The week at Retraction Watch featured a study suggesting that 2% of studies in eight medical journals contained suspect data, and the announcement of a retraction on a professor’s blog. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Science Translational Medicine has retracted a paper by researchers based in Switzerland, after an investigation concluded two figures had been manipulated. The investigation occurred at the University of Basel. It’s not clear what prompted it, but the paper has been discussed at length on PubPeer. After the investigation concluded two figure panels included manipulated data, the last … Continue reading “Data had been manipulated:” Science Translational Medicine retracts paper
A Rutgers computer scientist is retracting conference proceedings via an unusual channel: his personal blog. On April 7, Anand Sarwate wrote that he was retracting a mathematical proof from the proceedings from the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), after discovering errors that invalidated the result. He explains in the blog … Continue reading Rutgers prof announces retraction on his blog
After issuing a retraction notice May 30 for a biomedical engineering paper, the journal has since pulled the notice, citing “a potential problem.” After doing some digging, we’ve learned more about the “potential problem.” Apparently, the retraction was requested by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. NTU has been investigating the first author for months, after it received … Continue reading A retraction gets retracted — but the first author’s contract is still terminated
A sweeping analysis of more than 5,000 papers in eight leading medical journals has found compelling evidence of suspect data in roughly 2% of randomized controlled clinical trials in those journals. Although the analysis, by John Carlisle, an anesthetist in the United Kingdom, could not determine whether the concerning data were tainted by misconduct or … Continue reading Two in 100 clinical trials in eight major journals likely contain inaccurate data: Study
The week at Retraction Watch featured an unusual warning from the New England Journal of Medicine, and the withdrawal of a paper over a fear of legal threats. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Last week, Emily Putnam-Hornstein, an associate professor at the University of Southern California, was reading what seemed like a noteworthy new report from the RAND Corporation on the child welfare system. But then she realized that some of the key estimates were off. When she sent the report to some colleagues, they agreed. Curious, Putnam-Hornstein and … Continue reading RAND withdraws report on child welfare reform for further analysis
The fallout continues for a study conducted at a local CrossFit gym by researchers at The Ohio State University. First it was corrected, now it’s been retracted, and it continues to be the basis of litigation against both the authors and the publisher. Editors at the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research have decided to … Continue reading Journal retracts Ohio State CrossFit study at center of lawsuits
Neuroscientist Stanley Rapoport just can’t catch a break. Rapoport, who’s based at National Institute on Aging, is continuing to experience fallout from his research collaborations, after multiple co-authors have been found to have committed misconduct. Most recently, Rapoport has had four papers retracted in three journals, citing falsified data in a range of figures. Although the notices do not … Continue reading NIH neuroscientist up to 16 retractions
Mistakes happen. Including, sometimes, putting articles that should be freely available behind a paywall. This occasionally happens — though likely not with alarming frequency, according to publishing expert Charles Oppenheim, who recently wrote about the issue in Scholarly Kitchen. Still, the costs can literally be high, both for the authors who paid to make their articles free … Continue reading How upset should we get when articles are paywalled by mistake?