This week at Retraction Watch featured seven retractions in a long-running case involving cancer research, as well as the retraction of a paper claiming a link between a vaccine and behavioral issues. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Ben Goldacre has been a busy man. In the last six weeks, the author and medical doctor’s Compare Project has evaluated 67 clinical trials published in the top five medical journals, looking for any “switched outcomes,” meaning the authors didn’t report something they said they would, or included additional outcomes in the published paper, with … Continue reading Top journals give mixed response to learning published trials didn’t proceed as planned
A paper about combating cyberterrorism is coming under fire after allegations of plagiarism sparked on social media. Soon after the paper was published by the journal Computer Technology and Application in 2015, Orgnet LLC, a network analysis software company, announced on Twitter that the paper took content from its webpage. The firm tweeted:
Mike Rossner has made a name for himself in academic publishing as somewhat of a “manipulation detective.” As the editor of The Journal of Cell Biology, in 2002 he initiated a policy of screening all images in accepted manuscripts, causing the journal to reject roughly 1% of papers that had already passed peer review. Other … Continue reading Don’t trust an image in a scientific paper? Manipulation detective’s company wants to help.
High-profile social psychologist Jens Förster has earned two retractions following an investigation by his former workplace. He agreed to the retractions as part of a settlement with the German Society for Psychology (DGPs). The papers are two of eight that were found to contain “strong statistical evidence for low veracity.” According to the report from an expert panel convened at … Continue reading Psychologist Jens Förster earns second and third retractions as part of settlement
There’s good news and bad news in radiology research, according to a new study: The number of retractions is increasing in radiology journals, but the rate of retraction remains lower than that seen in biomedical journals outside the field of radiology. According to the study in the American Journal of Roentgenology, between 1986 and 2001, … Continue reading Do radiology journals retract fewer papers? New study suggests yes
A Toronto hospital network is keeping two researchers’ labs closed even after an Ontario court quashed part of a misconduct finding by the institution. Some background: After the University Health Network found evidence of falsified data, Sylvia Asa stepped down as Program Medical Director of the Laboratory Medicine Program, the largest hospital diagnostic laboratory in Canada. Due to the investigation, UHN suspended the labs … Continue reading Sanction for Toronto researchers upheld despite court challenge
When a researcher encountered two papers that suggested moonlight has biological effects — on both plants and humans — he took a second look at the data, and came to different conclusions. That was the easy part — getting the word out about his negative findings, however, was much more difficult. When Jean-Luc Margot, a … Continue reading Why publishing negative findings is hard
A California court has dismissed virologist Judy Mikovits’s lawsuit against fourteen people and two Nevada corporations, in part because she failed to submit necessary documents on time. Mikovits is the author on a now-retracted Science paper suggesting a link between a virus known as XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome, which has no known cause. She alleged that she was fired … Continue reading Court dismisses lawsuit by XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome researcher
The editor in chief of Vaccine has removed a paper suggesting a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine can trigger behavioral changes in mice. The note doesn’t provide any reason for the withdrawal, although authors were told the editor asked for further review. Two co-authors on the paper — about Gardasil, a vaccine against HPV — have previously suggested … Continue reading Journal temporarily removes paper linking HPV vaccine to behavioral issues