A group of authors have retracted a Cell paper describing a mouse model of autism because of image problems.
The senior author on the paper — there were 22 altogether — is Paul Worley of Johns Hopkins. Here’s the notice for “Enhanced Polyubiquitination of Shank3 and NMDA Receptor in a Mouse Model of Autism:” Continue reading Neuroscientists retract Cell autism model paper for “improperly assembled” figures
Two papers by researchers from China and Taiwan have been retracted from two journals, one based in the US, one in Croatia, after identical studies appeared in the June 2011 issues of both publications.
Eastern European Economics retracted their version first, and that journal’s editor discussed the case with the editors of Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics: Journal of Economics and Business, where the same paper was also published.
Eastern European Economics‘ retraction reads: Continue reading Duplicate analysis of Eastern Europe’s GDP retracted from two journals, one in US, one in Croatia
Plant Physiology and Biochemistry has an amusing retraction notice this month that underscores the perils of allowing authors to come up with their own statements.
The paper, “Molecular strategies in manipulation of the starch synthesis pathway for improving storage starch content in plants (review and prospect for increasing storage starch synthesis),” came from a group at Sichuan Agricultural University in China — including its Maize Research Institute — and was published in the December 2012 issue.
For several months now, we’ve been reporting on variations on a theme: Authors submitting fake email addresses for potential peer reviewers, to ensure positive reviews. In August, for example, we broke the story of a Hyung-In Moon, who has now retracted 24 papers published by Informa because he managed to do his own peer review.
Now, Retraction Watch has learned that the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) was hacked sometime last month, leading to faked peer reviews and retractions — although the submitting authors don’t seem to have been at fault. As of now, eleven papers by authors in China, India, Iran, and Turkey have been retracted from three journals.
Here’s one of two identical notices that have just run in Optics & Laser Technology, for two unconnected papers: Continue reading Elsevier editorial system hacked, reviews faked, 11 retractions follow
The Journal of Vascular Surgery is retracting — with vigor — a paper it published online in March after discovering that the authors had published essentially the same article for the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology some months earlier.
Both papers are titled “Randomized controlled trial comparing treatment outcome of two compression bandaging systems and standard care without compression in patients with venous leg ulcers.” The work was funded by the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau of Hong Kong and a grant from Lohmann & Rauscher GmbH & Co KG, a German company that makes compression bandages and other surgical supplies.
According to the retraction notice in JVS: Continue reading Double bind: Duplication of bandaging paper leads to retraction
Today, on Thanksgiving in the U.S., Retraction Watch is taking a bit of a holiday as we dig into some turkey — not to be confused with retractions from Turkey. We’d like to give thanks for the thousands of Retraction Watch readers all over the world who’ve helped us shine a spotlight on the scientific process, warts and all.
And we imagine that journal editors around the globe are giving thanks to plagiarism detection software such as iThenticate, so today’s post is a roundup of some recent retractions for plagiarism: Continue reading Giving thanks for plagiarism detection software: Catching up on retractions for the sincerest form of flattery
A group of Chinese authors studying the Shang Ring, “a device that allows professionals to perform hundreds rather than tens of” circumcisions in a day, as had to retract the paper after editors apparently figured out they had changed some dates in the paper so it wouldn’t look as though they were trying to publish it twice. Or maybe they just changed the dates for some other reason, while publishing it twice anyway — it’s not clear.
Here’s the Journal of Urology notice for “A Randomized Clinical Study of Circumcision with a Ring Device Versus Conventional Circumcision,” by Cheng Yuea and colleagues from the Medical College of Ningbo University, the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, and Taizhou First People’s Hospital: Continue reading Paper cuts? Duplication, data manipulation force retraction of study of circumcision by ring device
The Journal of Vinyl and Additive Technology (JVAT) — the official journal of the Society of Plastics Engineers — is retracting a 2012 paper from a group of Chinese researchers who evidently realized at some point that they didn’t know quite what they were doing.
As the notice explains: Continue reading Retraction is final destination for epoxy paper marred by “pervasive misattribution of data”
On May 11 of this year, Juan Antonio Baeza, an environmental engineering researcher at Universitat Autonoma Barcelona was looking for papers in Water Research about knowledge-based systems, the subject of his 1999 PhD thesis. As he tells Retraction Watch, when he came across “Improving the efficiencies of simultaneous organic substance and nitrogen removal in a multi-stage loop membrane bioreactor-based PWWTP using an on-line Knowledge-Based Expert System”:
I started to read this paper and some sentences of the abstract were interesting, well, really I thought that I would have written that with the same words! But after reading some parts of the paper I realized that those were really my words of a previous paper published in the same journal in 2002.
I started to compare it and around 40-50% of the paper was a direct copy of my paper without changing even a comma.
So he wrote to the journal on May 14: Continue reading How does it feel to have your scientific paper plagiarized? Part 2
As we’ve noted before, we generally let duplication retractions make their way to the bottom of our to-do pile, since there’s often less of an interesting story behind them, duplication is hardly the worst of publishing sins, and the notices usually tell the story. (These are often referred to — imprecisely — as “self-plagiarism.”)
But that skews what’s represented here — boy, are there a lot of duplication retractions we haven’t covered! — and we might as well be more comprehensive. Plus, our eagle-eyed readers may find issues that we won’t see on a quick scan.
So with this post, we’re inaugurating a new feature here at Retraction Watch, “You’ve been dupe’d.” Every now and then, we’ll gather five of these duplication retractions at a time, and post them so they get into the mix, and into our category listing (see drop-down menu in right-hand column if you haven’t already). Here are the first five: Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Catching up on authors who liked their work enough to use it again