Search Results for: doing the right thing

Paper with authorship posted for sale retracted nearly two years after Retraction Watch report

An engineering journal has retracted an article that was posted on a website claiming to sell author positions. The retraction comes nearly two years after we reported on the website and a whistleblower informed the journal. The study, “On the dynamics of an ultra-fast-rotating-induced piezoelectric cantilevered nanodisk surrounded by viscoelastic foundation,” appeared in Mechanics Based … Continue reading Paper with authorship posted for sale retracted nearly two years after Retraction Watch report

High-profile paper that used AI to identify suicide risk from brain scans retracted for flawed methods

In 2017, a paper published in Nature Human Behavior made international headlines for the authors’ claim they had developed a way to analyze brain scans using machine learning to identify youth at risk for suicide.  “It was a big, splashy finding,” said Timothy Verstynen, an associate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, … Continue reading High-profile paper that used AI to identify suicide risk from brain scans retracted for flawed methods

Ob-gyn loses PhD after committee finds he made up research

It was déjà vu last month when a university in Belgium stripped Egyptian physician Hatem Abu Hashim of his doctorate after he was found to have fabricated data in his thesis.  Just weeks earlier, another Egyptian doctor, Ahmed Badawy, lost the PhD degree he had earned at a Dutch university in 2008. Abu Hashim and … Continue reading Ob-gyn loses PhD after committee finds he made up research

Journals dismiss claims that Harvard researcher’s work on race is ‘pseudoscience’

Two journals have dismissed allegations of research misconduct leveled against a  political scientist at Harvard in an anonymous memo that labeled his work “pseudoscience.”  The 2018 memo signed by “Social Scientists for Research Integrity” – which does not have an internet presence that we could find –  makes claims of academic misconduct against Ryan Enos, … Continue reading Journals dismiss claims that Harvard researcher’s work on race is ‘pseudoscience’

‘I was fired up’: Psychiatrist effort prompts retraction of antidepressant treatment paper

Eric Ross was listening to a popular psychiatry podcast one day last spring when “some pretty remarkable” research findings caught his attention.  A team of researchers in Egypt had shown that adding a cheap diabetes drug—metformin—to antidepressant therapy nearly doubled the treatment’s efficacy in people with moderate to severe depression. That meant the drug worked … Continue reading ‘I was fired up’: Psychiatrist effort prompts retraction of antidepressant treatment paper

Paper about “sexual intent” of women wearing red retracted seven years after sleuths raised concerns

A psychologist whose controversial publications on human behavior have attracted scrutiny for their implausible workload and impossible statistics has lost a third paper – seven years after sleuths first began questioning it.  The 2012 article, “Color and Women Attractiveness: When Red Clothed Women Are Perceived to Have More Intense Sexual Intent,” was published in the … Continue reading Paper about “sexual intent” of women wearing red retracted seven years after sleuths raised concerns

Exclusive: UCLA found a longtime researcher faked data – but made a strange mistake in its report

A few years ago, funding for the UCLA pathology lab where Janina Jiang had worked since 2010 was running out.  The head of the lab was grateful when another scientist offered to chip in $50,000 to keep Jiang on for six more months.  But some of the experiments Jiang – perhaps feeling that her job … Continue reading Exclusive: UCLA found a longtime researcher faked data – but made a strange mistake in its report

NIH asked to replace a PI on grants after university said she violated policy

An office of the National Institutes of Health requested earlier this year that a university designate a new principal investigator (PI) for two grants after the institution found she had violated its policy in a research misconduct investigation, Retraction Watch has learned.  The NIH’s Office of Extramural Research, which oversees funding granted to external institutions, … Continue reading NIH asked to replace a PI on grants after university said she violated policy

When editors confuse direct criticism with being impolite, science loses

In January 2022, motivated by our experience with eClinicalMedicine, we wrote about mishandling of published errors by journal editors. We had noticed that the methods used for the analysis of a cluster randomized trial published in the journal were invalid. Using a valid approach, we reanalyzed the raw data, which were shared with us by the … Continue reading When editors confuse direct criticism with being impolite, science loses

Meet a sleuth whose work has resulted in more than 850 retractions

Nick Wise had always been “slightly interested” in research integrity and fraud, just from working in science.  Then, last July, from following image sleuth Elisabeth Bik on Twitter, he learned about the work of Guillaume Cabanac, Cyril Labbé, and Alexander Magazinov identifying “tortured phrases” in published papers.  Such phrases – such as “bosom peril,” meaning … Continue reading Meet a sleuth whose work has resulted in more than 850 retractions