Search Results for: nature

Court dismisses lawsuit by XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome researcher

A California court has dismissed virologist Judy Mikovits’s lawsuit against fourteen people and two Nevada corporations, in part because she failed to submit necessary documents on time. Mikovits is the author on a now-retracted Science paper suggesting a link between a virus known as XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome, which has no known cause. She alleged that she was fired … Continue reading Court dismisses lawsuit by XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome researcher

Author dispute, “considerable overlap” retract chemistry study

A chemistry journal has issued a retraction after “a thorough and time-consuming analysis” revealed two out of four authors did not agree to submitting an article published in May, which also contains “considerable overlap and redundancy” with another paper published a few weeks prior in a different journal. Shortly after the paper appeared in Spectrochimica Acta Part … Continue reading Author dispute, “considerable overlap” retract chemistry study

Weekend reads: Does publishing take too long?; Zika data complaints; a Valentine’s Day special

The week at Retraction Watch featured two high-profile resignations linked to the Paolo Macchiarini case, as well as a Q&A with a long-frustrated — and now vindicated — whistleblower. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Reading about embattled trachea surgeon Paolo Macchiarini? Here’s what you need to know

The media has been abuzz in the last few weeks with developments in the ongoing story about “super surgeon” Paolo Macchiarini. We’ve been covering the allegations against him for years (and invited him to publish a guest post on our site). Below, we present a timeline of recent events, to keep you abreast of what we know … Continue reading Reading about embattled trachea surgeon Paolo Macchiarini? Here’s what you need to know

2014 ORI finding results in retraction of cancer paper with manipulated images

A paper flagged in an Office of Research Integrity notice more than one year ago has finally been retracted. According to the notice, the paper includes images manipulated by author H. Rosie Xing, a former University of Chicago cancer researcher. The main conclusions of the paper are affected by the ORI finding, according to the retraction note from Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. But otherwise, … Continue reading 2014 ORI finding results in retraction of cancer paper with manipulated images

Weekend reads: Scientist slams bloggers; men love their own work; public science broken?

The week at Retraction Watch featured a paper on reincarnation being retracted because it was plagiarized from Wikipedia, the swift retraction of a paper claiming that women’s makeup use was tied to testosterone levels, and a lot of news about trachea surgeon Paolo Macchiarini.  Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Karolinska orders new investigation of trachea surgeon Macchiarini

The Karolinska Institutet University Board announced today it was issuing a new external investigation of trachea surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, looking into questions about his recruitment and the handling of previous allegations of misconduct. According to a press release: The University Board deems such an inquiry to be an important part of restoring the confidence of the … Continue reading Karolinska orders new investigation of trachea surgeon Macchiarini

Data irregularities force author to retract three solar cell papers

An engineer has retracted three papers on a method for making nanoscale materials that are useful in solar cells. The papers, all published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, contain irregularities in data, and one includes images “which have been published elsewhere and identified with different samples,” according to the note. The first author on all three papers is Khalid … Continue reading Data irregularities force author to retract three solar cell papers

Do scientists need audits?

If audits work for the Internal Revenue Service, could they also work for science? We’re pleased to present a guest post from Viraj Mane, a life sciences commercialization manager in Toronto, and Amy Lossie at the National Institutes of Health, who have a unique proposal for how to improve the quality of papers: Random audits of … Continue reading Do scientists need audits?

Want to correct the scientific literature? Good luck

If you notice an obvious problem with a paper in your field, it should be relatively easy to alert the journal’s readers to the issue, right? Unfortunately, for a group of nutrition researchers led by David B. Allison at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, that is not their experience. Allison and his co-author Andrew Brown … Continue reading Want to correct the scientific literature? Good luck