Elsevier says it is investigating how one of its journals managed to publish a paper with patently absurd assertions about the genetic inheritance of personality traits.
The paper, “Temperament gene inheritance,” appears this month in Meta Gene and was written by authors in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It states:
Continue reading ‘Transparently ridiculous’: Elsevier says journal shares critic’s concerns about bizarre genetics paper
If bats and pangolins could review scientific papers, they’d definitely have given the following article an “accept without revisions.”
An international group of researchers has proposed that COVID-19 hitched a ride to this planet from space. Same for the fungal infection Candida auris.
We’ve heard plenty of bizarre theories about the novel coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, from its having been manufactured in a Chinese lab to its links to 5G cell technology. But this one wins the prize for being, as one Twitter user said, “batshit.”
Continue reading COVID-19 arrived on a meteorite, claims Elsevier book chapter
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:
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 32.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: A pay-for-peer review movement; toxic PIs; why plagiarism is not a victimless crime
The University of California, Irvine, appears to be putting some distance between the administration and a lecturer at the school who threatened Retraction Watch with legal action after we inquired about the misbehavior of one of his colleagues.
Last month, we reported on the case of Constance Iloh, a UCI education scholar whose work has come under scrutiny for plagiarism and misuse of references. Before posting our story, we emailed Iloh multiple times for comment on two retractions and a pair of corrections.
She didn’t reply — but we did hear from Eric Lindsay, a composer at the school, who told us, using a UCI email address:
Continue reading Professor’s legal threats “were personal and not made on behalf of the University,” says University of California, Irvine
This retraction reminds us of an old joke about food in the Borscht Belt resorts: It’s terrible, and such small portions!
A group of researchers in Japan and Singapore objected to being included on a 2019 paper without their consent — and someone’s feelings appear to have been hurt for having been left off the bogus list of authors.
The paper, “Effect of copper substitution on the local chemical structure and dissolution property of copper-doped β-tricalcium phosphate,” appeared in Acta Biomaterialia, an Elsevier title.
Continue reading Let me get this straight: You added a bunch of co-authors without their consent, and you couldn’t be bothered to include me?
Science has issued an expression of concern for a paper it published earlier this summer after readers pointed out suspect images in the work.
The July 10 article, titled “Proton transport enabled by a field-induced metallic state in a semiconductor hetero-structure,” came from a group in China and the United Kingdom. The corresponding authors were Bin Zhu and Huaibing Song, of China University of Geosciences in Wuhan. Zhu also is affiliated with the Southeast University School of Energy and Environment in Nanjing.
Shortly after publication, data-sleuth Elisabeth Bik posted on PubPeer that she’d been alerted by a reader to potential problems with two of the figures in the paper:
Continue reading PubPeer comments prompt Science expression of concern
Nine strikes in a row in bowling is called a “golden turkey.” So what do you call 10 papers on poultry pulled at once for plagiarism?
We first wrote about Sajid Umar in July 2018, when he’d lost a 2016 article in Scientifica for plagiarism and other sins, and then again earlier this summer when he notched two more retractions from Poultry Science for “grave mistakes.”
Now, the World’s Poultry Science Journal, a Taylor & Francis title, has pulled 10 more of Umar’s articles — bringing his total to 14, by our count. According to the retraction notice for the 2017 paper “Mycoplasmosis in poultry: update on diagnosis and preventive measures”:
Continue reading Going cold turkey: Infectious disease-poultry researcher up to 14 retractions
A researcher in Bangladesh who fabricated a list of co-authors — and possibly her data, too — in a paper on dengue fever that was recently retracted has published the same article in a different journal.
In 2019, Farzana Ahmed was a pediatric intensivist at United Hospital Ltd, in Dhaka, when she published a study in the Journal of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University. Titled “Diagnostic value of ferritin for the severity of dengue infection in children,” the article described a study of:
Continue reading Researcher republishes paper retracted for fake authorship — with a different co-author
Scopus is the world’s largest database of abstracts and citations, and calls itself “comprehensive,” “curated,” and “enriched.” But my recent experience with it suggests its curation could use some work.
In October 2019, I discovered that the Scopus profile of the journal Transylvanian Review contained numerous faked articles. How did I know? A few years ago, a legitimate Scopus indexed journal, Transylvanian Review, was hijacked and listed on the well-known — but controversial — Beall’s List of predatory and unscrupulous publishers.
Many of these articles appeared on the cloned website and were authored by Iraqi researchers.
Continue reading How did content from a hijacked journal end up in one of the world’s most-used databases?
There’s an “us” in lupus, but no “we” — at least in the case of a 2020 paper whose list of authors was a fabrication.
Published in the journal Lupus, the article, “Antibodies to cellular prion protein and its cognate ligand stress-inducible protein 1 in systemic lupus erythematosus,” was written by a group led by Jozélio F Carvalho, a rheumatologist at the University of São Paulo. Or rather, by Carvalho himself.
According to the notice:
Continue reading Wait, how did my name end up on that paper?