heard that Chinese researchers are not very well compensated, compared to their Western counterparts. What you might not know is that they can increase their income by a factor of 10 with a single publication. The better the journal they publish in, as judged by the average number of times that its papers are cited, the more money they make. According to an anonymous source specializing in science evaluation in China, some research institutions follow a simple formula for determining cash rewards: 10,000 yuan, multiplied by one plus the journal impact factor (the impact factor reflects average citation levels). For example, publication in The Lancet, whose impact factor was 39.06 in 2012, would fetch 400,600 yuan (about $65,000). By comparison, the average yearly income of Chinese scientific researchers was 39,850 yuan in 2007, according to a survey by the China Association for Science and Technology.

Hmm, that sort of incentive wouldn’t create any problems, would it? Read the rest of Ching’s piece for more.

And here’s Gady Epstein’s top, from The Economist: Continue reading Big trouble in little China: Two looks at what warps scientific publishing there

Math paper retracted because it “contains some ethical problems”

inequalThe Journal of of Inequalities and Applications has retracted a paper for unspecified “ethical problems.”

Here’s the notice for “Strong Limiting Behavior in Binary Search Trees:” Continue reading Math paper retracted because it “contains some ethical problems”

Journal retracts two papers after being caught manipulating citations

pibbEarlier this week, in a story by Richard van Noorden, Nature revealed the hidden workings of a scheme referred to as “citation stacking” that has landed a number of journals in trouble. The story begins:

Mauricio Rocha-e-Silva thought that he had spotted an easy way to raise the profiles of Brazilian journals. From 2009, he and several other editors published articles containing hundreds of references to papers in each others’ journals — in order, he says, to elevate the journals’ impact factors.

As Nature reports, Rocha-e-Silva was apparently frustrated that Brazilian government agencies were relying heavily on impact factor to evaluate graduate programs. That meant few scientists were willing to publish in Brazilian journals, which had lower impact factors. Rocha-e-Silva describes some of these frustrations in an impassioned 2009 editorial (in Portuguese). Continue reading Journal retracts two papers after being caught manipulating citations

Paper retracted because images “were, in fact, electron microscopy results of totally different catalysts”

catcommA group of chemical engineers in China has retracted their article on photocatalysts after alerting the journal that images in the paper did not show what they’d reported.

The article, which appeared in Catalysis Communications earlier this year, was titled “Synthesis and characterization of novel Cu2O/PANI composite photocatalysts with enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability,” and was written by Xiufang Wang, Guangmei Chen and Jun Zhang of the School of Materials and Chemical Engineering at Anhui University of Architecture, in Hefei.

Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Paper retracted because images “were, in fact, electron microscopy results of totally different catalysts”

Birds of a feather: Authors who play games with fowl data earn multiple retractions

jmicrobiotechA group of animal health researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences have lost their 2009 paper in the Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology because they’d published the data in at least four other articles.

The paper, “Two Novel Duck Antibacterial Peptides, Avian β-Defensins 9 and 10, with Antimicrobial Activity,” reported that: Continue reading Birds of a feather: Authors who play games with fowl data earn multiple retractions