The week at Retraction Watch featured health care fraud charges for a researcher who committed scientific fraud, and a first-ever government agency lawsuit against a scientific publisher for deceit. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has charged a publisher of hundreds of academic journals with deceiving readers about reviewing practices, publication fees, and the nature of its editorial boards. Here’s more from a news release about the suit:
A former graduate student at the University of Colorado Denver has gained three retractions and two expressions of concern (EOC), following an institutional probe into his work. Last year, we reported on an investigation by the University of Colorado Denver into the research of Rajendra Kadam, which recommended retracting 10 papers. The report also flagged eight additional papers … Continue reading U Colorado’s former “golden boy” up to 7 retractions
A cluster of papers by different authors has been retracted for sharing text, even though some papers were submitted at the same time. How is that possible? A spokesperson for Springer told us that they have reason to believe a third-party company may have helped prepare the papers for publication, and in the process might have spread … Continue reading A retraction cluster? Two papers retracted for overlap with other retractions
The week at Retraction Watch featured a new member of our leaderboard and a discussion of what would happen if peer reviewers didn’t look at results. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A researcher has retracted two 2016 papers after discovering problems with the data that negated the findings — and after one of his three listed affiliations denied the research was conducted there. According to the retraction notices issued by Chemosphere, Hong-Wei Luo incorrectly claimed to be affiliated with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee … Continue reading Where was chem research conducted? Not here, say two of three listed author affiliations
A tribunal in the UK has rejected an appeal by Queen Mary University of London, who sought to reverse a previous order that they release data from a controversial 2011 paper in The Lancet about chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The decision is one in a long series of judgments about the so-called PACE trial, which reported … Continue reading UK tribunal orders release of data from controversial chronic fatigue syndrome study
Authors of systematic review articles sometimes overlook misconduct and conflicts of interest present in the research they are analyzing, according to a recent study published in BMJ Open. During the study, researchers reviewed 118 systematic reviews published in 2013 in four high-profile medical journals — Annals of Internal Medicine, the British Medical Journal, The Journal of the American … Continue reading Should systematic reviewers report suspected misconduct?
A biology journal has blacklisted authors from publishing their work after finding their case report about a dementia patient with hypersexuality was plagiarized from a previously published report. The retraction notice, issued by Advances in Human Biology (AIHB) in June, recognizes the case as “scientific misconduct.” The journal launched an investigation after the plagiarism was … Continue reading Journal blacklists authors for plagiarizing case report about hypersexuality in dementia
Fazlul Sarkar has not had a good month: In the last few weeks, he has earned 13 retractions across four journals, the latest in the fallout from a string of legal cases that have pitted him against one of science publishing’s major players. Sarkar gained attention in 2014 when he sued anonymous commenters of PubPeer for defamation, and … Continue reading Meet the researcher with 13 retractions who’s trying to sue PubPeer commenters: Fazlul Sarkar