Search Results for: mdpi

“Lack of experience and understanding” forces duplication retractions of liver cancer paper

A group of researchers in China has lost their paper on liver cancer after the first author admitted to duplication, also known, inelegantly, as self-plagiarism. The paper, “Glycyrrhetinic acid-modified chitosan nanoparticles enhanced the effect of 5-fluorouracil in murine liver cancer model via regulatory T-cells,” appeared in the July 2013 issue of the Journal of Drug … Continue reading “Lack of experience and understanding” forces duplication retractions of liver cancer paper

Late resveratrol researcher Dipak Das up to 20 retractions

Dipak Das, the former University of Connecticut researcher found to have committed more than 100 counts of misconduct, and who passed away last year, has had another retraction appear. Here’s the notice, for “Dynamic Action of Carotenoids in Cardioprotection and Maintenance of Cardiac Health,” from Molecules:

Nine-year-old plagiarism allegation leads to retraction of math paper

It is often said that science is self-correcting, but it is usually more accurate to add “in the long run” to that statement. Take, for example, this retraction of a 10-year-old paper in Entropy that had been questioned since 2005. Here’s the notice for “Statistical Convergent Topological Sequence Entropy Maps of the Circle:” The editors … Continue reading Nine-year-old plagiarism allegation leads to retraction of math paper

A rating system for retractions? How various journals stack up

Here at Retraction Watch, we judge retraction notices every day. We even have a category called “unhelpful retraction notices.” But we haven’t systematically analyzed those notices, so lucky for us, a group of academics at Vanderbilt decided to. In a new paper published in a special issue of Publications — an issue whose editor, Grant … Continue reading A rating system for retractions? How various journals stack up

Simulation slip-up leads to retraction of explosives paper

Applied Sciences has retracted a 2012 article by a researcher whose efforts to model a particular kind of explosion called a shaped charge proved to be a dud. The paper, “Steady State Analytical Equation of Motion of Linear Shaped Charges Jet Based on the Modification of Birkhoff Theory,” was written by Seokbin Lim, a mechanical engineer in … Continue reading Simulation slip-up leads to retraction of explosives paper

Your bad: Journal yanks paper for plagiarism and duplication, and points fingers

Here’s a warning to would-be plagiarizers: Don’t submit to the journal Molecules unless you have no problem being called out by name when you’re busted. Consider: The journal is retracting a paper it published earlier this year after learning that the article contained verbatim text — and lots of it — from previously published papers. … Continue reading Your bad: Journal yanks paper for plagiarism and duplication, and points fingers

Journal to feature special issue on scientific misconduct, seeks submissions

It would be difficult to read the recent scientific literature on retractions and miss Grant Steen’s contributions. Retraction Watch readers are no doubt familiar with his work by this point, and if they’re not, we’d recommend spending some time with it. The journal Publications — an MDPI title — has asked him to guest-edit a … Continue reading Journal to feature special issue on scientific misconduct, seeks submissions

Pesticide paper retracted for “major errors”

The authors of a 2013 paper in the journal Foods which sounded alarms about the concentrations of pesticides in vegetables and other commercial crops have pulled the article, citing an insurmountable mistake.  To wit: the levels of pesticides they reported were, in fact, not what the data really showed. The article, titled “Health risk assessment … Continue reading Pesticide paper retracted for “major errors”

Mislabeled chemical bottle leads to retraction of liver protection paper

A labeled chemical bottle may contain a genie and not the expected reagent, according to a cautionary retraction that could be a warning for all bench researchers. Sreenivasan Sasidharan, a researcher at the Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), part of the Universiti Sains Malaysia, used a bottle labeled lantadene A, a liver-destroying chemical … Continue reading Mislabeled chemical bottle leads to retraction of liver protection paper