“Super-surgeon” who created artificial tracheas facing new misconduct allegations

A one-time media favorite is being accused of serious misconduct in three cases where he inserted artificial windpipes into patients and treated them with stem cells. Two of the patients have died; one survives, but needs her airway cleaned every four hours by hospital staff to keep her alive. A little over two years ago, thoracic … Continue reading “Super-surgeon” who created artificial tracheas facing new misconduct allegations

Weekend reads: Novartis fires scientist for faking data; journal accepts F-bomb-laden spam paper

The week at Retraction Watch began with a case of a South Korean engineer who had to retract ten studies at once. Here’s what was happening elsewhere, along with an update on a story we covered a few days ago:

Engineer in South Korea forced to retract ten papers in one fell swoop

Chang-Suk Han, a member of the engineering faculty at Hoseo University in South Korea, has had ten articles retracted at once because of duplicated data. Here are the ten studies from Metals and Materials International:

Weekend reads: Speed kills in publishing too; studying blank pages; apologies for the Rosetta Shirt

Highlights at Retraction Watch this week included a case of overly honest referencing and the story of how a medical resident flagged up a pseudoscientific study. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Professor defends ripping off his student by insulting him in the media

University of Regina professor Shahid Azam is the kind of thesis advisor that gives prospective grad students nightmares. According to the CBC, Azam lost a paper in Environmental Geotechnics for plagiarizing the work of his student, Arjun Paul, without bothering to cite it. Azam went on to trash the student’s ability to the CBC reporter. He’s got two … Continue reading Professor defends ripping off his student by insulting him in the media

Weekend reads: Scientists behaving badly; sexual harassment at Yale; help us find Retraction Watch bugs

First, a housekeeping note: We migrated web hosts this week, and while the move seems to have gone mostly smoothly, we’ve noticed a few issues: Comments aren’t threaded (even though we have them set up to be), categories aren’t properly nesting, and a small percentage of comments didn’t transfer over with the rest, the way … Continue reading Weekend reads: Scientists behaving badly; sexual harassment at Yale; help us find Retraction Watch bugs

“Embarrassing and regrettable incident of faulty memory” leads to retraction

Is there any accounting for plagiarism? A set of educational materials for accounting classes has been retracted for plagiarizing work published a decade earlier. We spoke to the author of the retracted work, who explained that over the course of ten years of revising his classroom material, he lost track of what was original, and … Continue reading “Embarrassing and regrettable incident of faulty memory” leads to retraction

Weekend reads: “Academic science isn’t sexist;” buying your way into university rankings

The week at Retraction Watch began with news of a lawsuit against PubPeer commenters. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

What was behind an oddly-worded dental retraction? The authors stole someone’s thesis

A dentistry journal has retracted a paper after discovering the research was lifted from dissertation work by two people unrelated to the paper authors. Here’s the notice for “Treatment of mandibular angle fracture with a 2 mm, 3-dimensional rectangular grid compression miniplates: A prospective clinical study“:

“Our real intention was to emphasize, not plagiarize”

This one’s not a retraction, but rather a back and forth of letters to the editor concerning accusations of plagiarism. Dentists Bryan and Paul Jacobs, a father and son team, wrote a paper describing a novel surgical technique in March 2013. In October 2013, several Croatian dentists published their own paper using the technique. A … Continue reading “Our real intention was to emphasize, not plagiarize”