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Bearly believable: Water bear paper retracted for missing lab notebooks

Tardigrades, the most hardy animals on or off planet Earth, can survive boiling, freezing, and even the ravages of outer space. Unfortunately, some data on water bears’ memories proved to be less long-lasting, earning a retraction for a George Mason University researcher who also published the paper without alerting her co-workers ahead of time. Here’s the notice for … Continue reading Bearly believable: Water bear paper retracted for missing lab notebooks

Weekend reads: Publish a paper, get $10,000!; Lancet editor Horton under fire

Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Publish a paper, get $10,000! “Following the publication in The Lancet last month of an open letter to the people of Gaza, a number of doctors have begun a petition to force editor-in-chief Richard Horton to resign. Should medical journals get political?

Hydrogen journal pulls palladium paper for data misuse

The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy is retracting a 2013 article for what appears to be the misappropriation of data. The paper,  titled “Hydrogen production by an anaerobic photocatalytic reforming using palladium nanoparticle on boron and nitrogen doped TiO2 catalysts,” was written by researchers from the Veltech Dr RR & Dr SR Technical University, in Chennai, … Continue reading Hydrogen journal pulls palladium paper for data misuse

Paper on liver failure in babies withdrawn for lab mix-up

A paper on liver failure in infants has been retracted due to a lab error, though the author contends that the paper still holds a valuable message for pediatricians — one that could save lives. To get to that, though, we had to make it through what turns out to be an unnecessarily vague retraction … Continue reading Paper on liver failure in babies withdrawn for lab mix-up

Weekend reads: Dope-addicted doctors running drug trials; jailed for copyright violation?

Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: “Why are dope-addicted, disgraced doctors running our drug trials?” asks Peter Aldhous. Could a biology student in Colombia be jailed for violating copyright?

ORI sanctions collaborator of Nobel winner Buck for data fabrication

The Office of Research Integrity has sanctioned a former researcher in the lab of Linda Buck, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for falsifying data in two papers written with the support of grants from the National Institutes of Health. The researcher, Zou Zhihua, worked with Buck as a post-doc at … Continue reading ORI sanctions collaborator of Nobel winner Buck for data fabrication

Law review paper yanked for lack of attribution despite offer of co-authorship

Sometimes, retractions seem to have a juicy back story, but the explanation proves tantalizingly out of reach. Such is the case for a law review retraction on a paper about reparations for human rights violations. After someone complained that author Gentian Zyberi “had not done sufficient justice to the substantial contribution” they made, the complainant refused … Continue reading Law review paper yanked for lack of attribution despite offer of co-authorship

Duplication earns retraction for nanomaterials paper that had already been corrected

After earning an erratum shortly after publication in 2009, a paper in Applied Physics Letters has now been retracted for the “regrettable mistake” of duplicating an earlier paper by the researchers. Here’s the notice for “Broadband and omnidirectional antireflection from conductive indium-tin-oxide nanocolumns prepared by glancing-angle deposition with nitrogen:”

Weekend reads: How to fix “slow,” “unhelpful,” and “generally awful” peer review, where all the PhDs go

Another busy week at Retraction Watch, but there was lots happening elsewhere, too:

The camel doesn’t have two humps: Programming “aptitude test” canned for overzealous conclusion

From Larry Summers to James Watson, certain scientists have a long and questionable tradition of using “data” to make claims about intelligence and aptitude. So it’s no surprise that, when well-known computer scientist Richard Bornat claimed his PhD student had created a test to separate people who would succeed at programming versus those who didn’t, people happily … Continue reading The camel doesn’t have two humps: Programming “aptitude test” canned for overzealous conclusion