One of the most contentious issues in scholarly publishing is authorship. Sometimes there’s forgery involved, but most of the time the tension is more mundane but also more pernicious: Researchers who did most of the work wondering why “honorary” authors suddenly appear on papers, or wondering why their own names didn’t appear. Journals, it would seem, are … Continue reading How good are journals at policing authorship?
Anil Potti‘s retraction count is now eight with the withdrawal of a 2008 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Here’s the notice, which appeared online in JAMA sometime yesterday:
Some retractions beg for a kick of sand in the face, and others do the kicking. Here’s an example of what Charles Atlas might have written had he been a journal editor concerned with research integrity. Experimental Biology and Medicine, the official journal of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, has retracted a 2010 … Continue reading Journal retracts heart stem cell paper (and pulls no punches) over image fraud
The journal Cancer has issued an Expression of Concern about two lung cancer screening papers long dogged by doubt. Last April, The Cancer Letter and The New York Times jointly published an investigation into the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (I-ELCAP) run by Claudia Henschke and David Yankelevitz. Other researchers had already criticized the … Continue reading Cancer issues expression of concern about two Henschke I-ELCAP lung cancer screening papers
The authors of a study in Urology that was at the center of two 2009 lawsuits brought by a company that funded the work have retracted the paper. The idea behind the research — by Robert Getzenberg and colleagues at Johns Hopkins — was to find an alternative to the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test, … Continue reading Hopkins scientists retract prostate cancer screening study at center of 2009 lawsuits
Today, we have the pleasure of presenting a guest post from Mico Tatalovic, who wrote in October aboutretractions in journals in his home country, Croatia. Here, he describes what appears to be an alarming rate of plagiarism in Serbian journals. A report for the Serbian science ministry by the Centre for Evaluation in Education and Science … Continue reading A tsunami of plagiarism in Serbia, but hardly any retractions
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” keeps U.S. mail carriers from delivering your letters and packages, and neither seven retractions, nor being forced to resign, nor malpractice settlements (and an ongoing case) keeps former Duke oncologist Anil Potti from publishing papers. Potti’s latest effort, “A Pathway-Based Approach to Identify Molecular Biomarkers in … Continue reading Seven retractions, a resignation, and lawsuit settlements haven’t stopped Anil Potti from publishing
Several journals in the field of orthopedics and related disciplines have been victimized by an apparent serial plagiarist. The author, Bernardino Saccomanni, of Gabriele D’ Annunzio University, in Chieti Scalo, Italy—across the boot and up a bit from Rome—appears to have lifted significant amounts of text in several articles. Last January, for example, Current Reviews … Continue reading Multiple retractions as brazen plagiarist victimizes orthopedics literature
The senior author of a Journal of Immunology paper has retracted it after a university investigation found that he had inappropriately manipulated images, Retraction Watch has learned. Here’s the notice:
PLoS One and Nature Medicine have issued corrections for papers by Zhiguo Wang, the former Montreal Heart Institute researcher who resigned in September following an investigation into image manipulation in his lab. In September, PLoS One told us that they were investigating the paper. Here’s the text of the correction for “Transcriptional and Post-Transcriptional Mechanisms for Oncogenic Overexpression of … Continue reading Corrections in PLoS One, Nature Medicine for Zhiguo Wang, and details about Montreal Heart Institute investigation