The week at Retraction Watch featured the story of a graduate student who fought back after being caught in the middle of a fraud case, and the retraction of a hotly debated paper from Nature Cell Biology. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
There are a lot of accusations about research misconduct swirling around, and not every journal handles them the same. Recently, Cell Metabolism Scientific Editor Anne Granger and Cell Metabolism Editor-in-Chief Nikla Emambokus shared some details about their investigative procedure in “Weeding out the Bad Apples.” We talked to them about why they don’t necessarily trust accusations leveled on … Continue reading How a Cell journal weeds out the “bad apples”
The week at Retraction Watch featured news of a publisher hack, and a story about a Nature Cell Biology paper likely headed for retraction. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A publisher in the Netherlands has retracted 13 published studies and withdrawn 52 that were under consideration (but not yet published) after learning that someone illegally accessed its workflows to add fake authors and manipulate text. According to Seyyed Mohammad Miri, the founder, CEO, and managing director of Kowsar Publishing, the 13 retracted papers all included extra authors … Continue reading Scientific publisher hacked, affecting 65 papers
A new letter signed by 20 researchers is casting additional doubts on the validity of a potentially invaluable lab tool — and alleges the lab that produced the initial results turned them away when they tried to replicate its findings in mammalian cells. In a letter published this week in Protein & Cell, the researchers … Continue reading More questions arise over gene-editing tool
Recently, an ecology journal received a submission that made them pause. In order to conduct their research, the authors had to kill thousands of fish. The study had been approved by conservation authorities, but it still wasn’t sitting well with the journal. So it rejected the paper, on ethical grounds. Biological Conservation explained its decision in … Continue reading Should journals reject papers solely on ethical grounds?
Two sets of authors based largely at Harvard Medical School have each retracted a paper for duplication in the same journal. Both papers — which are more than a decade old — were pulled in The Journal of Clinical Investigation on November 1 by their respective corresponding authors. One paper’s last author told us it … Continue reading Two Harvard-led groups pull well-cited cancer papers for duplication
The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a physics society’s press release quoting U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, and an apparent blow for clairvoyance research. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Journals have retracted five papers by a materials researcher based in Poland after concluding the peer-review process had been faked. According to the retraction notices — which all appear in Elsevier journals and contain the same text — the papers were accepted due to “positive advice of at least one faked reviewer report,” which were submitted … Continue reading Researcher denies faking reviews for 5 newly retracted papers
A new analysis of more than 30 clinical trials co-authored by a bone researcher based in Japan is casting doubt on the legitimacy of the findings. Yoshihiro Sato, based at Mitate Hospital, has already retracted 12 papers, for reasons ranging from data problems, to including co-authors without their consent, to self-plagiarism. Most of these retracted papers are … Continue reading Analysis casts doubt on bone researcher’s body of work