Consider this a bit of a thought experiment, but hear us out. The National Institutes of Health earlier this month notified the scientists it funds that, thanks to the sequester, many may soon face cuts in those grants as the agency tries to deal with a reduction in its $30.9 billion budget. In her March … Continue reading Could the sequester mean more business for Retraction Watch?
About a year ago, we wrote about the retraction of a paper in Oral Oncology that highlighted a big issue in oncology research: Widespread contamination of cancer cell lines by other lines, making findings difficult to interpret. One of the common contaminants is HeLa cells. HeLa, of course, stands for Henrietta Lacks, the subject of … Continue reading More HeLa problems: For decades, a widely used bladder cancer line hasn’t been what scientists thought
Is this the new business ethics? In January, we reported on a paper retracted from the Journal of Business Ethics for duplication. That earned the author a five-year publishing ban. This week, we learned of a case of plagiarism in another journal in the field, the Journal of Academic and Business Ethics. Here’s an email … Continue reading Oh, the irony: Business ethics journal paper retracted for plagiarism
Retraction Watch readers may be familiar with the work of Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist who has taken a tough stance about many of the problems in his field and coordinates the Reproducibility Project. So it must have seemed quite ironic for Nosek and his co-authors to learn today that one of their … Continue reading “What I find offensive is not that they plagiarized us, it’s that they did it so badly”
On Tuesday, we reported on the case of Adam Savine, a former graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis who was found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have committed misconduct. Today, Blythe Bernhard, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has an illuminating Q and A with Todd Braver, whose lab Savine worked … Continue reading Wash U psychologist sheds light on inquiry against former psychology grad student
JAMA Internal Medicine has replaced a commentary they published last week on the risks of two diabetes drugs, but you wouldn’t know the new version was a replacement. One change is a correction about whether Byetta and Januvia carry so-called “black box” warnings from the FDA. The original sentence: Because both drugs already carry US … Continue reading JAMA journal quietly replaces diabetes drug commentary after learning co-author is working for drugmaker
A Saudi engineer has lost his 2012 paper in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews for plagiarizing from two previously published articles, including one in the same journal. The article, titled “Fresh water production from/by atmospheric air for arid regions, using solar energy: Review,” was written by A.M.K. El-Ghonemy, of Al-Jouf University. According to the retraction notice:
As a first-year medical student at the University of California, San Diego, Jessica Tang already has an impressive CV. Her name has appeared on ten papers in the medical literature, including three in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine. On one of these she was the sole author. Except that one doesn’t exist anymore. But the … Continue reading Med student loses paper when former boss claims right to data
A U.K. urban planner and self-styled expert on “truth and lying” has launched a forceful attack on the ethics of a key trade association, accusing it of refusing to promote his work for fear that the findings might be damaging to the profession. And what, you’re asking, does this have to do with retractions? Trust … Continue reading Mean streets: Expert on lying accuses planning association of ethical lapses
The journal Experimental and Clinical Transplantation has retracted three papers by a group of Lebanese researchers who appear to have been engaging in illicit trafficking of human kidneys. According to the notice: