Taiwan’s education minister, Chiang Wei-ling, whose name appeared on several of 60 retracted articles by Peter Chen — apparently the architect of a peer review and citation syndicate we were first to report on last week — has resigned over the publishing scandal. According to the University World News:
Another busy week at Retraction Watch, with a lot of media attention to a story about 60 retractions at a single journal for peer review fraud, and our op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
This one comes to us from Twitter, where Willem van Schaik went to express his frustration that a PLOS ONE paper he’d edited had been retracted for fake data. Two other papers from the same group at the Institute of Microbial Technology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Chandigarh, India, were retracted simultaneously. We sent van Schaik … Continue reading Three PLOS ONE papers retracted for totally made-up data
This one deserves a “wow.” SAGE Publishers is retracting 60 articles from the Journal of Vibration and Control after an investigation revealed a “peer review and citation ring” involving a professor in Taiwan. [Please see an update on this post.] Here’s the beginning of a statement from SAGE:
There has been another development in the case of Dong-Pyou Han, the former Iowa State University (ISU) researcher who admitted last fall to spiking rabbit blood samples to make it look as though his team’s HIV vaccine was working in the animals. The Des Moines Register reports:
This story began as a report of a one-off case of potential predatory practice last month, and has escalated to an official call to disband an entire international editorial board, and an accusation against the editor of mass-scale nepotism and other publishing misconduct. The journal, Archives of Biological Sciences (ABS) is the official publication of … Continue reading Serbian journal lands in hot water after challenge on 24 hour peer review that cost 1785 euros
Another busy week at Retraction Watch, with Ivan in Seoul speaking on research integrity at the Korean Medical Association conference. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
In our coverage Tuesday of the republication of the controversial retracted study of GMOs and rats by Gilles Seralini and colleagues, we wrote this about a strange passage in an editor’s note on the paper: The republished study was peer-reviewed, according to the press materials, and Seralini confirmed that it was in an email to … Continue reading Republished Seralini GMO-rat study was not peer-reviewed, says editor
A Boston doctor indicted on charges of Medicare fraud in 2007 has had a paper relating to the case retracted this month. Abdul Razzaque Ahmed was considered something of a miracle worker by his patients, treating two rare and disfiguring skin conditions called pemphigoid and pemphigus vulgaris. He used more powerful medicines than the typical course … Continue reading Alleged Medicare cheat loses paper for data mix-up
Alfredo Fusco, who is under criminal investigation in Italy for scientific fraud, has had two more papers retracted. Both are in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC). Here are the two studies: