Duplication — sometimes referred to “self-plagiarism,” with a lack of precision — is a frequent cause of retractions. Usually, it’s of text that authors have used elsewhere. But what about data? In our new LabTimes column, we describe a hypothetical situation:
In what appears to be a first, two papers have been retracted for including citations designed to help another journal improve its impact factor rankings. The articles in The Scientific World Journal cited papers in Cell Transplantation, which in turn appears to have cited to a high degree other journals with shared board members. Here’s … Continue reading A first? Papers retracted for citation manipulation
Japanese investigators have concluded that Yoshitaka Fujii, an expert in postoperative nausea and vomiting whose findings drew scrutiny in 2000 but who continued to publish prolifically for a decade after, fabricated his results in at least 172 published studies. That number nearly doubles that of the current unofficial retraction record holder, Joachim Boldt. An inquiry … Continue reading Does anesthesiology have a problem? Final version of report suggests Fujii will take retraction record, with 172
In the beginning, there was Scott Reuben. Well, not quite. Reuben, a Massachusetts anesthesiologist who fabricated data and briefly topped our list of most-retracted authors, didn’t invent research fraud, although he did spend six months in federal prison for his crimes. But his case was in no small measure responsible for the birth of this … Continue reading Is post-hoc statistical analysis the new fraud detection tool? A new review looks at fraudster Reuben’s work
Last August, we brought you the news that the Indian Journal of Dermatology had banned a group of Tunisian researchers from publishing in the journal for five years, because they had plagiarized in a 2009 study. Well, the journal’s editors found another case in which the authors have plagiarized, and now they’re banned from the … Continue reading Serial plagiarizers banned from dermatology journal forever
The authors of a study of Australasian temperatures over the past millennium have put the print publication of an online-first study on hold after errors were identified in the records they used. Here’s how RealClimate.org summarized the findings of the original paper, which was published in mid-May: The conclusion reached is that summer temperatures in … Continue reading Paper claiming hottest 60-year-span in 1,000 years put on hold after being published online
Last week, we brought you the story of Thong Duc Le and his colleagues, physicists who were forced to retract four papers, including one that cited, as we noted “their own study that had already been retracted for plagiarism.” The team has now retracted three more papers:
Last month, we (and others) reported that the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) had temporarily withdrawn a paper by a former president of the society after a number of chemists pointed out similarities between the March 25 article and previous ones by the author, Ronald Breslow. The paper had drawn puzzled looks thanks … Continue reading JACS makes it official, retracting Breslow “space dinosaurs” paper for “similarity to his previously published reviews”
In 2011, Diederik Stapel, a Dutch researcher who at the time was a shining star in the world of social psychology, published an article in the British Journal of Social Psychology with the counter-intuitive claim that failure can sometimes be more emotionally gratifying than success. We’re guessing this isn’t one of those times. As readers of … Continue reading Brit psych journal retracts Stapel paper on the paradox of failure
As Stevie Nicks sang in Fleetwood Mac’s hit, “Landslide”: Well, I’ve been afraid of changing, cause I’ve built my life around you …. The authors of a 2010 paper in the journal Landslides might have taken those words a little too much to heart. Their manuscript, “Real-time slope water table forecasting by multi-tank model combined … Continue reading Fleetwood Mac, anyone? Landslides paper crumbles under weight of “significant originality issue”