Graham Ellis-Davies says January 25th was one of the worst days of his life. That was when the journal ChemBioChem retracted an article, published barely two weeks earlier, for a mistake Ellis-Davies blames squarely on himself. The fallout has been nearly two months of painful self-recrimination, a tattered friendship and, perhaps most significant, he adds, … Continue reading Aftermath: Gut-wrenching misstep leads to retraction, frayed feelings and a paperless postdoc
Plagiarism can involve the theft of words, and we’ve covered plenty of such cases (like this one). But here’s a case of what appears to be more wholesale lifting of everything from ideas to assays. The Journal of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology (JMMB), a Karger title, has retracted an October 2010 paper, “Characterization of Methyltransferase … Continue reading ME-Coli: Germ paper retracted after mentor accuses authors of idea theft
Self-plagiarism alert: A very similar version of this post is being published online in Anesthesiology News, where one of us (AM) is managing editor. If a plagiarist plagiarizes from an author who herself has plagiarized, do we call it a wash and go for a beer? That scenario is precisely what Steven L. Shafer found … Continue reading Plagiarists plagiarized: A daisy chain of retractions at Anesthesia & Analgesia
Yesterday,we posted on the retraction of a 2004 Nature paper on innate immunity whose findings had been questioned by two groups. A few hours after we posted that item, we heard back from the senior author of one of the papers doubting that data, Tom DeCoursey. DeCoursey makes a number of important points, so we … Continue reading More on Ahluwalia et al Nature retraction, from Tom DeCoursey
“Because of its growing reach and influence, Retraction Watch’s investigations and revelations have helped to address the issue of ‘unhelpful retraction notices’.” In 2020, NewsGuard said we were “unsung heroes,” one of ten sites they pointed to as “models in producing content that is truthful, compelling, credible, and transparent.” “The seamier side of academia, lying, … Continue reading What people are saying about Retraction Watch
The authors of an article linking scores on a “wokeness” scale and mental health issues are blaming political bias for the retraction of their paper in March following post-publication peer review. The article, “Do Conservatives Really Have an Advantage in Mental Health? An Examination of Measurement Invariance,” appeared in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology last … Continue reading Paper on “wokeness” and mental health retracted for political reasons, authors say
Unverifiable researchers are a harbinger of paper mill activity. While journals have clues to identifying fake personas — lack of professional affiliation, no profile on ORCID or strings of random numbers in email addresses, to name a few — there isn’t a standard template for doing so. The International Association of Scientific, Technical, & Medical … Continue reading Can a better ID system for authors, reviewers and editors reduce fraud? STM thinks so
An Elsevier journal has pulled three articles after the publisher determined an author had been “involved in the peer review and decision making” as managing guest editor of the special issues in which they appeared. The author, botany researcher Vijay Kumar of Lovely Professional University in Punjab, India, told Retraction Watch his apparent involvement in … Continue reading ‘Foolish mistake’: Guest editor loses three articles published in his own special issues
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of “What’s in a picture? The temptation of image manipulation,” in which I described the problem of image manipulation in biomedical research. Two decades later, much has changed. I am reassured by the heightened awareness of this issue and the numerous efforts to address it by … Continue reading What’s in a picture? Two decades of image manipulation awareness and action
An article about the overuse of spinal imaging has been retracted after the distributor of a chiropractic product it criticized in passing complained to the journal. The paper, “An investigation into the chiropractic practice and communication of routine repetitive radiographic imaging for the location of postural misalignments,” was retracted in June from the Journal of … Continue reading Journal retracts paper on chiropractic product after distributor complains