Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: Is nutrition science the worst-performing science?; gender bias in peer review; the Sherlock Holmes of science fraud

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

two investigations at King’s College London that found “poor research practices“
a five-year ban on federal U.S. funding for a researcher who reused images over and over again
sanctions for a former Johns Hopkins postdoc for data fabrication

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

A failure at Renal Failure leads to retraction of duplicate article

A kidney journal has retracted a 2019 paper by a group of researchers in China for an unfortunate own-goal.

The article, “The relationship between hemodialysis mortality and the Chinese medical insurance type,” was first published in January in Renal Failure, a Taylor & Francis title. It appeared again in the journal nine months later.

According to the retraction notice:

‘Reused over and over again:’ Image recycling leads to 5-year funding ban for cancer researcher

A former researcher at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Nebraska has agreed to a five-year ban from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) on receiving federal science funding after being found guilty of having fabricated data in numerous grant applications and articles.

According to the ORI, Sudhakar Yakkanti, a Harvard-trained cancer specialist who from 2004 to 2012 held the post of Director of the Cell Signaling, Retinal & Tumor Angiogenesis Laboratory at Boys Town:

Former Johns Hopkins postdoc sanctioned by Feds for data fabrication

A former postdoc at Johns Hopkins University has been hit by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) with a four-year ban on receiving federal research funding after being found guilty of misconduct in several studies and her doctoral dissertation.

We covered problems with several of Deepti Malhotra’s papers in February of 2016. At the time, Hopkins refused to tell us if the issues stemmed from misconduct. But nearly four years later, the ORI has announced that Deepti Malhotra, while at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:

What’s the hernia? Authors lose surgery paper for miscounting cases

A group of pediatric surgeons in China has lost their 2016 paper on a technique for repairing abdominal defects in children because they apparently had trouble keeping those defects straight.

The article, “A new technique for extraperitoneal repair of inguinal hernia,” appeared in the Journal of Surgical Research, an Elsevier title. The authors reported that a laparoscopic method of repairing inguinal hernias in children was superior to conventional, open surgery. According to the authors, they had nearly 1,900 patients to prove their point.

But as the retraction notice indicates, the numbers didn’t add up.

Exclusive: King’s College London finds “poor research practices” but no misconduct in two recent cases

King’s College London (KCL) found evidence of poor research practices by three of its faculty, but “no intention to deceive” and no misconduct, according to documents obtained by Retraction Watch.

One case involves work by cancer biologists Farzin Farzaneh and Ghulam Mufti, while the other involves work by Mahvash Tavassoli, also a cancer researcher. Both involve problems with images and were brought to the attention of KCL in January of this year by pseudonymous whistleblower Claire Francis.

In the Farzaneh and Mufti case, writes Tim Newton, KCL’s dean of research governance, ethics and integrity in an October 31 letter:

Weekend reads: Grad student who alleged discrimination dismissed; academics who play dumb; when papers cite predatory works

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

A rare permanent ban on U.S. federal research funding for a lab tech at the center of the Duke case;
A look at whether 61 likely retractions for a controversial psychologist is a low estimate;
A university giving the task of clearing a researcher of misconduct to one of his frequent co-authors;
A glaring conflict of interest for the academic editor of a paper published in PLOS ONE.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Stem cell researchers have papers retracted for image manipulation

A group of dentistry researchers in Japan, whose work on stem cells has been the subject of an institutional investigation, have now lost two papers in PLOS ONE for image problems.

The authors, from Aichi Gakuin University in Nagoya, were led by Makio Mogi, a medicinal biochemist at the school. Mogi asked for at least one of the retractions.

The first article, published in 2013, was titled “Matrix metalloproteinase-3 in odontoblastic cells derived from Ips cells: unique proliferation response as odontoblastic cells derived from ES cells.” It has been cited 18 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. According to the notice:

Feds ban ex-Duke lab tech from funding after she faked data linked to 60 NIH grants

Erin Potts-Kant, who lost her job as a researcher at Duke University in 2013 for embezzling more than $25,000 from the institution, has received a rare permanent Federal funding ban from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) after investigators concluded that she had used fabricated data in nearly 120 figures.

The case has been ongoing since 2013. Potts-Kant and a former colleague, William Michael Foster, were named in a 2015 whistleblower lawsuit which alleged that they, with the knowledge of their institution, had used bogus data to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants. Earlier this year, Duke settled the case for $112.5 million, of which nearly $34 million went to the whistleblower, Joseph Thomas.

According to an ORI finding issued today, investigators determined that Potts-Kant

PLOS ONE realizes an academic editor had a conflict of interest that the publisher says it now tries harder to avoid

A group of genetics researchers in Italy has lost a 2014 paper in PLOS ONE for a range of image problems and a glaring conflict of interest.

The article, titled “Neuronal differentiation dictates estrogen-dependent survival and ERK1/2 kinetic by means of caveolin-1,” came from a team led by Luca Colucci-D’Amato, of the Second University of Naples.

The retraction notice in PLOS ONE lays out a raft of issues with the paper, for example:

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