The author of a 2006 review article published in Abdominal Imaging has retracted it because it hews too closely to previously published articles. The review described the latest imaging techniques used in cancer, focusing on genitourinary conditions. Here’s the full text of the retraction notice for “New Horizons in Genitourinary Oncologic Imaging”:
Authors from Xinxiang Medical University in Weihui, China, are retracting a 2014 paper in Molecular Biology Reports because… well, because lots of things. The researchers exposed nine rats to acute levels of alcohol then compared them to unexposed mice rats, noting differences in gene expression and molecular pathways. But no one is toasting these findings … Continue reading Drunk rats paper wasted by “significant statistical errors”, among other issues
This is the second article in a series by John R. Thomas, Jr., a lawyer at Gentry Locke [Editor’s note, 3/26/19: He has since moved to Haley, Hafemann, Magee and Thomas] who represents whistleblowers in a variety of False Claims Act cases. In this installment, he writes about how whistleblowers can tell if they have … Continue reading So you want to be a whistleblower? Part II
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Public health expert Stephen Leeder has been ousted as editor of Australia’s top medical journal after he questioned the decision to outsource the journal’s production and other tasks to publishing giant Elsevier. Leeder, emeritus professor at the University of Sydney, told the Medical Observer he was asked to leave when he and the journal’s publisher, … Continue reading Editor of Medical Journal of Australia fired after criticizing decision to outsource to Elsevier
A University of Minnesota former chemistry graduate student has been banned from receiving federal funding for five years based on “a preponderance of the evidence that the Respondent intentionally and knowingly engaged in research misconduct.” Venkata J. Reddy appears to have manipulated findings in one R01 grant application. In recent years, bans are less common than having … Continue reading Misconduct earns researcher a five-year ban on federal funding
We’ve written quite a lot about the perks and pitfalls of the peer review system, but one thing we never really touched on was the risk that a reviewer might be … well, not to put too fine a point on it: a dope. But Fiona Ingleby can speak to that. Ingleby, a postdoc in … Continue reading It’s a man’s world — for one peer reviewer, at least
In our line of work, we see it all — mega-corrections that don’t quite rise to the level of retraction, letters to the editor that point out seemingly fatal flaws in papers that remain untouched, and studies retracted for what seem like minor reasons. It can make you wonder what makes a paper worthy of … Continue reading When should a paper be retracted? A tale from the obesity literature
Grant reviewers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health are doing a pretty good job of spotting the best proposals and ranking them appropriately, according to a new study in Science out today. Danielle Li at Harvard and Leila Agha at Boston University found that grant proposals that earn good scores lead to research that … Continue reading Does peer review ferret out the best science? New study tries to answer
A Chinese researcher has lost a paper after the journal discovered he published others’ research without permission and lied about the grant funding he used for the work. Yihang Shen published a paper using his PhD research on the molecular biology of fetal rodent livers earlier this year in DNA and Cell Biology. Unfortunately, he didn’t have permission to … Continue reading Use of data “without permission,” bad authors list, and hidden funding sink mol bio paper