exclusive – Page 3 – Retraction Watch

Exclusive: Thousands of papers misidentify microscopes, in possible sign of misconduct

One in four papers on research involving scanning electron microscopy (SEM) misidentifies the specific instrument that was used, raising suspicions of misconduct, according to a new study.

The work, published August 27 as a preprint on the Open Science Framework , examined SEM images in more than 1 million studies published by 50 materials science and engineering journals since 2010.

Researchers found only 8,515 articles published the figure captions and the image’s metadata banners, both of which are needed to determine whether the correct microscope is listed in papers. Metadata banners usually contain important information about the experiments conducted, including the operating voltage of the microscope and the instrument’s model and parameters.

Of these papers, 2,400 (28%) listed the wrong microscope manufacturer or model, raising questions about the integrity of the conducted research.

Exclusive: Publisher retracts more than 450 papers from journal it acquired last year

Sage has retracted 467 articles from the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems, a title it took on when it acquired IOS Press last November for an undisclosed sum.

The publisher “launched a thorough investigation” into the journal in April, according to a spokesperson, after the indexing company Clarivate “informed us about concerns relating to the quality of some of the journal’s content.”

“The investigation found that the peer review process for some articles was inadequate, leading to the retraction of these articles,” the spokesperson said.

The journal’s editor in chief, Reza Langari of Texas A&M University in College Station, resigned on June 16 “due to differences of opinion on how to proceed” with Sage’s investigation, he told Retraction Watch.

Exclusive: Biochemistry journal retracts 25 papers for ‘systematic manipulation’ of peer review

A journal of the UK-based Biochemical Society is retracting 25 papers after finding “systematic manipulation of our peer-review and publication processes by multiple individuals,” according to a statement provided to Retraction Watch.

The batch of retractions for Bioscience Reports is “the first time that we have issued this many retractions in one go for articles that we believe to be connected,” managing editor Zara Manwaring said in an email.

As academic publishing grapples with its papermill problem, many firms are retracting articles by the dozens, hundreds, or even thousands after discovering foul play.

Bioscience Reports already had retracted 20 papers this year, by our count. The latest batch means the journal’s yearly total will surpass 2023, when it pulled 32 papers, and the year before, when it pulled 26.

Exclusive: Publisher to retract article for excessively citing one researcher after Retraction Watch inquiry

A paper that cited a single researcher’s work in 53 of 64 references will be retracted following our inquiries, the publisher of the journal has told Retraction Watch.

The article, ‘Culturally-informed for designing motorcycle fire rescue: Empirical study in developing country’, published in June in AIP Advances, overwhelmingly cites the work of Muhammed Imam Ammarullah, a lecturer at Universitas Pasundan in West Java, Indonesia, sometimes without obvious relevance to the text.

An anonymous tipster came across the soon-to-be retracted paper on Google Scholar, then alerted the editors at AIP Advances in June to the strange citation pattern. The journal investigated, but didn’t acknowledge a problem with the excessive citations to Ammarullah’s work in their initial response to the complaint. Instead, they identified issues with six other, unrelated citations, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch.

Exclusive: Prof plagiarized postdoc’s work in now-retracted paper, university found

A political scientist in Canada copied his postdoc’s work without credit in a paper, according to the retraction notice and a university inquiry report.

The paper by Charles Conteh, a professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, appeared in Sage’s Outlook on Agriculture in October 2023. It has one citation, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

An inquiry by Brock identified plagiarism and uncredited authorship in the article, according to the report finalized this March and seen by Retraction Watch. Failure to give post-doctoral fellows the “opportunity to publish in peer-reviewed journals negatively impacts [them] both reputationally and financially,” the report states.

Exclusive: Kavli prize winner threatens to sue critic for defamation

One of the winners of the 2024 Kavli Prize in nanoscience has threatened to sue a longtime critic, Retraction Watch has learned.

In a cease and desist letter, a lawyer representing Chad Mirkin, a chemist and director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University in Chicago, accused Raphaël Lévy, a professor of physics at the Université Paris Sorbonne Nord, of making “patently false and defamatory” statements about Mirkin’s research.

The demand primarily concerns a letter to the editor Lévy submitted in April to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences regarding an article Mirkin co-authored, “Multimodal neuro-nanotechnology: Challenging the existing paradigm in glioblastoma therapy,” which appeared in the journal in February.

Exclusive: Psychology researcher loses PhD after allegedly using husband in study and making up data

A psychology researcher already under fire for several questionable studies has had her PhD revoked by a university tribunal that found it likely she fabricated data in her thesis.

Ping Dong, who was a doctoral student at the University of Toronto from 2012 to 2017, had already earned retractions for two papers based on her thesis before the tribunal’s decision to cancel her degree and give the thesis a failing grade. A summary of the case the school has made available online reveals those retractions, which we’ve previously reported on, arose from more serious misconduct than previously publicized and were also subject to an institutional investigation.

Dong’s research concerned how moral violations and unethical behavior, such as tax evasion or adultery, influence consumer choices.. According to the university’s report, her thesis had an “improbable level of duplication” in the answers research participants gave to open-ended questions. Dong also allegedly confessed to a former supervisor that her husband impersonated participants in her studies and that she had failed to properly randomize the results – although the supervisor contests that Dong ever admitted this to her.

Exclusive: Wiley journal editor under investigation for duplicate publications

An academic editor at Wiley who vowed to “uphold publication ethics” is being investigated by the company for allegedly publishing three of his papers twice, in violation of journal policies, Retraction Watch has learned.

One of the duplicates, which appeared last year in Nurse Education in Practice, an Elsevier title, has already been slated for retraction, according to emails we have seen. The other offending articles were published in Wiley journals.

The editor, Daniel Joseph Berdida, is a nurse and faculty member at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, the Philippines. He joined the editorial board of Wiley’s Journal of Nursing Management four months ago, announcing on LinkedIn that he would “be serving with integrity and uphold publication ethics.”

Exclusive: ‘Bust Size and Hitchhiking’ author to earn four more expressions of concern

The journal Social Influence will be issuing expressions of concern for four papers by Nicolas Guéguen, a marketing researcher whose work has long been dogged by allegations, Retraction Watch has learned.

Guéguen has to date has lost at least three papers to retraction, and has received many more expressions of concern, for his questionable studies. However, his institution, the Université de Bretagne-Sud, cleared him of wrongdoing in 2019.

Guéguen made a name for himself for his quirky studies – often about human sexuality – like one purporting to find women with bigger breasts were more likely to be successful hitchhikers; and one which claimed to find men with guitar cases are more attractive to women. (The first of those articles has an expression of concern; the second was retracted in 2020.)

Exclusive: PLOS ONE to correct 1,000 papers, add author proof step

The megajournal PLOS ONE will be correcting about 1,000 papers over the next few months, Retraction Watch has learned, and will add an author proof step – a first for the journal.

The corrections are for “errors in author names, affiliations, titles and references; to make minor updates to the acknowledgements, funding statements, and data availability statements, among other minor issues,” PLOS ONE head of communications David Knutson told us. He continued:

This batch of corrections does not reflect a recent change in the journal’s quality control standards or processes. Rather, we are clearing a backlog that accumulated during a 2-year period when minor corrections were deprioritized and resources were diverted to other areas. PLOS ONE is in the process of implementing an author proof step so that in the future such errors can be identified and addressed prior to publication.

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