A former postdoc at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) committed misconduct in a study of hepatitis by falsely claiming that data from a single trial subject were actually from more than a dozen different people, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has found. The investigation was prompted by allegations made by readers of the … Continue reading Former NIH scientist falsified images in hepatitis study: ORI
We have a follow-up from François-Xavier Coudert on the trial of two French odontology researchers accused of stealing from — and abetting the theft of — the work of a graduate student. A French court has ruled that French dental researcher accused of plagiarizing the thesis of a fellow student was guilty of the charge, but … Continue reading Stiff sentence for French researcher found guilty of plagiarizing
Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s a taste of scientific publishing news from elsewhere:
The Journal of Pregnancy has retracted a 2012 article by a pair of researchers in Iran who lifted the contents from an article published 10 years previous. The paper, “The Effects of Fetal Gender on Serum Human Chorionic Gonadotropin and Testosterone in Normotensive and Preeclamptic Pregnancies,” was written by Nahid Lorzadeh and Sirous Kazemirad, OBs … Continue reading Chip off the old block: Pregnancy paper yanked for plagiarism
A group at the University of Texas Southwestern that retracted five papers last year has retracted one more, and has had a paper subjected to an Expression of Concern at the request of the school’s dean. Here’s the retraction notice for “DNA methylation-associated inactivation of TGFβ-related genes, DRM/Gremlin, RUNX3, and HPP1 in human cancers,” originally … Continue reading Cancer biology group notches sixth retraction, and earns an Expression of Concern
The author of a paper on the phenomenon of the vanishing twin has lost the article for failure to list his co-author on the article. The paper, “Genotyping Analysis of Circulating Fetal Cells Reveals High Frequency of Vanishing Twin Following Transfer of Multiple Embryos,” had appeared earlier this year in Avicenna Journal of Medical Biotechnology, … Continue reading Vanishing citation for vanishing twin paper
It’s really hard to get papers retracted, police might be best-equipped to handle scientific misconduct investigations, and there’s finally software that will identify likely image manipulation. Those are three highlights from a number of pieces that have appeared in Nature and Nature Medicine in the past few weeks. Not surprisingly, there are common threads, so … Continue reading Should scientific misconduct be handled by the police? It’s fraud week at Nature and Nature Medicine
Nearly six months after first expressing concern about the validity of a 2010 paper on multiple sclerosis, Nature Medicine has retracted the article for containing “erroneous” data — which in this case don’t seem to have existed, making them more fabricated than wrong. The paper, “Crucial role of interleukin-7 in T helper type 17 survival … Continue reading Nature Medicine retracts MS paper with ghost data by former GSK researcher
A group of anesthesiology researchers in China has lost their 2011 paper in Der Anaesthesist because, well, the article wasn’t theirs to begin with. The paper, “Different anesthesia methods for laparoscopic cholecystectomy,” came from authors at the 309th Hospital of PLA, in Beijing, who purported to report on a randomized trial of 68 patients undergoing … Continue reading Same “difference,” as anesthesia paper retracted for plagiarism
The European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging has an interesting exchange of retraction-related notices in its pages. The article, “Neuroradiological advances detect abnormal neuroanatomy underlying neuropsychological impairments: the power of PET imaging,” appeared in 2011 and was written by Benjamin Hayempour and Abass Alavi, one of the pioneers in PET imaging. According to … Continue reading Retraction prompts letter of explanation by co-author — and a legal threat against Retraction Watch