A group of astrophysicists has notched a pair of corrections for papers on galaxy clusters, thanks to an error that affected several figures in the papers, but not the overall conclusions. The errors came in the catalog of “mock” galaxies that first author Fabio Zandanel, a postdoc at the University of Amsterdam, created to model features that are found in … Continue reading Astrophysicists issue two detailed corrections
What if we told you that approximately 1 in 6 researchers working with human cells are using the wrong cell line? In other words, they believe they are studying the effects of a drug on breast cancer cells, for instance, but what they really have are cells from the bladder. That is the unfortunate reality … Continue reading Hundreds of researchers are using the wrong cells. That’s a major problem.
An article about the use of vaccines against pertussis — also known as whooping cough — didn’t include the fact that the author has received grants and consultancy fees from three pharmaceutical companies that help make or sell the vaccines. The correction to “Pertussis in young infants: a severe vaccine-preventable disease,” published in Autopsy and Case Reports just a few … Continue reading Publisher error removes industry conflicts in vaccine paper
Olivier Voinnet, a well-known plant scientist at the ETH in Zurich, has notched his 7th retraction for a highly cited paper. The 2003 paper was pulled when “additional image manipulations” came to light after The Plant Journal issued a correction earlier this year. The retraction follows an investigation into — and then retraction of — several other papers co-authored by Voinnet. The … Continue reading Voinnet retracts highly cited paper, bringing his total to 7
Memorial University in Canada has released a five-year-old report of an investigation, confirming a former nutrition professor had committed misconduct in a 2001 paper. The 53-page report — about Ranjit Kumar Chandra, a prominent and once-lauded researcher — focuses on a Nutrition paper that examined the effectiveness of vitamins patented by Chandra. The report, authored by MUN professor emeritus William Pryse-Phillips, … Continue reading After lawsuit, university releases misconduct report about nutrition researcher Chandra
When two chemists based in China couldn’t reproduce experiments in their paper on opal films, they retracted it. As the retraction note explains: In this article we report a method to fabricate 2D TiO2–WO3 composite inverse opal films via a mechanical co-assembly route with a template of polystyrene spheres. Upon repeating the experiments described, we found that this … Continue reading Chemists pull non-reproducible paper on method to make opal films
Benevolent readers: As we’ve noted many times, since August of 2010 when we launched Retraction Watch, you’ve showed us plenty of love, for which we are ever grateful. Your encouragement, story tips, and critiques are what make the site what it is. It’s great to know that we are providing you with a valuable source of … Continue reading This Giving Tuesday, consider supporting Retraction Watch
Nearly three years ago, our co-founders Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus penned a column in Lab Times suggesting ways for readers to report alleged scientific misconduct. They are now retracting that advice. In the retracted column, they suggested initially contacting the editor of the journal that published the potentially problematic work, and if the editor suggests … Continue reading A Retraction Watch retraction: Our 2013 advice on reporting misconduct turns out to have been wrong
The week at Retraction Watch featured a move by the Journal of Biological Chemistry that we’re applauding, a retraction by a high-profile nutrition researcher, and an announcement about a new partnership to create a retraction database. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A paper suggesting that exposure to sunlight might help prevent hip fractures in the elderly has been retracted, due to duplication and “concerns about the underlying data.” An expression of concern that appeared last July flagged the 2005 paper as containing text that matched another paper with the same first author that was published in 2011. According … Continue reading Osteoporosis paper felled by concerns with “scientific integrity”