Category: RW announcements

We’ve temporarily removed a Retraction Watch post. Here’s why. (Hint: A bad law.)

Longtime Retraction Watch readers may recall that in 2013, we were forced to temporarily remove ten posts following a false — and frankly ridiculous — copyright infringement claim.

Well, it’s happened again.

On Wednesday, our host, Bluehost, forwarded us another false copyright claim — aka a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice — by someone calling himself “Jiya Khan” and claiming to be based in Delhi, India. (Well, specifically, in “Rohini,sector-12,” which would mean that he or she is based at one of  two petrol stations.)

Khan insisted under penalty of perjury that a December 2014 post of ours — which we have now temporarily removed from public view (more on that in a moment) — violated his or her copyright.

What actually happened, in an eerie echo of the 2013 case, is that Continue reading We’ve temporarily removed a Retraction Watch post. Here’s why. (Hint: A bad law.)

Retractions holding steady at more than 650 in FY2016

pubmedDrumroll please.

The tally of retractions in MEDLINE — one of the world’s largest databases of scientific abstracts — for the last fiscal year has just been released, and the number is: 664.

Earlier this year, we scratched our heads over the data from 2015, which showed retractions had risen dramatically, to 684. The figures for this fiscal year — which ended in September — have held relatively steadily at that higher number, only dropping by 3%. (For some sense of scale, there were just shy of 870,000 new abstracts indexed in MEDLINE in FY2016; 664 is a tiny fraction of this figure, and of course not all of the retractions were of papers published in FY2016.)

Of note: In FY2014, there were fewer than 500 retractions — creating an increase of nearly 40% between 2014 and 2015. (Meanwhile, the number of citations indexed by MEDLINE rose only few percentage points over the same time period.) Which means the retraction rate in the last two years is dramatically higher than in 2014.

We have often wondered whether the retraction rate would ever reach a plateau, as the community’s ability to find problems in the literature catches up with the amount of problems present in the literature. But based on two years of data, we can’t say anything definitive about that.

Here’s an illustration of retraction data from recent years:

Continue reading Retractions holding steady at more than 650 in FY2016

It’s Giving Tuesday: Consider supporting Retraction Watch

RW logoWithout you, we wouldn’t exist. Plain and simple.

From story tips, to encouragement, to comments that add more substance to a story, we thank you, and are forever grateful. With your help, we can continue to shine a spotlight on scientific misconduct and hopefully improve the process of self-correction.

And there’s another way in which you’ve supported us throughout the years: With generous donations. Now, on this Giving Tuesday, we’re hoping some of you will consider making tax-deductible charitable contributions to The Center For Scientific Integrity, the 501(c)3 parent organization of Retraction Watch. Please consider financially supporting our work — any amount helps. Continue reading It’s Giving Tuesday: Consider supporting Retraction Watch

Post you may have missed: Tomato study squashed by authorship, data problems

A technical glitch prevented a story from reaching our email subscribers earlier today, so in case you missed it:

Like Retraction Watch? Consider making a tax-deductible contribution to support our growth. You can also follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, sign up on our homepage for an email every time there’s a new post, or subscribe to our daily digest. Click here to review our Comments Policy. For a sneak peek at what we’re working on, click here.

What should you do if a paper you’ve cited is later retracted?

RW logoWe all know that researchers continue to cite papers long after they’ve been retracted, posing concerns for the integrity of the literature. But what should you do if one of the papers you’ve cited gets retracted after you’ve already cited it?

We posed this question to some members of the board of directors of our parent non-profit organization, who offered up some valuable advice based on many years of experience working at journals and organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The first step: Determine whether the fact a reference has been retracted has any impact on the conclusions of your own paper. From Elizabeth Wager, publications consultant, Sideview; former chair, COPE:

Continue reading What should you do if a paper you’ve cited is later retracted?

Posts you may have missed: Congress investigating lab, meet Hindawi’s head of research integrity

The email alerts for two of today’s posts didn’t didn’t go out, due to a programming glitch. So in case you missed them, here they are:

Like Retraction Watch? Consider making a tax-deductible contribution to support our growth. You can also follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, sign up on our homepage for an email every time there’s a new post, or subscribe to our daily digest. Click here to review our Comments Policy. For a sneak peek at what we’re working on, click here.

A significant cardiology retraction; second retraction from Case Western biologist; and more you may have missed

RW logoA number of readers contacted us last week to let us know that their email alerts had stopped arriving. We’ve now fixed that problem, which had to do with a software update. With apologies for the technical glitch, here’s a roundup (from a Friday post, which wasn’t delivered by email) of posts for which emails didn’t go out, in case you missed them: Continue reading A significant cardiology retraction; second retraction from Case Western biologist; and more you may have missed

Posts you may have missed: Student loses PhD, controversial data to be released

RW logoWe’ve got some late-breaking news to report — plus, it’s been a busy news week overall, and some of our email alerts didn’t go out, due to a programming glitch. Below, here are some recent stories you may have missed.

A tribunal at Queen Mary University of London has decided to disclose the data from the controversial PACE trial, which tested various therapies for chronic fatigue syndrome. For critics of this study, this has been a long-awaited decision.

What’s more,  Continue reading Posts you may have missed: Student loses PhD, controversial data to be released

Embezzlement, 15 retractions, and a whistleblower could add up to trouble for Duke

scienceRetraction Watch readers may recall the case of Erin Potts-Kant, who pled guilty to embezzling funds from a lab, and now has 15 retractions, and Michael Foster, both formerly of Duke. You may also remember that we’ve featured discussions of the False Claims Act, which some attorneys are trying to use to expose wrongdoing — and earn large settlements for whistleblowers in the process.

It turns out those two threads are intertwined, as we learned only last month when a federal court case against Potts-Kant, Foster, and Duke was unsealed last month. (False Claims Act cases are frequently sealed when initially filed, with big penalties for anyone — including the attorneys — who talk about them, which is why we didn’t know of this link before.) In today’s Science, as part of our new partnership, we tell the story in a lot more detail, and describe the potential ramifications for Duke and other universities.

The whistleblower in the Duke case is named Continue reading Embezzlement, 15 retractions, and a whistleblower could add up to trouble for Duke