Two authors in Turkey have had their paper subjected to a correction after it became clear that material was lifted heavily from two previous papers by one of the researchers. The corrigendum reads:
The title of this post is the title of a new study in PLOS ONE by three researchers whose names Retraction Watch readers may find familiar: Grant Steen, Arturo Casadevall, and Ferric Fang. Together and separately, they’ve examined retraction trends in a number of papers we’ve covered. Their new paper tries to answer a question … Continue reading “Why Has the Number of Scientific Retractions Increased?” New study tries to answer
Our mothers told us that if we used the masterbatch process, we’d go blind. And what better way to gather some updates to recent posts than to include one that involves said masterbatch process? First, a retraction John Spevacek noticed when he tried clicking on the link in a Journal of Applied Polymer Science retraction we’d … Continue reading A masterbatch: More polymer retractions, gerontology journal lifts paywall, Microbiology notices appear
We have an update on a case we reported last week involving four papers in two different journals. The Journal of Bacteriology retracted two papers by Carlos Barreiro and colleagues, in notices that referred to the fact that …identical bands for the 16S rRNA probe controls in the Northern blots were reported to correspond to … Continue reading Update: Microbiologists face two more retractions for Northern blot problems
Coding errors in a database maintained by Pfizer have led authors to retract two heart biomarker papers in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The two notices, for “Prediction of cardiovascular events in statin-treated patients by lipid and non-lipid biomarkers” and “Plasma PCSK9 levels and clinical outcomes in the TNT (Treating to New … Continue reading Pfizer database errors cause two voluminous retractions for JACC statin-biomarker papers
Duplication is a frequent reason for the retractions we cover. Such duplication retractions are so common that we don’t get to most of them. While many have argued that duplication pollutes the literature, and can bias meta-analyses when the same study ends up being counted more than once, others say the need to come up … Continue reading How much self-plagiarism, aka duplication, is too much?
Hiroaki Matsubara, a leading Japanese cardiology researcher who has had three papers retracted and another five subject to expressions of concern, has resigned from Kyoto Prefectural University, according to local media. Mainichi Shimbun reports — according to our roughest of (Google) translations — that Kyoto Prefectural University accepted Matsubara’s resignation following an investigation. That investigation … Continue reading After three retractions, five expressions of concern, cardiologist Matsubara resigns post
The next time a business professor in Thailand is looking for an ethics case study, he might look no further than the mirror. Mohammad Asif Salam earned himself a five-year ban on publishing in a Springer journal after publishing work there that he’d already published elsewhere. Here’s the notice for “Corporate social responsibility in purchasing … Continue reading Do as I say, not as I do? Duplication in ethics journal earns author five-year publishing ban
How should journals deal with duplication — aka “self-plagiarism?” Scientists have engaged in vigorous debates here on Retraction Watch about whether such duplication is a minor form of scientific misconduct, or just a conflict between the interests of publishers and those of researchers who have better things to do than figure out different ways to … Continue reading A different tack: A “notice of redundant publication,” rather than a retraction, for duplication
A new paper has catalogued retractions over the past few decades in business and economics journals — and hasn’t found very many. In “Retraction, Dishonesty and Plagiarism: Analysis of a Crucial Issue for Academic Publishing, and the Inadequate Responses from Leading Journals in Economics and Management Disciplines,” which just went online in the Journal of … Continue reading Why aren’t there more retractions in business and economics journals?