Search Results for: elisabeth bik

Paper from company claiming phototherapy could treat COVID-19 is retracted

A study that touted phototherapy as a way to combat the COVID-19 pandemic has been retracted after Elisabeth Bik noted a litany of concerns about the article, from duplications in the figures to the authors’ failure to disclose conflicts of interest.  The article, “Methylene blue photochemical treatment as a reliable SARS-CoV-2 plasma virus inactivation method … Continue reading Paper from company claiming phototherapy could treat COVID-19 is retracted

‘They seem to mean business’: Cardiology journal flags papers cited hundreds of times

A European cardiology journal has issued expressions of concern for seven widely-cited papers dating back to 2009 after a reader flagged suspicious images in the articles.  Although the cast of characters changes, the senior author on all seven papers is Chao-Ke Tang, of the First Affiliated Hospital of the University of South China, in Hengyang, … Continue reading ‘They seem to mean business’: Cardiology journal flags papers cited hundreds of times

Weekend reads: ‘The obesity wars and the education of a researcher’; zombie research; hijacked journals

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Pulp fiction: Japanese university revokes two dentistry PhDs in case … Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘The obesity wars and the education of a researcher’; zombie research; hijacked journals

‘We apologize again for the inadvertent mistakes during the assembly of data due to our carelessness’

Last December, Elisabeth Bik notified journals about 45 articles by a researcher in China which struck her as suspicious. Within weeks, one of those journals — DNA and Cell Biology — had retracted the paper she’d flagged. That reassuringly brisk response appears to have been an anomaly in the case of Hua Tang, of Tianjin … Continue reading ‘We apologize again for the inadvertent mistakes during the assembly of data due to our carelessness’

Weekend reads: ‘Lab leak’ and journals; a murder rocks Chinese academia; NIH removes lab heads from grants after harassment claims

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Kentucky professor resigns ahead of vote that could have stripped … Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Lab leak’ and journals; a murder rocks Chinese academia; NIH removes lab heads from grants after harassment claims

Meet a sleuth whose work has led to the identification of hundreds of fraudulent papers

Last month, Retraction Watch reported on the case of Hironobo Ueshima, an anesthesiology researcher found guilty of misconduct in more than 140 papers. A journal editor, John Loadsman, was the first to suspect there were issues in Ueshima’s work. But this was hardly the first time Loadsman had been the canary in the coal mine … Continue reading Meet a sleuth whose work has led to the identification of hundreds of fraudulent papers

Weekend reads: Legal threats, lawsuits, a professor loses emeritus status, and ‘the 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill’

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Paper linking frequency of Google search terms to violence against … Continue reading Weekend reads: Legal threats, lawsuits, a professor loses emeritus status, and ‘the 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill’

Researcher loses medical degree for using paper mill to write his dissertation

A university in China has revoked the medical degree of a researcher found guilty of having produced his dissertation with the help of a prodigious paper mill.  As Elisabeth Bik noted last year in a post on PubPeer, the thesis by Bin Chen, a lung specialist at Soochow University, was one of 121 articles produced … Continue reading Researcher loses medical degree for using paper mill to write his dissertation

On the perils of scientific collaboration from thousands of miles away

Collaborations can be fraught. Ask David Ojcius.  Ojcius, an emeritus professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Merced, and a department chair at the University of the Pacific, is up to four retractions, five corrections and an expression of concern in papers he wrote with collaborators in China and elsewhere.  Ojcius … Continue reading On the perils of scientific collaboration from thousands of miles away

Journal retracts paper by ‘miracle doctor’ claiming life force kills cancer cells

A “miracle doctor” in China and his colleagues have lost a 2007 paper on the ability of the martial art qigong to treat cancer after the journal that published the work said it failed to properly vet the findings. Well, the first part of that is true. The second part is implied. We’ll explain.  The … Continue reading Journal retracts paper by ‘miracle doctor’ claiming life force kills cancer cells