Sometimes, the best way to expose a problem with the publishing process is to put it to a test — perhaps by performing a Sokal-style hoax, or submitting a paper with obvious flaws. In 2014, that’s just what a researcher in Kosovo did. Suspicious that a journal wasn’t doing a thorough job of vetting submissions, she decided to … Continue reading Sting operation forces predatory publisher to pull paper
A genetics researcher included falsified data in two published papers, according to a report by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) released today. At the time of the misconduct, Andrew Cullinane was a postdoctoral fellow in the Medical Genetics Branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). According to his LinkedIn page, he is now an assistant professor … Continue reading Former NIH postdoc doctored data
The week at Retraction Watch featured health care fraud charges for a researcher who committed scientific fraud, and a first-ever government agency lawsuit against a scientific publisher for deceit. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has charged a publisher of hundreds of academic journals with deceiving readers about reviewing practices, publication fees, and the nature of its editorial boards. Here’s more from a news release about the suit:
A former graduate student at the University of Colorado Denver has gained three retractions and two expressions of concern (EOC), following an institutional probe into his work. Last year, we reported on an investigation by the University of Colorado Denver into the research of Rajendra Kadam, which recommended retracting 10 papers. The report also flagged eight additional papers … Continue reading U Colorado’s former “golden boy” up to 7 retractions
A cluster of papers by different authors has been retracted for sharing text, even though some papers were submitted at the same time. How is that possible? A spokesperson for Springer told us that they have reason to believe a third-party company may have helped prepare the papers for publication, and in the process might have spread … Continue reading A retraction cluster? Two papers retracted for overlap with other retractions
The week at Retraction Watch featured a new member of our leaderboard and a discussion of what would happen if peer reviewers didn’t look at results. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A researcher has retracted two 2016 papers after discovering problems with the data that negated the findings — and after one of his three listed affiliations denied the research was conducted there. According to the retraction notices issued by Chemosphere, Hong-Wei Luo incorrectly claimed to be affiliated with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee … Continue reading Where was chem research conducted? Not here, say two of three listed author affiliations
A tribunal in the UK has rejected an appeal by Queen Mary University of London, who sought to reverse a previous order that they release data from a controversial 2011 paper in The Lancet about chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The decision is one in a long series of judgments about the so-called PACE trial, which reported … Continue reading UK tribunal orders release of data from controversial chronic fatigue syndrome study
Authors of systematic review articles sometimes overlook misconduct and conflicts of interest present in the research they are analyzing, according to a recent study published in BMJ Open. During the study, researchers reviewed 118 systematic reviews published in 2013 in four high-profile medical journals — Annals of Internal Medicine, the British Medical Journal, The Journal of the American … Continue reading Should systematic reviewers report suspected misconduct?