Two journals have retracted five papers by a researcher in Taiwan who evidently took the notion of teamwork a little too liberally. The first notice is one we missed when it came out in 2012 in the British Journal of Educational Technology. The article, “Learning in troubleshooting of automotive braking system: a project-based teamwork approach,” … Continue reading Five plagiarism retractions appear for Taiwan engineer
A strange tale is brewing at a journal that has been shuttered since August of last year, which will lead to some 40 expressions of concern. There are a number of threads to tie together here, so bear with us for a moment. First, BioMed Central, the publisher of Head & Neck Oncology, posted this … Continue reading Head-spinning: Publisher to post dozens of notices of concern following investigations into editors in chief
The journal Applied Surface Science (okay, so maybe it’s not called ASS at the home office) is retracting a pair of articles in its December issue. The first, “Structure and mechanical properties of Ni–P electrodeposited coatings,” appeared in 2009 and was written by a group of researchers in Beijing. It has been cited nine times, … Continue reading Holes in ASS as journal pulls two papers
The journal Case Reports in Medicine has retracted a 2012 article by a group of Turkish authors who made up things in the piece. The paper, “Brain Metastasis as an Initial Manifestation of Ovarian Carcinoma: A Case Report,” came from ob-gyns at Hacettepe University in Ankara, and purported to relate the case of A 30-year-old … Continue reading Case report journal pulls paper on metastatic ovarian cancer with falsified data
The Office of Research Integrity has concluded that Hao Wang, a Canadian pathologist, falsified data in a 2011 poster presentation supported by money from the National Institutes of Health. For his part Wang, a former faculty member at Western University in Ontario (his website is still active but his email bounces back), has said there … Continue reading ORI sanctions pathologist in Canada for bogus monkey data
Tabitha Powledge and Beryl Benderly, two long-time science writers, have found a post they wrote on PLOS Blogs taken down. The removal follows an online dispute with another blogger, Emily Willingham, about the post, which covered a session on sexual harassment, The XX Question, at the recent National Association of Science Writers (NASW) meeting in … Continue reading PLOS Blogs removes post criticizing writer over sexual harassment post
Okay, so great speechifying isn’t always recognized the first time it’s heard. We’re sure “I Have a Dream” had its detractors at the time. And Homer probably put more than his share of listeners to sleep while reciting the Iliad (that sucker’s LONG, after all). But when the Patriot & Union, of Pennsylvania, trashed Lincoln’s … Continue reading Doing the right thing, 150 years later: Paper retracts editorial condemning Gettysburg Address as “silly”
A group of researchers in Ireland has retracted their 2013 article on a possible new method for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — ALS, also commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease — after identifying errors in several images in the paper. The article, “Acidotoxicity and acid-sensing ion channels contribute to motoneuron degeneration,” was published online in Cell … Continue reading ALS paper retracted for figure problems
Has anyone seen our irony meter? The author of a 2003 study on “the ethics of being first” is retracting it because it turns out he had already published it elsewhere — making it, well, not first. Here’s the retraction notice for “Surgical Research and the Ethics of Being First,” the Journal of Value Inquiry … Continue reading Who’s on first? Paper on “the ethics of being first” retracted because it was…second
mBio, whose editor, Arturo Casadevall, has contributed greatly to our knowledge about why articles are retracted, has an interesting retraction of its own. The journal — a publication of the American Society for Microbiology and the American Academy of Microbiology — is pulling a 2011 paper by a trio of researchers from the University of … Continue reading mBio retracts anthrax paper whose authors say they misinterpreted findings