The Journal of Clinical Investigation is retracting a 2004 paper by a cancer researchers from Italy because of “evident misrepresentation of data and image duplication.”
Here’s the notice for “The IL-12Rβ2 gene functions as a tumor suppressor in human B cell malignancies:” Continue reading JCI retracts 10-year-old cancer study because figures were “intentionally mislabeled”
The Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary Medicine (JEBCAM) has retracted a 2013 review on probiotics by an author from Turkey who patched the paper together from a variety of other sources — and then appears to have reused his own work elsewhere without attribution.
The article was written by Öner Özdemir, a pediatric allergy specialist at İstanbul Medeniyet University. According to the abstract: Continue reading Plagiarism spells demise of complementary medicine paper
If it looks like a duck flu study, and quacks like a duck flu study, and it’s word-for-word the same as a duck flu study…
Zoonoses and Public Health has retracted a 2013 paper on bird flu in Myanmar because the authors had published the article previously in a different journal.
The article, “Risks of Avian Influenza (H5) in Duck Farms in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta Region, Myanmar,” was written by a group led by Alongkorn Amonsin, of the Department of Veterinary Public Health at Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok, Thailand.
Per the abstract: Continue reading Duck, duck, gone: Duplication plucks bird flu paper
Imagine you were a cop, sitting in your squad car at the side of the road with a radar gun, when you clock someone speeding. You turn on your lights, pull the speedster over to the side of the road, and walk to her driver’s side window.
Just as you say “Driver’s license and registration, please,” you realize the driver is your squad captain. Oops.
That must have been something like what it was like — with plagiarism detection software sitting in for the radar gun — for the co-editor-in-chief of Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome when he realized that Marilia de Brito Gomes, the other co-editor-in-chief, had published two papers in their journal that contained plagiarized passages.
Here’s the notice for “Historical facts of screening and diagnosing diabetes in pregnancy:” Continue reading Editor in chief steps down after being found plagiarizing in her own journal
Bharat Aggarwal, the MD Anderson researcher who has threatened to sue Retraction Watch for writing about issues in his papers, has corrected another study.
Here’s the notice for “Induction of Cell Cycle Arrest and Apoptosis by the Proteasome Inhibitor PS-341 in Hodgkin Disease Cell Lines Is Independent of Inhibitor of Nuclear Factor-κB Mutations or Activation of the CD30, CD40, and RANK Receptors:” Continue reading Cancer researcher who threatened to sue Retraction Watch corrects another paper
Science reported last week that Jens Förster, the former University of Amsterdam social psychologist embroiled in data fabrication controversy, may have stumbled in his defense by muddling the timeline of his disputed studies in public statements.
According to a piece by Frank van Kolfschooten (which is behind a paywall, and to which we linked in Saturday’s Weekend Reads):
The real challenge to Förster’s timeline may lie in e-mails between him and Pieter Verhoeven, his research assistant at UvA from September 2008 to June 2009, who made the correspondence available to Förster’s accuser. In it, the two discuss how to conduct what are evidently the same experiments Förster’s blog declares were completed much earlier in Bremen. For instance, among the stimuli used are three unintelligible audio recordings, which the 2011 paper says were described to the subjects as “Moldavian” poems. In an 18 May 2009 e-mail, Verhoeven comes up with the idea to describe the poem that way, rather than as Malaysian, because the reader of the poem has a German accent.
But in a yet another lengthy open letter to colleagues and friends, Förster insists that he conducted the studies in Germany before coming to the University of Amsterdam. And he hints darkly at the end that those seeking to cast doubt on his research may be doing so for personal gain: Continue reading Förster on defense again, this time weighing in on timeline controversy
Courtesy of a Freedom of Information Act request, The Boston Globe has a very good piece detailing what investigators found had actually happened in the Marc Hauser lab before the former Harvard psychology researcher resigned in 2011 and was found guilty of misconduct by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in 2012.
The Globe requested the 2010 report Harvard sent the ORI. Here’s a summary:
The 85-page report details instances in which Hauser changed data so that it would show a desired effect. It shows that he more than once rebuffed or downplayed questions and concerns from people in his laboratory about how a result was obtained. The report also describes “a disturbing pattern of misrepresentation of results and shading of truth” and a “reckless disregard for basic scientific standards.”
The Globe quotes key passages from the report: Continue reading “Misrepresentation,” “reckless disregard for basic scientific standards”: Hauser report reveals details of misconduct
We’ve been following the case of Amine Bahi, a neuroscience researcher in the United Arab Emirates who has managed something unusual in the annals of Retraction Watch: Three different retractions for three completely different reasons. One was for “legal issues,” another was for lack of IRB approval, and the third was for using RNAs from the wrong species.
Now, Bahi’s co-authors have repeated the last of those studies with the right RNAs, and have republished their paper in the same journal, Biological Psychiatry — but without Bahi.
The retraction notice for “Blockade of Protein Phosphatase 2B Activity in the Amygdala Increases Anxiety- and Depression-Like Behaviors in Mice” now includes this final paragraph: Continue reading Researchers repeat retracted study, republish in same journal sans first author
Xenon may be an inert gas, but that doesn’t mean papers about the molecule aren’t subject to change.
Indeed, the journal Anaesthesia has retracted a 2010 article about xenon-based anesthesia, and corrected a 2005 article by some of the same researchers, for what appears to be a case of wurst slicing.
The 2005 paper, “Comparison of xenon-based anaesthesia compared with total intravenous anaesthesia in high risk surgical patients,” came from a group at the Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, in Kiel, Germany. It has been cited 10 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
According to the abstract: Continue reading Failure to cite leads to ignoble end for xenon paper, and a correction
Cory Toth, the University of Calgary diabetes researcher who told us last month he would stop publishing in science following a string of inappropriate manipulations, has retracted another paper.
Here’s the notice in Brain for “Intranasal insulin prevents cognitive decline, cerebral atrophy and white matter changes in murine type I diabetic encephalopathy:” Continue reading Diabetes researcher who says he will no longer publish now up to five retractions