The week at Retraction Watch featured admissions of fake data from a biotech company whose compound is now in clinical trials, a look at who recycles text, and the apparent demotion of a researcher who had a paper on video games retracted. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Researchers have retracted and replaced a June 2016 paper in JAMA Internal Medicine after discovering errors in their data. The paper explored whether Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) — groups of health care providers who earn more when they deliver high-quality care without boosting costs — improve care and lower health care costs for Medicare patients. … Continue reading Errors in govt database prompt authors to retract and replace paper in JAMA journal
A biotechnology journal has corrected a 2006 paper after discovering duplication and plagiarism. This offense is the second we know of for the corresponding author, Uttam Chand Banerjee, in the same journal, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology. Last year, Banerjee—who works at National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) in Mohali, Punjab, India—had a 14-year-old review … Continue reading Author who previously claimed plagiarism was a mistake earns new erratum
Authors react in a variety of ways to criticism of their work. Some stonewall, some grit their teeth but make corrections, and others thank their critics. But what about bribery?
On April 17th, Mathieu Bollen, a researcher at KU Leuven in Belgium, received a notice from PubPeer: A paper he had published in 2013 appeared to have data duplications. The article, “Maternal Embryonic Leucine Zipper Kinase (MELK) Reduces Replication Stress in Glioblastoma Cells,” published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, offered an explanation for why … Continue reading Author cops to “randomly” choosing data for figures in paper, colleagues say
The week at Retraction Watch featured the revocation of a PhD, a questionable way to boost university rankings, and a look at what editors should do when a researcher known to have committed misconduct submits a new manuscript. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A former graduate student at the University of Hong Kong confessed to making “inappropriate modifications” to several figures in a 2013 paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC). According to the retraction notice, the authors identified issues in 13 images while reviewing the data; the paper’s first author, Yingying Lu, copped to manipulating the … Continue reading Author admits to manipulating more than a dozen images in 2013 paper
A pair of Canadian scientists may be running out of options to save their laboratories, which have been permanently closed based on findings of research misconduct. Sylvia Asa, once the head of the largest hospital diagnostic laboratory in Canada, and her husband and collaborator Shereen Ezzat, have spent almost five years fighting allegations of research misconduct … Continue reading Toronto wife-husband research team lose bid to re-open labs
The Weizmann Institute in Israel has barred a biologist from mentoring graduate students, after an investigation uncovered ” a case of serious misconduct that included manipulation of data.” In a letter posted on PubPeer, President Daniel Zajfman describes some of the disciplinary measures taken against an unnamed scientist, including also retracting or correcting all affected papers. Michal Neeman, … Continue reading Weizmann bans grad students from researcher’s lab over “serious misconduct”
Plant scientists have issued two retractions after noticing several images had been duplicated within and across the papers. The papers both appeared in March 2002 in The Plant Cell and The Plant Journal. The last author on both papers — Jonathan Jones, a professor and group leader at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK — took … Continue reading Authors retract two plant biology papers over duplicated images