The president of a top university in Taiwan has announced he will resign from his post at the end of his first term in June. President Pan-chyr Yang of National Taiwan University (NTU) has opted not to seek a second term as president given two recent investigations — one which concluded last month and one which … Continue reading President of Taiwan university to step down amidst investigation
Ask and ye shall receive: A journal has retracted a 2014 paper by Paolo Macchiarini, upon request from the Karolinska Institutet (KI). The latest news is only one step in a long-running saga about former star surgeon Macchiarini, who was dismissed from KI last year. To read more, check out our timeline. KI announced it was … Continue reading Macchiarini blames Karolinska for losing data as he retracts 2014 paper
Two countries have recently announced plans to learn more about research misconduct, with the goal of preventing it from happening in the first place. In Japan, the effort takes the form of a joint study group among six universities, which will interview researchers who have engaged in misconduct to discover patterns and common factors for their … Continue reading Japan, Taiwan taking closer look at fraud — and how to stop it
The week at Retraction Watch featured a lawsuit threat following criticism of a popular education program, and the new editor of PLOS ONE’s explanation of why submissions are down. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Susana Gonzalez, a rising star in stem cell research, has had a rough year. In addition to being fired from her former research institute (which she is now appealing), one of her grants (totaling nearly 2 million Euros) was suspended. Most recently, she has received two new retractions in Nature Communications over figure duplications and … Continue reading Two more retractions for stem cell researcher appealing her dismissal
Chemistry researchers in China have retracted their 2016 paper after reporting that the raw data did not match what they presented in the article. The authors were attempting to develop a method to produce large amounts of a high-quality two-dimensional form of antimonene, a prized crystal structure that has been notoriously difficult to synthesize reliably. They … Continue reading Why don’t the raw data match what was reported in a chemistry paper?
The chair of a biology department who has faced years of misconduct accusations has taken another hit—a lengthy correction due to text “overlap” between one of his PNAS papers and six other articles. According to the correction, a reader contacted the journal to notify the editors that text and sentences in multiple sections of the … Continue reading Another correction for prominent cancer researcher who’s dodged accusations for decades
The timing was tight, but Sergio Gonzalez had done it. Gonzalez, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Neurosciences of Montpellier (INSERM) in France, had a paper accepted in a top journal by the end of 2015, just in time to apply for a small number of highly sought-after permanent research positions that open up in France each … Continue reading Negligence by stressed-out postdoc led to retraction of high-profile paper, supervisor says
Here’s a rather odd case: When readers raised issues about some of the images in a 2008 cancer paper, the authors issued a correction last year. But when readers asked additional questions about the corrected images, the authors decided to retract the paper entirely, along with its correction. Both the original and corrected versions were questioned on … Continue reading Huh? Cancer paper gets retracted because of its correction
The week at Retraction Watch featured three new ways companies are trying to scam authors, and a look at why one journal is publishing a running tally of their retractions. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: