Retraction Watch

An author loses a fifth paper because it “bears the hallmarks of plagiarism”

A researcher in France has lost his fifth paper for plagiarism, this one a 2015 article on weakness in the elderly.

The study, “Identification of biological markers for better characterization of older subjects with physical frailty and sarcopenia,” appeared in Translational Neuroscience and came from a group in France led by Bertrand Fougère, of the Universitaire de Toulouse.

As we reported in 2019, Fougère had tallied previous retractions for plagiarism dating back to 2018. At the time, he told us:

University of Tennessee investigation finds manipulated images in Science paper

An investigation by the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, in Memphis, into a 2006 Science paper found evidence that three figures in the article had been manipulated.

Science sleuth Elisabeth Bik first flagged the paper, titled “Molecular Linkage Between the Kinase ATM and NF-κB Signaling in Response to Genotoxic Stimuli,” to the editors of Science in 2015. Today, Science issued an expression of concern for the paper:

University of New Mexico investigation finds manipulated data and images, prompts retractions

A research group at the University of New Mexico has lost at least two papers after an inquiry found evidence of manipulated data.

One article, “Large-Area Semiconducting Graphene Nanomesh Tailored by Interferometric Lithography,” appeared in 2015 in Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature title, and has been cited 25 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

The other, “Vertical Charge Transfer and Lateral Transport in Graphene/Germanium Heterostructures,” was published in 2017 in the American Chemical Society’s journal Applied Materials & Interfaces. It has been cited twice.

The senior author on both articles was Sanjay Krishna, who has since moved to the Ohio State University, where he is the George R. Smith Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The retraction notice for the paper in Scientific Reports states:

Legal researcher who claimed false affiliation up to 31 retractions

A law researcher who has falsely claimed to have been affiliated with several institutions has lost eight more publications, bringing his retraction total to 31 and earning him a spot in the top 20 of our leaderboard.

The most recent retractions for Dimitris Liakopoulos include The Regulation of Transnational Mergers in International and European Law, an entire book he co-authored. They also include three papers from Homa Publica and two from Lex et Scientia International Journal. An example:

“The right decision”: Group retracts Nature Chemical Biology paper after finding a key error

Nicola Smith, credit Karl Welsch, Welsch Photography

Researchers in Australia have retracted a 2016 paper in Nature Chemical Biology after discovering a critical error in their research, bringing some closure to a gut-wrenching case for the scientists involved.

As we reported in January, Nicola Smith, the senior author of the article, titled “Orphan receptor ligand discovery by pickpocketing pharmacological neighbors,” described learning of the error as “the most horrific time” of her career.

Smith, then at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney (she’s now at the Orphan Receptor Laboratory at the University of New South Wales) told us that she briefly considered letting the flawed research — which has been cited 26 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science — go uncorrected.

After all, as one colleague told her, the subject of the studies was so arcane that

What happened when a group of sleuths flagged more than 30 papers with errors?

Jennifer Byrne

Retraction Watch readers may recall the name Jennifer Byrne, whose work as a scientific sleuth we first wrote about four years ago, and have followed ever since. In a new paper in Scientometrics, Byrne, of New South Wales Health Pathology and the University of Sydney, working along with researchers including Cyril Labbé, known for his work detecting computer-generated papers, and Amanda Capes-Davis, who works on cell line identification, describe what happened when they approached publishers about errors in 31 papers. We asked Byrne several questions about the work.

Retraction Watch (RW): You focused on 31 papers with a “specific reagent error.” Can you explain what the errors were?

“I absolutely stand by the validity of the science” says author of energy field paper now flagged by journal

An integrative health journal has issued an expression of concern for an article it published two years ago last month about the “human biofield” and related topics after receiving complaints that the piece lacked scientific “validity.”

The article, “Energy Medicine: Current Status and Future Perspectives,” appeared in Global Advances in Health and Medicine, a SAGE title. The author was Christina Ross, of the Wake Forest Center for Integrative Medicine, in Winston-Salem, N.C. Which happens to be where the two top editors of the journal are based.

Ross also is the author of Etiology: How to Detect Disease in Your Energy Field Before It Manifests in Your Body, which is available on Amazon and elsewhere.

According to the abstract of the article:

Weekend reads: Prof plagiarized student, says investigation; universities mishandle allegations; what we should learn from ‘bad science’

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Meet the postdoc who says he’s been trying to retract his own paper since 2016
Nanotech group that retracted Nature study pulls two more papers
JAMA journal retracts, replaces paper linking nonionizing radiation to ADHD
Former Cleveland Clinic researcher’s papers “more likely than not” included falsified images, says investigation
“Serious non-compliance” prompts retraction of book on social justice in Hawai’i

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 85.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Meet the postdoc who says he’s been trying to retract his own paper since 2016

In August 2015, bioengineers gathered in Milan, Italy, for the 37th annual conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. About 2,000 papers were accepted and published online for the conference. But an author of one of those articles says he’s been trying to retract it since 2016.

As a PhD student at the Université de Lorraine, in France, Khuram Faraz worked with professors Christian Daul and Walter Blondel on the processing of biomedical images, mainly for dermatology. Faraz is listed as a co-author on a paper titled “Optical flow with structure information for epithelial image mosaicing,” which was published at the 2015 conference. The paper has been cited twice, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

A few months after the conference, in January 2016, Faraz emailed Daul and Blondel about his concerns with the study, according to emails that Faraz shared on PubPeer last June. Faraz allegedly told Daul and Blondel that, for a specific method used in the paper, called RFLOW:

Nanotech group that retracted Nature study pulls two more papers

Nanotechnology researchers in Japan, who in November retracted a paper in Nature for lack of reproducibility, have retracted two more articles after what they said was a failure to replicate their findings.

As we reported previously, the authors, led by Kenichiro Itami of Nagoya University, called for an investigation into the problems with their work, the conclusions of which have yet to be made public.

The new retractions involve articles published in ACS Applied Nano Materials.

Here’s the notice for “Graphene Nanoribbon Dielectric Passivation Layers for Graphene Electronics,” a paper which appeared in July 2019 and has been cited 11 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science:

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