In 2016, Mingjun Zhang, a biomedical engineering researcher at The Ohio State University, along with collaborators, published a paper that explored the mechanism behind ivy’s impressive adhesive strength. In it, the authors claimed to report the genetic sequences of the proteins making up the adhesive.
But shortly after publication, an anonymous whistleblower sent a letter to OSU and PNAS simultaneously: “The authors have knowlingly [sic], intentionally, repeatedly, and substantially misrepresented data in order to publish the manuscript.”
The authors of a paper in Science Advances on methanogens — archaea that produce methane — have retracted the work a week after its publication because they included genetic data that violated an embargo.
A publisher is retracting five papers from one of its conference series after discovering what it says was “clear evidence” that the articles were generated by a computer.
Burned by the offer of a special issue, a journal has retracted four papers after determining that the guest editors of the supplement were not legit.
Neuroscience Letters, an Elsevier title, published the special issue — “Special Issue on Clinical and Imaging Assessment of Cognitive Dysfunction in Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders” — last summer, but it’s no longer on the journal’s website. The guest editors were listed as “Dr. Kalemaki Katerina Kalemaki, Dr. Hailong Li and Prof. Wiesława Grajkowska.”
This case is the third we’ve seen lately involving journals and publishers scorched by rogue guest editors. For an insider’s look at how such scams can run, check out our 2019 Q&A with Jamie Trapp, whose journal, Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine (formerly the Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine), fell victim to one not long ago. A preview:
Harold “Skip” Garner has worn many hats over the course of his career, including plasma physicist, biologist, and administrator. One of his interests is plagiarism and duplication the scientific literature, and he and colleagues developed a tool called eTBLAST that compares text passages to what has already been published to flag potential overlap.
A group of researchers in Canada has retracted their 2018 paper on the gene sequence of the Arctic charr — a particularly hearty member of the Salmonidaefamily that includes salmon and trout — after discovering that the sample they’d used for their analysis was from a different kind of fish.
Eight journals have corrected a total of eleven papers after one of the authors failed to list potential financial conflicts of interest. Two additional journals have also told Retraction Watch that they plan to issue corrections, which will bring the total to 13 or more.
Stuart Phillips is a professor and director of the Centre for Nutrition, Exercise, and Health Research at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The corrected studies — which now reflect Phillips’ links to companies or patents — are all related to his research on nutritional supplements and exercise.
One journal, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, issued a single correction for four studies authored by Phillips:
Last February, Richard Pollock was reading a review in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews — a prominent resource for evidence-based medicine — when he spotted an error.
In the first figure, which compared the effectiveness of two different treatments for the most common form of liver cancer, a label was switched. The error made it seem like the “worse” treatment was better than the more effective option.
Pollock, a health economist, was concerned enough to send an email to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the corresponding author, on February 20th. Abdel-Rahman, an oncologist at the University of Alberta, wrote back the next day, saying he would review the comments with experts at Cochrane, “and if there is any typos in the publication, it will be corrected immediately.” Emails seen by Retraction Watch show that, when replying to this email, Abdel-Rahman copied one of Cochrane’s editors, Dimitrinka Nikolova.
Months passed. Pollock sent another email to Abdel-Rahman and two Cochrane editors — Nikolova and Christian Gluud — on June 15th. Then, on November 16th, the journal pulled the review with a brief notice:
