The week at Retraction Watch featured more fallout from a citation-boosting episode, and a look at when animal research becomes unnecessary and cruel. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Researchers at Columbia University have retracted a 2013 paper in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, after uncovering abnormalities in the stem cell lines that undermined the conclusions in the paper. Last year, corresponding author Dieter Egli discovered he could not reproduce key data in the 2013 paper because almost all the cell lines first author Haiqing Hua used … Continue reading Unexplained abnormalities in stem cells prompt Columbia researchers to pull diabetes paper
It’s been a busy few months for Brian Wansink, a prominent food researcher at Cornell University. A blog post he wrote in November prompted a huge backlash from readers who accused him of using problematic research methods to produce questionable data, and a group of researchers suggested four of his papers contained 150 inconsistencies. The scientist has … Continue reading “Social science isn’t definitive like chemistry:” Embattled food researcher defends his work
A researcher in Greece has issued extensive — what we sometimes call “mega” — corrections to two 2016 papers published in a medical journal in Romania. The first author — Alexandra Kalogeraki, a pathology researcher at the University of Crete in Greece — retracted two reviews from the same journal last year for plagiarism. The newest notices … Continue reading Researcher issues massive changes to papers amidst plagiarism investigation
The week at Retraction Watch featured the launch of the greatest journal ever, and a story about the backlash against widely covered research on why men eat more. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Sometimes, a seemingly run-of-the-mill retraction notice turns out to be much less straightforward. Such was the case with a recent retraction of a 2016 paper in a journal published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, apparently over permission to use an evaluation scale designed to test whether patients take their medications as … Continue reading If you use this research tool without permission, you’ll hear about it
An investigation into the lab of a prominent cancer researcher in British Columbia has revealed nearly 30 acts of misconduct. As we detail in our latest feature for Science, the investigation, at the University of British Columbia (UBC), uncovered 29 instances of scientific misconduct, 16 of which were characterized as “serious,” according to university … Continue reading Prominent cancer researcher committed nearly 30 acts of misconduct
If you think something is amiss with your data, running an experiment again to figure out what’s going on is a good move. But it’s not always possible. A team of researchers in Seoul recently found themselves in a bind when they needed to check their work, but were out of a key substance: breast milk. The … Continue reading Researchers retract paper after they run out of breast milk
The BMJ has released a detailed correction to a much-debated article critiquing the expert report underlying the U.S. dietary guidelines. After the article was published in 2015, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) organized a letter signed by more than 100 researchers, urging the publication to retract the article. Today, the journal said it found “no … Continue reading BMJ won’t retract controversial dietary guidelines article; issues lengthy correction
A genetics journal has issued an expression of concern (EOC) for a study after an investigation by its chief editors. According to the notice in Frontiers in Genetics, the authors of the paper — based at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan — are conducting further experiments to resolve the issues raised by the journal’s investigation. … Continue reading Genetics study flagged for reliability issues by Frontiers journal