Last week, microbiologist Enrico Bucci emailed us with concerns that several of the citations listed on his Google Scholar profile were fake. Colleagues of his had noticed the same problem on their pages. The listings seem to be real titles, researchers, and publications, but scrambled. When Bucci first spoke with us, the Scholar citations all … Continue reading Fake citations plague some Google Scholar profiles
Highlights at Retraction Watch this week included a case of overly honest referencing and the story of how a medical resident flagged up a pseudoscientific study. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The Leadership Quarterly has retracted a trio of papers by Frederick Walumbwa, an “ethical leadership” guru at Florida International University, whose work has come under scrutiny for flawed methodology. And another journal has pulled one of his articles for similar reasons. That brings his count – as far as we can tell — to seven retractions … Continue reading Univ.: No misconduct, but “poor research practice” in mgt prof’s work now subject to 7 retractions
After our post yesterday on a fishy retraction from author Brian Peskin, a reader who alerted the journal to problems got in touch to give us the lowdown. Ian Garber is in the last year of medical residency at the University of British Columbia. Here’s the story he told us via email:
Harvard stem cell researcher Doug Melton got a lot of press last year for research on a hormone he named betatrophin, after its supposed ability to increase production of beta cells, which regulate insulin. Now, the conclusions from that paper, which has been cited 59 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, have been called … Continue reading “I kind of like that about science:” Harvard diabetes breakthrough muddied by two new papers
First, a housekeeping note: We migrated web hosts this week, and while the move seems to have gone mostly smoothly, we’ve noticed a few issues: Comments aren’t threaded (even though we have them set up to be), categories aren’t properly nesting, and a small percentage of comments didn’t transfer over with the rest, the way … Continue reading Weekend reads: Scientists behaving badly; sexual harassment at Yale; help us find Retraction Watch bugs
Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation has retracted a 2014 meeting abstract by a group of researchers on Crete whose ranks were inflated by one. The abstract, titled “GENOTYPE (A) OF ENOS GENE AND R229Q MUTATION OF NPHS2 APPEARS TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH A WORSE OUTCOME IN PATIENTS WITH IGA NEPHROPATHY,” was presented at the European Renal Association-European … Continue reading Kidney journal pulls abstract for author issues
A paper suggesting that 45% of deer ticks in Texas have Lyme disease was raked over the coals in a letter to the editor in a recent issue of Parasites and Vectors, though it doesn’t seem like a retraction is forthcoming.
This one’s not a retraction, but rather a back and forth of letters to the editor concerning accusations of plagiarism. Dentists Bryan and Paul Jacobs, a father and son team, wrote a paper describing a novel surgical technique in March 2013. In October 2013, several Croatian dentists published their own paper using the technique. A … Continue reading “Our real intention was to emphasize, not plagiarize”
Last month, we reported that a Wayne State University cancer researcher had threatened legal action involving post-publication peer review site PubPeer, claiming that he had lost a job offer from the University of Mississippi because of comments on the site. Fazlul Sarkar — who has received $12.8 million in NIH funding and has been an investigator … Continue reading Scientist sues PubPeer commenters, subpoenas site for names