Pseudo amino acid paper pseudo new — and now retracted

The Journal of Computational Chemistry is retracting a 2011 paper by a group of Chinese researchers for duplication.

The article was titled “Predicting Protein Folding Rates Using the Concept of Chou’s Pseudo Amino Acid Composition.” According to the notice: Continue reading Pseudo amino acid paper pseudo new — and now retracted

In detailed notice, radiology journal retracts lung cancer paper for likely plagiarism

The editors of Acta Radiologica have retracted a study of patients with lung cancer, with a notice that tells the whole story:

The manuscript “Measurement of tumor volume by PET to evaluate prognosis in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated by non-surgical therapy” was submitted to Acta Radiologica on November 3, 2010 and, after a review, accepted for publication on February 26, 2011 (1). The article was published in Acta Radiol 2011;52:646–50. Authors were: Honjiang Yan, Renben Wang (corresponding author), Fen Zhao, Kubli Zhu, Shumei Jiang, Wei Zhao, and Rui Feng, from the Department of Radiation Oncology and Department of Nuclear Medicine, Shandong Tumor Hospital, Jinan, China. Continue reading In detailed notice, radiology journal retracts lung cancer paper for likely plagiarism

Two Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Advances retractions, for unreliable results, surprised author

Authors of two separate studies in RSC Advances — RSC is the Royal Society of Chemistry — have retracted their papers.

Here’s one notice, for “Laser-induced gold/chitosan nanocomposites with tailored wettability applied to multi-irradiated microfluidic channels:” Continue reading Two Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Advances retractions, for unreliable results, surprised author

Expressions of regret: group retracts sedation paper for stolen words, data

A group of researchers in China have retracted a 2011 article in Acta Pharmacologica Sinica, the official journal of the Chinese Pharmacological Society, acknowledging that they lifted text and results from a previously published paper from other researchers.

The paper was titled “Lipid metabolism disturbances and AMPK activation in prolonged propofol-sedated rabbits under mechanical ventilation.”

According to the notice: Continue reading Expressions of regret: group retracts sedation paper for stolen words, data

Physics paper retracted because authors wrongfully claimed they got there first — in the same journal

Here’s a tip: If you’re going to claim you were first to discover something, even though you know you weren’t, don’t publish your claim in the same journal where the first finding appeared. Oh, and don’t ask the researchers who made the first discovery for help along the way.

Those, perhaps, are the cynical lessons from a retraction notice that appeared last week in the Journal of Chemical Physics: Continue reading Physics paper retracted because authors wrongfully claimed they got there first — in the same journal

Slew of retractions appears in Neuroscience Letters

We’re not sure how many you need for a “slew,” but we’ve seen five retractions in Neuroscience Letters recently, most of them because researchers republished translations of papers in English, so we thought we’d round them up in a post.

We’ll start the count — appropriately, we think — with the notice for “Simple mental arithmetic is not so simple: An ERP study of the split and odd–even effects in mental arithmetic“, published in February by researchers from Nanjing Normal University in China: Continue reading Slew of retractions appears in Neuroscience Letters

Comp sci journal retracts paper for overlap

The Journal of Systems Architecture has retracted a 2010 article by a group of researchers in China who tried to publish their work twice.

The paper first appeared in July 2010 in the Journal of Software under the title, “Description and Verification of Dynamic Software Architectures for Distributed Systems.” At the time, it had three authors — Xu Hongzhen, Zeng Guosun and Bo Chen.

But Xu and Zeng evidently resubmitted the paper to the Journal of Systems Architecture, which published its version, “Specification and verification of dynamic evolution of software architectures,” in October 2010.

As the notice explains: Continue reading Comp sci journal retracts paper for overlap

More shoes drop for Chinese author who made up peer reviewer addresses

Last month, we brought you the story of Guang-Zhi He of the Guiyang College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China, an enterprising fellow who got caught faking the email addresses of potential peer reviewers. At the time, Elsevier, who published journals where He published, told us there would be several retractions other than the one we reported on.

Three of those have appeared, in the same journal, Experimental Parasitology, and saying the same thing: Continue reading More shoes drop for Chinese author who made up peer reviewer addresses

Author retracts PNAS paper about alleged Pliocene cheetah fossil that critics said was a fake

A paper about an alleged cheetah fossil from the Pliocene epoch, dogged by questions since its publication in 2008, has been retracted after one of the authors acknowledged it wasn’t what they thought it was.

Here’s the notice for the paper, “A primitive Late Pliocene cheetah, and evolution of the cheetah lineage:Continue reading Author retracts PNAS paper about alleged Pliocene cheetah fossil that critics said was a fake

Biochemistry journal retracts paper for being, well, less than conclusive

Here’s a new one that may stoke the debate about whether a paper deserves retraction merely for being wrong or less than fully right.

The journal Cell Biochemistry and Function, a Wiley title, has retracted an article it published earlier this year by a pair of Chinese authors — or, rather, from one author an an unwitting co-author. That authorship issue alone should be enough to warrant a retraction. But the retraction notice also includes a more interesting matter: Continue reading Biochemistry journal retracts paper for being, well, less than conclusive