This week in Nature, Daniele Fanelli at Stanford made an interesting proposal: Set up a system of “self-retraction” that makes it crystal clear when a paper is pulled for honest error, rather than misconduct. Fanelli, a whose work we have frequently covered, rightly notes that honest error represents a minority of retractions — around 20%. … Continue reading Poll: Should there be a way to “self-retract” for honest error?
Authors have retracted two papers about visual perception and working memory from the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, after the first author admitted to falsifying or fabricating data in four other papers. The authors have requested another two retractions, as well, which will bring the total for Edward Awh and his former graduate student David Anderson to nine retractions. (Earlier … Continue reading More retractions bring total to 7 for neuroscience pair, 2 more pending
The authors of a paper showing a “striking and unanticipated” relationship between light and temperature in regulating circadian rhythms are retracting it when the results couldn’t be replicated. After being contacted by another group who couldn’t reproduce the data, the authors failed to, as well. They “have absolutely no explanation for the discrepancies with the original … Continue reading Authors retract striking circadian clock finding after failing to replicate
Pernille Rørth is not your typical novelist. She was a scientist for 25 years and was also editor-in-chief of the EMBO Journal for five years. But now, she’s written a novel – Raw Data – about an incident of misconduct that forces a top lab in Boston to retract a prominent Nature paper. The novel … Continue reading When misconduct strikes: A fictional tale
Authors are retracting a 2014 paper about how liquid-crystalline materials self-organize in low temperature conditions after realizing they had measured the temperatures incorrectly. The error affected three figures and a table in “Milestone in the NTB phase investigation and beyond: direct insight into molecular self-assembly.” The paper, published in Soft Matter, has been cited three … Continue reading Molecular self-assembly paper fell apart
A doctor in Manchester, UK has received a year’s suspension by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service. Gemina Doolub admitted that she fabricated research data and submitted papers without the knowledge of her co-authors, including faking an email address for a co-author, a news story in the BMJ reports. The research in question was part of two retractions … Continue reading Doctor suspended in UK after faking co-authors, data
A psychology journal is retracting a 2015 paper that attracted press coverage by suggesting women’s hormone levels drive their desire to be attractive, after a colleague alerted the last author to flaws in the statistical analysis. The paper, published online in November, found women prefer to wear makeup when there is more testosterone present in their … Continue reading Makeup use linked to testosterone levels? Not so fast, says retraction
After a group of researchers noticed an error that affected the analysis of a survey of psychologists working with medical teams to help pediatric patients, they didn’t just issue a retraction — they published a commentary explaining what exactly went wrong. The error was discovered by a research assistant who was assembling a scientific poster, and noticed … Continue reading What to do when you make a mistake? Advice from authors who’ve been there
Following her request last month, a public health journal has retracted a paper co-authored by prominent nutrition researcher Marion Nestle, after revelations of multiple factual errors and her co-author’s ties to one of the subjects of the article. The article, an opinion piece, critiqued the supposed relationship between the biggest beverage distributor in Guatemala and the … Continue reading Retraction published for nutrition researcher Marion Nestle
Authors have retracted a paper from the Journal of Neurosurgery that contained many errors, including mislabeled figures, anatomical errors, and mismatched citations. They said that the paper’s preparation was rushed and not all authors had a chance to verify that it was accurate. Two of the authors of the paper had previously contacted the journal … Continue reading Neuroanatomy paper riddled with errors pulled by authors