Back in November 2013, we wrote about a correction in PNAS about a May 2012 paper by a group from Toronto and Mount Sinai in New York who, as we said at the time
had been rather too liberal in their use of text from a previously published paper by another researcher — what we might call plagiarism, in a less charitable mood.
Continue reading Authors get away with throwing quotation marks around plagiarized passages. Again.
Over the past few months, there has been a great deal of criticism of the work of stem cell researcher Jacob Hanna, especially on PubPeer.
Now, Hanna has responded in the comments of the PubPeer entries for a number of papers. He has also posted a number of PDFs, including his PhD thesis, and correspondence with scientists who have been critical of his work.
He also wrote a response to a criticism published on bioRxIV, a non-peer reviewed repository of biology pre-prints.
One of Hanna’s comments on PubPeer is a summary of the issues with his Blood paper on PubPeer, blaming the figure errors on “medical trainees” who did the word while he was away at Mount Sinai. Here’s his explanation: Continue reading Stem cell researcher Jacob Hanna responds to criticism
A team led by David Latchman, a geneticist and administrator at University College London, has notched a mysterious retraction in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and has had 25 more papers questioned on PubPeer.
The JBC notice for “Antiapoptotic activity of the free caspase recruitment domain of procaspase-9: A novel endogenous rescue pathway in cell death” is as useless as they come, a regular occurrence for the journal: Continue reading Prominent geneticist nets retraction, two corrections, and a lot of questions
Prominent German diabetes researcher Kathrin Maedler has issued corrections on two papers, and told Retraction Watch she is in the process of defending the data on others.
14 of her papers have been critiqued by PubPeer commenters. The commentary, which spans from her graduate work in 2002 to a 2014 publication in Nature Medicine, includes questions about image manipulation and self-plagiarism.
Laborjournal’s blog (we have a column in their English-language publication) first flagged these suspicions in July 2014, after being approached by pseudonymous Clare Francis.
Here’s a comparison between figures in Maedler’s 2009 PLoS One paper, “Deletion of the Mitochondrial Flavoprotein Apoptosis Inducing Factor (AIF) Induces β-Cell Apoptosis and Impairs β-Cell Mass,” and one she co-authored in 2006 in Diabetes, “Low concentration of interleukin-1beta induces FLICE-inhibitory protein-mediated beta-cell proliferation in human pancreatic islets,” via PubPeer: Continue reading Leading diabetes researcher corrects paper as more than a dozen studies are questioned on PubPeer
Olivier Voinnet, a researcher at ETH in Zurich and the winner of the 2013 Rössler Prize, is correcting a number of papers following critiques of more than a dozen of his studies on PubPeer.
The work appears in journals including Cell and PNAS. Voinnet’s co-author on several of the papers, David Baulcombe, who is also highly decorated, left this comment on relevant PubPeer entries: Continue reading Award-winning plant researcher correcting several papers critiqued on PubPeer
Frontiers in Pharmacology has retracted a paper on baicalin, an antioxidant sold in health food stores, because it had both “incorrect data and invalid statistical analyses.”
A comment on PubPeer notes that one of the figures (see image to the right) contains two similar-looking flow cytometry images labeled with different values, which could be what the retraction is hinting at.
Here’s the notice for “Baicalin induced dendritic cell apoptosis in vitro”: Continue reading “Incorrect data” kills apoptosis paper
Bruce Murdoch, a neuroscientist formerly of the University of Queensland, will appear in court next week to face fraud charges stemming from an investigation that has already led to three retractions, several corrections, and similar charges for one of his colleagues.
Here’s the notice from the Crime and Corruption Commission: Continue reading Second former University of Queensland researcher to appear in court to face fraud charges
Cardiovascular Research has retracted a 2010 paper by a group of prominent cardiology researchers in Brazil.
The reason: Image manipulation — which the authors say didn’t materially affect the conclusions of the paper.
The article, “FAK mediates the activation of cardiac fibroblasts induced by mechanical stress through regulation of the mTOR complex,” came from a group led by Ana Paula Dalla Costa, from the State University of Campinas.
Here’s the abstract of the study, which has been cited 19 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Heart journal pulls paper for image manipulation
This one’s not a retraction, but rather a back and forth of letters to the editor concerning accusations of plagiarism.
Dentists Bryan and Paul Jacobs, a father and son team, wrote a paper describing a novel surgical technique in March 2013. In October 2013, several Croatian dentists published their own paper using the technique.
A year later, the story has gotten a little more interesting. The November issue of the Journal of Oral and Mixillofacial Surgery, which published the second article, has two letters. One, from the Jacobses, accuses the Croatian authors of plagiarism. The second is a response from author Dragana Gabrić Pandurić, claiming “our real intention was to emphasize, not plagiarize, their work.”
Here’s the letter from Bryan and Paul Jacobs (paywalled): Continue reading “Our real intention was to emphasize, not plagiarize”
A group of liver researchers from the University of Pittsburgh has earned a pair of corrections in Hepatology for image problems.
The team was led by George K. Michalopoulos, chair of the department of pathology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
One article, “Excessive hepatomegaly of mice with hepatocyte-targeted elimination of integrin linked kinase following treatment with 1,4-bis [2-(3,5-dichaloropyridyloxy)] benzene,” appeared in January 2011. According to the notice: Continue reading Hepatology issues corrections in two papers from Pitt liver group