The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper on the potential dangers of Wi-Fi, and our 3,000th post. Also, have you taken our survey? Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The National Football League failed to include data from diagnosed concussions in peer-reviewed studies, making the sport look safer than it is, allege the results of an investigation published yesterday in the New York Times. Now, the paper and the NFL are arguing over whether the studies were supposed to include every instance of head injury. … Continue reading NFL and NYT collide: Did studies on concussion rates leave out necessary data?
Four expressions of concern in the journal Diabetes have turned into retractions for Mario Saad, a move which he had tried to stop with a lawsuit. Last August, a judge dismissed Saad’s suit against the American Diabetes Association, which publishes Diabetes, concluding that the expressions of concerns on the papers were not defamation, but part of an “ongoing … Continue reading Lawsuit couldn’t stop four retractions for diabetes researcher
This is our 3,000th post, dear reader, and to celebrate we’re presenting you with a wealth of retraction data from fiscal year 2015, courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The biggest take-home: The number of retracted articles jumped from 500 in Fiscal Year 2014 to 684 in Fiscal Year 2015 — an increase … Continue reading Retractions rise to nearly 700 in fiscal year 2015 (and psst, this is our 3,000th post)
The Karolinska Institutet has dismissed former rising star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini from his post, effective immediately. A KI news release, dated today, states: The Staff Disciplinary Board at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to relieve Paolo Macchiarini of his duties as a researcher at KI. He is to be informed immediately that his contract has been … Continue reading Macchiarini dismissed from Karolinska
A report that presents guidelines for treating people allegedly harmed by signals from Wi-Fi and mobile phones was pulled two weeks after publication for plagiarism. However, the retraction note, published in the March issue of Reviews on Environmental Health, doesn’t use the word “plagiarism,” and instead blames the move on lost citations and errors. The editor of the journal, David Carpenter, told us … Continue reading “A big mistake:” Paper about the dangers of Wi-Fi pulled for plagiarism
Ever wonder how editors figure out whether a paper should be corrected, retracted, or left as-is? For a window into that crucial decision-making process, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) publishes a number of anonymized cases per year, in which they weigh in on a dilemma faced by a journal editor. The organization has weighed … Continue reading What happens before a retraction? A behind-the-scenes look from COPE
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has no plans to change the wording of an article that led to allegations of breached patient confidentiality and caused a minor social media firestorm this past weekend, the journal told Retraction Watch. The paragraph in question appeared in an essay by Lisa Rosenbaum chronicling the history of power … Continue reading NEJM: No plan to clarify wording that led to allegations of breached confidentiality
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has permanently debarred a clinical trial coordinator from working on drug applications after he swapped patient stool samples for his own, and pocketed the money earmarked for patients — along with forging patient records, lab work, and doctors’ signatures. The debarment is moot for time being — last … Continue reading FDA bans trial coordinator who pocketed patient funds and went to prison
The journal Epidemiology Biostatistics and Public Health has issued back-to-back corrections for a 2015 paper after the authors failed to disclose conflicts of interest with the asbestos industry and included an “erroneous citation.” The mistaken citation was more than just a clerical error, critics argue — it undermines one of the key arguments of the paper, “Critical … Continue reading Corrections chip away at asbestos paper for conflicts of interest, “misleading” citation