We’ve come across three notices in cardiology journals this week, so although they’re unrelated, we’re gathering them here.
Item 1, from Circulation Research: Continue reading Heart attack: Two cardiology retractions, plus a notice of duplication, in three different journals
A pair of engineers at Hohai University in Nanjing, China, has lost their 2012 paper in the Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics. The reason: The article, “Study of the New Leon model for concrete failure,” wasn’t theirs to publish.
According to the retraction notice (which is dated September 2013 but has already appeared in ScienceDirect): Continue reading Retraction for water researchers who ripped off dissertation
A group of researchers from Shangdong, China, has retracted their 2011 paper in the Journal of Molecular Medicine on the heart-protective properties of a substance in ginseng because the article contained dodgy figures.
The article, “Ginsenoside-Rg1 enhances angiogenesis and ameliorates ventricular remodeling in a rat model of myocardial infarction,” purported to show that ginsenoside: Continue reading Image problems lead to demise of paper on ginseng for heart attack
Joseph Hoffman, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Bielefeld in Germany says he got a “kind of odd” feeling as he read a recent paper on the transcriptome of the spotted seal. Let’s just call it deja vu.
The article, “Characterization of the spotted seal Phoca largha transcriptome using Illumina paired-end sequencing and development of SSR markers,” which appeared in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part D: Genomics and Proteomics:
Continue reading Seals of disapproval, as pinniped paper gets yanked for plagiarism
Pharmaceutical Biology has retracted a 2012 paper by a group of liver researchers from China after the discovery of an error that evidently invalidated the results in the paper.
The article, “Antifibrotic effects of protocatechuic aldehyde on experimental liver fibrosis,” purported to show that
protocatechuic aldehyde, the major degradation of phenolic acids … has potentially conferring antifibrogenic effects.
Here’s something we haven’t seen before: A group of researchers plagiarize, are called on it, and are then allowed to resubmit a new version that’s published, while their offending paper is retracted.
A reader flagged the plagiarism in the original paper, “Protein domains, catalytic activity, and subcellular distribution of mouse NTE-related esterase,” by Ping’an Chang and colleagues, which led the research team to revise and resubmit the manuscript. After the journal Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry — a Springer title — published the plagiarism-scrubbed paper, the original paper required retraction.
The retraction refers to a dispute between labs, but not plagiarism: Continue reading You plagiarized? No problem, says journal, we’ll retract so you can rewrite, and we’ll republish
Once again, the headline has written itself.
The journal Animal has retracted a 2010 paper on cloning pig embryos after it became clear that there were “close similarities” between it and a 2009 paper by some of the same authors. Here’s the notice:
Continue reading Pig cloning paper retracted for being a clone
Call it uncreative non-destruction. 
A team from China and, it appears, Mississippi, has lost a paper in Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation for duplicate publication.
Here’s the notice (a PDF): Continue reading Duplication leads to collapse in Nondestructive Testing
Authors of a 2012 article in the Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology have retracted it for plagiarism.
The article, “Progress of genome wide association study in domestic animals,” came from a group of chicken geneticists in China affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture in Harbin and Northeast Agricultural University, in the same city.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Authors “regretfully” retract genomics paper for plagiarism
Renewable Energy may cover conservation, but that doesn’t mean it expects its authors to recycle their own words. The Elsevier journal is retracting a biodiesel paper it published in February 2012 by a group of Chinese researchers who published much the same work in another title a month later. That periodical, the Journal of the American Oil Chemists Society, from Springer, has retracted its version as well.
Here’s the notice in Renewable Energy: Continue reading Hey authors, “Renewable Energy” doesn’t mean you can recycle words