This week saw us profiled in The New York Times and de Volkskrant, and the introduction of our new staff writer. We also launched The Retraction Watch Leaderboard. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A team of Harvard and Yale biologists have retracted an Infection and Immunity paper due to data duplication. After the duplication came to light, the erroneous figures were corrected using original data, but the results affected “some of the manuscript’s conclusions.” An ethics panel subsequently recommended retraction, according to the journal, and the authors agreed. The paper, “NOD2 … Continue reading “Evidence of data duplication” infects lung inflammation paper from Harvard and Yale
Citing an “abuse of the scientific publishing system,” the editors of Geomorphology have retracted a paper from a quartet of geologists in China for containing “significant similarity” to four other papers. It is the second recent retraction for the group: In a loop of self-plagiarism, the Geomorphology paper was cited as a source of copied material … Continue reading Geology dust-up: Second sand paper swept away for duplication
There’s been a 10th retraction from two former postdocs at a UT-Southwestern cancer research center who were sanctioned by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) last September, in part due to observations and comments from Retraction Watch readers. It’s a 2008 Cancer Letters paper, “Methylation of apoptosis related genes in the pathogenesis and prognosis of … Continue reading ORI-sanctioned former UT-Southwestern cancer researchers up to 10 retractions
Former University of Tokyo researcher Shigeaki Kato continues to put big numbers on the board. Last month, we reported on his 26th, 27th, and 28th retractions, all in Nature Cell Biology and cited close to 700 times. Yesterday, EMBO Journal and EMBO Reports published a total of five more retractions for the endocrinology researcher, who … Continue reading Shigeaki Kato up to 33 retractions, with five papers cited a total of 450 times
A mistaken molecular structure has led to a retraction and a withdrawal for group in India studying optical crystals. Here’s the notice for “Crystal growth and spectroscopic characterization of Aloevera amino acid added lithium sulfate monohydrate: A non-linear optical crystal” in Spectrochimica Acta Part A:
Retractions have arrived in the case of Peter Nijkamp, a leading Dutch economist accused of duplication and plagiarism. The Review of Economic Analysis has removed two of Nijkamp’s articles for self-plagiarism. According to the NRC Handelsblad website (courtesy of Google translate): The affair university economics professor Peter Nijkamp and his PhD student Karima Kourtit has … Continue reading Retractions arrive in plagiarism scandal involving economist Nijkamp
A group at the University of Texas Southwestern led by Adi F. Gazdar that found evidence of inappropriate image manipulation in a number of their papers has retracted its seventh and eighth studies. Here’s the notice for 2005’s “Aberrant methylation profile of human malignant mesotheliomas and its relationship to SV40 infection,” in Oncogene:
Alfredo Fusco, a cancer researcher in Italy who is facing a criminal investigation for fraud, has had two more papers retracted.
More than two years ago, we wrote about a retraction for duplication in Biophysical Journal prompted by an email from pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis. That post generated a robust discussion, including one comment from someone calling himself or herself “Double Dutch.” This past weekend, the last author of that paper, Rienk van Grondelle, left a … Continue reading “Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction