Category: corrections

Researcher who threatened Retraction Watch with lawsuit corrects funding source for several papers

Ariel Fernandez, source: Wikipedia
Ariel Fernandez, source: Wikipedia

Ariel Fernandez, an Argentine chemist (who claims to hold the fastest-awarded PhD from Yale) and the subject of institutional investigations at multiple universities, has corrected several papers recently. What makes the moves particularly unusual — and interesting — is the stated reason for the amendments: disclaiming any funding from the National Institutes of Health for the work.

Fernandez was the recipient in 2005 of a $275,880 award “Protein packing defects as functional markers and drug targets.” The following year he received $294,217, and in 2007, $284,461, for the same four-year project, if we’re reading the link correctly.

Fernandez, readers of this blog might recall, threatened us with legal action when we wrote last spring about an expression of concern regarding his 2011 paper in BMC Genomics, “Subfunctionalization reduces the fitness cost of gene duplication in humans by buffering dosage imbalances.” According to that notice: Continue reading Researcher who threatened Retraction Watch with lawsuit corrects funding source for several papers

Ask Retraction Watch: Should these papers be retracted?

protein scienceLast week, we reported on a new paper by Scripps Research Institute researchers in which they described how two of their previous papers had been based on mistaken interpretations. The authors wrote in their new paper that they were retracting the earlier works, but the journal had told them the papers would be corrected instead.

We had asked Protein Science editor Brian Matthews for clarification, and he emailed us late last week:
Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: Should these papers be retracted?

Birds of a feather: Authors who play games with fowl data earn multiple retractions

jmicrobiotechA group of animal health researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences have lost their 2009 paper in the Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology because they’d published the data in at least four other articles.

The paper, “Two Novel Duck Antibacterial Peptides, Avian β-Defensins 9 and 10, with Antimicrobial Activity,” reported that: Continue reading Birds of a feather: Authors who play games with fowl data earn multiple retractions

Three retractions, two lawsuits, one institutional inquiry for San Diego orthopedic surgeon

11832_5_2_OC.inddThree retractions, two lawsuits, one institutional inquiry. That’s not the kind of math anyone likes to do — but it’s the tally for Harish Hosalkar, a San Diego surgeon specializing in pediatric orthopedics.

Hosalkar became embroiled in a messy affair after problems surfaced in data he had published while at Rady Children’s Hospital — a facility he left under a cloud of recriminations. More on that in a bit. Continue reading Three retractions, two lawsuits, one institutional inquiry for San Diego orthopedic surgeon

Duplication earns engineering paper a corrigendum rather than a retraction

kybernetesTwo authors in Turkey have had their paper subjected to a correction after it became clear that material was lifted heavily from two previous papers by one of the researchers.

The corrigendum reads: Continue reading Duplication earns engineering paper a corrigendum rather than a retraction

Journal of Neuroscience retracts plasticity paper for “substantial data misrepresentation”

jneuroscicoverThe Journal of Neuroscience has retracted a 2012 paper by a group from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet for what appears to be research misconduct. But more on that in a moment.

The article, “The Existence of FGFR1-5-HT1A Receptor Heterocomplexes in Midbrain 5-HT Neurons of the Rat: Relevance for Neuroplasticity,” came from the lab of Kjell Fuxe, whose interests include Parkinson’s disease, addiction and depression. The first and second authors, Dasiel Oscar Borroto-Escuela and Wilber Romero-Fernandez, are listed as being post-docs in the lab.

According to the notice: Continue reading Journal of Neuroscience retracts plasticity paper for “substantial data misrepresentation”

A mega-correction for Rui Curi, whose lawyers threatened to sue Science-Fraud.org

plos oneA Brazilian researcher whose legal threats helped lead to the shutdown of Science-Fraud.org and who has had two papers retracted has had to correct another paper.

The fourth correction for Rui Curi — and we’d call it a mega-correction — is of a paper in PLOS ONE. Curi is the fourth out of 11 authors; someone named Tania Pithon-Curi is the final author:
Continue reading A mega-correction for Rui Curi, whose lawyers threatened to sue Science-Fraud.org

Bitter legal fight leads to a retracted retraction

faseb june 2013Two years ago, the FASEB Journal retracted a paper that it had initially agreed to correct, after a dean at one of the author’s institutions said that a “well-recognized and top-class fact finding commission concluded that the publication contains gross flaws.” The retraction of the 2003 paper, as we noted at the time, punctuated a complicated case involving several investigations as well as legal maneuvering.

Now, the journal has retracted the retraction. Here’s the beginning of the notice: Continue reading Bitter legal fight leads to a retracted retraction

Nature corrects figures McGill committee found had been “intentionally contrived and falsified”

nature 5 31The second of two corrections by McGill researcher Maya Saleh for what a university committee called “intentionally contrived and falsified” figures has run in Nature.

We reported in January that the McGill committee concluded that

two figures in [a] Nature paper had been “intentionally contrived and falsified.” One of those figures was duplicated in a PNAS paper, which also contained an image that  had incorrectly labeled some proteins.

The committee recommended corrections for both of the papers. The PNAS correction ran in February. Now, the Nature Corrigendum has appeared: Continue reading Nature corrects figures McGill committee found had been “intentionally contrived and falsified”

A partial retraction appears for former Salzburg crystallographer who admitted misconduct

j imm april 2013A paper by a crystallographer fired from his university for misconduct has been partially retracted.

Last year, we covered the case of Robert Schwarzenbacher, formerly of Salzburg University. Schwarzenbacher had provided the crystallographic data for a paper in the Journal of Immunology, but those results raised questions with another crystallographer and prompted an investigation by the university.  Schwarzenbacher admitted he’d committed misconduct, although he recanted at one point, and was eventually fired.

Now, the authors have retracted the crystallographic data from the Journal of Immunology paper. Here’s the partial retraction, which is listed as a correction:
Continue reading A partial retraction appears for former Salzburg crystallographer who admitted misconduct