Search Results for: medical

Bone researcher with lifetime funding ban earns third retraction

A researcher who received a lifetime funding ban for misconduct from a Canadian agency has logged her third retraction, after a re-analysis of her work unveiled “serious inconsistencies.” In July, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) released a report about Sophie Jamal, following an investigation by her former employer, The Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, Canada. … Continue reading Bone researcher with lifetime funding ban earns third retraction

Weekend reads: One of the most highly cited papers ever; a pharma buys peer-reviewed praise; how to get more citations

The week at Retraction Watch featured revelations about a cancer researcher in Canada and an author’s worst nightmare come true. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Dear peer reviewer, you stole my paper: An author’s worst nightmare

“Deeply disturbing,” “heinous intellectual theft,” erosion of the “public’s trust in medical research:” These are just a few words used to describe a rare type of plagiarism reported in this week’s Annals of Internal Medicine. Although we’ve only documented a few cases where peer reviewers steal material from manuscripts and pass them off as their … Continue reading Dear peer reviewer, you stole my paper: An author’s worst nightmare

Entomology journal retracts 2016 study with flawed analyses

An entomology journal has issued its first retraction during the current editor’s nearly 30-year tenure — for a 2016 study with serious flaws in the analyses.  After the Journal of Medical Entomology (JME) published the study — about the identification of genes that enable an insect to detect odors — an outside researcher wrote a letter to the … Continue reading Entomology journal retracts 2016 study with flawed analyses

Weekend reads: A flawed paper makes it into Nature; is science in big trouble?; a reproducibility crisis history

The week at Retraction Watch featured a refreshingly honest retraction, and a big win for PubPeer. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Journal reverses acceptance of study linking vaccines to autism

A journal posted an abstract online suggesting a link between vaccines and autism. After a firestorm of criticism, it removed the abstract, saying it was going to be re-reviewed. Now, the journal has decided to formally reject it. As we reported last month, Frontiers in Public Health removed the abstract after it sparked criticism on … Continue reading Journal reverses acceptance of study linking vaccines to autism

A paper was published in 2015; the authors already lost the data

The authors of a 2015 study have retracted it after discovering that several Western blots in their paper “do not represent the experiments that were reported.” They couldn’t check some of the original blots, because — according to the retraction notice in the American Journal of Physiology – Renal Physiology — they could not be located. … Continue reading A paper was published in 2015; the authors already lost the data

“A sinking feeling in my gut:” Diary of a retraction

When an ecologist realized he’d made a fatal error in a 2009 paper, he did the right thing: He immediately contacted the journal (Evolutionary Ecology Research) to ask for a retraction. But he didn’t stop there: He wrote a detailed blog post outlining how he learned — in October 2016, after a colleague couldn’t recreate … Continue reading “A sinking feeling in my gut:” Diary of a retraction

Remaining fraud charges withdrawn for Parkinson’s researcher

Two remaining charges against a Parkinson’s researcher recently convicted of fraud have been dropped by an Australian court. In October, Caroline Barwood, formerly at the University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane, was found guilty of five out of seven charges. Subsequently, Barwood was handed two suspended sentences: one for two years, and another for 15 months, both … Continue reading Remaining fraud charges withdrawn for Parkinson’s researcher

Retractions holding steady at more than 650 in FY2016

Drumroll 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 … Continue reading Retractions holding steady at more than 650 in FY2016