Shane Mayack, a former post-doc in Harvard lab of Amy Wagers, a rising star in the stem cell field, has been sanctioned by the Office of Research Integrity for misconduct. Mayack, who has defended her actions on this blog as honest error — albeit sloppiness — and has not admitted to wrongdoing, must undergo supervision … Continue reading ORI finds Harvard stem cell lab post-doc Mayack manipulated images
The American Journal of the Medical Sciences has retracted a 2012 article on premature heartbeats by a group of authors in Missouri who took “significant” liberties with an earlier paper in Heart. The offending paper, “Ventricular ectopic beats: an overview of management considerations, “was written by Amar Jadhav and colleagues at the University of Missouri … Continue reading Mizzou investigating faculty as one heart beats as two in plagiarized — and now retracted — cardiac paper
The Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B: Applied Biomaterials is retracting a 2010 paper by Turkish dental researchers for “unattributed overlap.” We’re pretty sure that’s a euphemism for plagiarism we haven’t heard before — and it raises the question, could you have acceptable, attributed overlap? The study has been cited three times, according to … Continue reading Dental paper pulled for “unattributed overlap”
Family Practice has retracted a 2009 review article on diabetes whose author had published a similar — in spots identical — paper two years earlier in another journal. We think the notice is nine-tenths solid, but there’s a part at the end that raises an important question about how much, or little, editors should do … Continue reading Family Practice affair: Diabetes paper pulled for redundancy, which journal calls “honest error”
Retraction Watch turns two on Friday (August 3), and while you might be stumped about what to get us, we’ll make things easy for you. All we want to mark the occasion is your … expertise. In their August 2012 issue, The Scientist published an opinion piece in which we call for a “Transparency Index” … Continue reading The Retraction Watch Transparency Index
As its research institutions grow and mature, the Brazilian scientific establishment is hoping its scientists encourage research integrity and responsible conduct of research. In late May, Ivan was invited to Brazil to take part in the Second Brazilian Meeting on Research Integrity, Science and Publication Ethics(II BRISPE). Organized by the Medical Biochemistry Institute (IBqM/UFRJ) & … Continue reading Brazil statement urges culture of research integrity
There has been plenty of interest in scientific fraud and misconduct lately — and not just on Retraction Watch — from major news outlets and government agencies, among other parties. The rate of retractions is increasing, and some fraudsters are even setting new records. That has focused attention on how institutions can prevent misconduct — … Continue reading How can institutions prevent scientific misconduct?
Duplication — sometimes referred to “self-plagiarism,” with a lack of precision — is a frequent cause of retractions. Usually, it’s of text that authors have used elsewhere. But what about data? In our new LabTimes column, we describe a hypothetical situation:
In what appears to be a first, two papers have been retracted for including citations designed to help another journal improve its impact factor rankings. The articles in The Scientific World Journal cited papers in Cell Transplantation, which in turn appears to have cited to a high degree other journals with shared board members. Here’s … Continue reading A first? Papers retracted for citation manipulation
Japanese investigators have concluded that Yoshitaka Fujii, an expert in postoperative nausea and vomiting whose findings drew scrutiny in 2000 but who continued to publish prolifically for a decade after, fabricated his results in at least 172 published studies. That number nearly doubles that of the current unofficial retraction record holder, Joachim Boldt. An inquiry … Continue reading Does anesthesiology have a problem? Final version of report suggests Fujii will take retraction record, with 172