The June 2012 issue of Current Opinion in Critical Care has a retraction that might have been a rather mundane case of plagiarism but for the remarkably intertwined relationships of the authors of the publications involved. Here’s the notice, which doesn’t attempt to broach the conflicts of interest (we can hardly blame them, as you’ll see):
Duplication has, as we noted on Twitter the other day, been tripping up more and more scientists. And now self-plagiarism has snared a prominent Columbia University chemist in a paper that left many people scratching their heads to begin with. As reported by the Chembark blog and Nature, the Journal of the American Chemical Society … Continue reading JACS temporarily pulls “space dinosaurs” paper for alleged duplication
The authors of three papers in Rheumatology International about systemic sclerosis, also known as scleroderma, are retracting them after patients were misidentified in databases. According to the three notices: This article has been retracted at the request of the authors. The authors made a serious statistical error which unfortunately invalidates their results. Corresponding author Metin … Continue reading Patient database errors lead to three rheumatology retractions
The Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England has an informative retraction notice about a recent paper it published that was marred by self-plagiarism. The article, “Current concepts of surveillance and its significance in head and neck cancer,” from a group of researchers at Grant Medical College, in Mumbai (which is known to … Continue reading Surgery journal retracts cancer paper for duplication after “naive” response from authors
A group of cancer researchers from Tunisia has been seeding the oncology literature with plagiarized articles that steal liberally — both text and data — from the work of others. The group has one retraction, in the journal Obesity — whose splash page has the jaunty, if disconcerting, invite: “Welcome to Obesity!” — and at … Continue reading Whistling the same Tunisia: Serial plagiarists plague the oncology literature
Have a seat, this one’s a howler. According to a retraction notice for “Computer application in mathematics,” published in Computers & Mathematics with Applications:
Two liver journals have retracted articles from a group of Irani researchers who published similar — but not quite identical — versions of the same paper some months apart. A retraction notice in the Journal of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases — which bills itself as the “Official Journal of the Romanian Societies of Gastroenterology” — explains what … Continue reading Crise de foie: Liver journals retract duplicate biomarker pubs
Perhaps it’s appropriate given the Easter season, but we have learned that Naoki Mori, the Japanese cancer researcher who received a 10-year publishing ban from the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) for imagine manipulation, has published a new paper. Mori, who was fired and then rehired by the University of the Ryukyus over the scandal, … Continue reading Back in the saddle: After more than 30 retractions, Naoki Mori publishing again
A group of French cardiology researchers have retracted a study of a potential way to rule out heart attacks, after it became clear they had used data from another study without alerting the journal. In an unusually forthright letter accompanying the retraction of “Concomitant measurement of copeptin and high-sensitivity troponin for fast and reliable rule … Continue reading Salami slicing and heart attacks don’t mix: Duplication, lack of transparency lead to retraction
The Spanish press has picked up on the story of a prominent veterinary scientist in that country who has been accused of research misconduct. According to El Pais, the researcher, Jesús Ángel Lemus, whose areas of interest include the effects of toxins on birds, ran into trouble in December when colleagues complained to the Ethics … Continue reading Spanish veterinary researcher under suspicion of creating “ghost” author, fabricating data