A deluge of bizarre and malicious emails targeting a professor at Harvard Medical School has left him reeling, while raising questions about the smear campaign’s use of a popular online forum where scientists publicly critique research. Joseph Loscalzo sent a letter to PubPeer, the online forum, in September describing an “aggressive cyberstalking and harassment campaign” … Continue reading Cyberstalking pits Harvard professor against PubPeer
Purdue University has reached a settlement with the federal government to pay back grant money the institution received through applications submitted with falsified data, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana. The settlement resolves allegations under the False Claims Act related to the case of Alice C. Chang (who also … Continue reading Purdue agrees to pay feds back $737,000 for grant submissions with fake data
The Lancet today retracted two papers by former Karolinska Institutet surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, whose professional and personal escapades have made headlines for more than a decade and who has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for causing bodily harm to his patients. The move comes a month after Sweden’s National Board for Assessment of … Continue reading Lancet retracts two more papers by convicted surgeon Paolo Macchiarini
Less than a year after he became dean of the University of Alabama Birmingham School of Dentistry, an uncomfortable email landed in Russell Taichman’s inbox. Overlapping and duplicated panels in one of Taichman’s 2005 papers were among a list of complaints relayed by the publisher of Cellular Signalling in the April 2020 correspondence – complaints … Continue reading Exclusive: How a dean went about correcting the scientific record even when at least one journal said he didn’t need to
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to more than 300. There are now 40,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains 200 titles. And have you … Continue reading Weekend reads: Study claiming masks harm is retracted; papers lead to high treason charges; paying to publish in fake journals
Tokyo’s Waseda University is investigating alleged misconduct by an assistant professor at the institution, Retraction Watch has learned. The probe is focusing on at least three works by Woohyang Sim, of the Faculty of International Research and Education, including her 2020 doctoral dissertation, titled “What is Higher Education For? Educational Aspirations and Career Prospects of … Continue reading Exclusive: Top-tier university in Japan investigating prof’s alleged misconduct
In my prior career as an investigative science journalist and now as a whistleblower lawyer, I’ve seen institutions react to allegations of scientific fraud in two ways. The first could be called “Investigate and Disclose.” This strategy was exemplified by Bell Laboratories’ 2002 investigation of allegations that Jan Hendrik Schön, a member of the technical … Continue reading Guest post: When whistleblowers need lawyers
In 2018, when The Lancet pulled two studies by once-celebrated transplant surgeon Paolo Macchiarini after he was found guilty of misconduct, we suggested in a post that the journal’s chapter of the long-running Macchiarini saga was finally over. We were wrong. Last week, the journal issued expressions of concern about a pair of papers by … Continue reading Five years on, convicted transplant surgeon earns expressions of concern from Lancet
A former associate professor at Purdue University faked data in two published papers and hundreds of images in 16 grant applications, according to a U.S. government research watchdog. Alice C. Chang, whose publications and grants listed her name as Chun-Ju Chang, received nearly $700,000 in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through grant … Continue reading Cancer researcher banned from federal funding for faking data in nearly 400 images in 16 grant applications
A Johns Hopkins researcher who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology has retracted four papers from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) for concerns about images in the articles. Gregg Semenza is “one of today’s preeminent researchers on the molecular mechanisms of oxygen regulation,” the work for which he … Continue reading Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza retracts four papers