Nature Communications looking into paper on mentorship after strong negative reaction

A Nature journal has announced that it is conducting a “priority” investigation into a new paper claiming that women in science fare better with male rather than female mentors. 

The article, “The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance,” appeared in Nature Communications on November 17, and was written by a trio of authors from New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi. 

According to the abstract: 

Continue reading Nature Communications looking into paper on mentorship after strong negative reaction

Science retracts paper co-authored by high-profile scientist and former Dutch minister

Ronald Plasterk

Science has retracted a 13-year-old paper, five years after data sleuth Elisabeth Bik first raised questions about issues with the images in the article. 

The paper, “Secondary siRNAs result from unprimed RNA synthesis and form a distinct class,” appeared in 2007 and was written by a group of researchers in the Netherlands and Switzerland. The senior author of the study was Ronald Plasterk, founder of Frame Cancer Therapeutics in Amsterdam and once a minister in the Dutch government. The article has been cited at least 300 times, according to Clarivate Analytics Web of Science. 

It also drew Bik’s attention. In 2015, she posted — as Peer 1 — on PubPeer about her concerns with one of the figures in the paper. Other commenters joined in, including to point out similarities between images in the Science paper and two other articles from members of the group. 

Bik said the paper: 

Continue reading Science retracts paper co-authored by high-profile scientist and former Dutch minister

Publisher infected twice with the same anti-vaccine article

Researchers who lost a paper derided by critics as anti-vaccine have republished their article in a different journal … owned by the same publisher (hint: rhymes with “smells of beer”). 

As we reported in April 2019, the original article version of “Cognition and behavior in sheep repetitively inoculated with aluminum adjuvant-containing vaccines or aluminum adjuvant only” appeared in November 2018 in Pharmacological Research.  

Antivaccine advocates such as Celeste McGovern seized on the study, which  also drew harsh criticism from Skeptical Raptor and Orac, who called it

Continue reading Publisher infected twice with the same anti-vaccine article

Author initiates “a legal process” against a journal and its publisher after a retraction, expressions of concern

An author tells us he is taking legal action against a journal and its publisher after the editor retracted one of his papers and flagged two others.

The Health Informatics Journal has issued expressions of concern for two articles on autism and retracted one on obesity in children.  According to the journal, the papers — led by Fadi Thabtah, of the Manukau Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand — were marred by compromised peer review. 

But that’s not all. Apparently, well, things change. 

Here’s what the EoCs have to say: 

Continue reading Author initiates “a legal process” against a journal and its publisher after a retraction, expressions of concern

Two and a half years after findings of misconduct, stem cell researchers up to 19 retractions

A group of researchers at Aichi Gakuin University in Nagoya, Japan, continues to lose papers for duplication of images and text from their previous work, and is now up to 19 retractions.

Please see an update on this post.

Here’s a typical notice, for “Bone morphogenetic protein-induced cell differentiation involves Atg7 and Wnt16 sequentially in human stem cell-derived osteoblastic cells,” a paper published in 2016 in Experimental Cell Research, an Elsevier title:

Continue reading Two and a half years after findings of misconduct, stem cell researchers up to 19 retractions

Co-authors of paper on COVID-19 and jade amulets blame ‘the online press’ and social media for misinterpretation in retraction letter

The co-authors of a paper that claimed jade amulets might prevent COVID-19 have tried to distance themselves from the work, in a letter to the co-editor of the journal that published it. 

In fact, the first author, Moses Bility of the University of Pittsburgh, says of his co-authors:

Continue reading Co-authors of paper on COVID-19 and jade amulets blame ‘the online press’ and social media for misinterpretation in retraction letter

Weekend reads: Hydroxychloroquine champion faces ethics charges; a serial plagiarist in philosophy; another author reaches 100 retractions

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 38.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Hydroxychloroquine champion faces ethics charges; a serial plagiarist in philosophy; another author reaches 100 retractions

Journal drops the ball as it tries to juggle an embargo request and Elsevier’s temporary removal policy

So much for author instructions.

Researchers who’d submitted a paper to Social Science & Medicine on smoking in public places briefly lost their article after the journal had some confusion about an embargo they’d requested. 

The article, “Neighbourhood greenspace and smoking prevalence: Results from a nationally representative survey in England,” has since been republished in the journal, an Elsevier title. So harm, no foul. But the initial appearance of the paper online earlier this fall surprised senior author Benedict Wheeler, of the University of Exeter Medical School: 

Continue reading Journal drops the ball as it tries to juggle an embargo request and Elsevier’s temporary removal policy

Author blames “multitasking dementia” for duplicated cancer paper

Robert Gatenby

The authors of a 2017 paper on resistance to cancer chemotherapy have retracted and replaced the article after learning that it included duplicated material from previously published work by one of the duo. 

The article, “The evolution and ecology of resistance in cancer therapy,” was written by Robert Gatenby and Joel Brown, of the Moffitt Cancer Center, in Tampa, Fla. It appeared in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine. 

Richard Sever, the editor of the journal, told us that sometime after publication, a reader alerted his office that the paper included passages of text that were identical to those in a 2015 paper in Cancer Research, published by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), by Gatenby and two other co-authors:

Continue reading Author blames “multitasking dementia” for duplicated cancer paper

Journal that published paper about a black hole at the center of Earth sinks into the void at a leading government database

A black hole, not at the center of the Earth (via Wikimedia)

The Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, which retracted five papers recently, including one claiming that there was a black hole at the center of Earth, will no longer be indexed in a heavily used U.S. government database of journals.

According to the journal’s index page at PubMed Central (PMC), part of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, “The journal no longer participates in PMC.” Volumes of the journal from 2019 and earlier will remain.

Mirko Spiroski, the founding editor of the journal, did not respond to a request for comment.

Continue reading Journal that published paper about a black hole at the center of Earth sinks into the void at a leading government database