A paper that caught flak for its claims that an ancient city in the Middle East was destroyed by an exploding celestial body – and the authors’ suggestion that the event could have inspired the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah – now has an editor’s note acknowledging the journal is looking into concerns about … Continue reading Journal investigating Sodom comet paper for data problems
A university investigation in Hong Kong found that a professor used the email account of a former student to conduct all the correspondence needed to edit special issues of two journals, Retraction Watch has learned. The two special issues, which were published last year, are full of articles with the hallmarks of paper mills, said … Continue reading Exclusive: Prof stole former student’s identity to edit two journal special issues
Citing an investigation by Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, two journals last week retracted five articles by Edward Whang, an associate professor of surgery at the school. The journals, Oncogene and Surgery, both refer to problems with images of Western blots that could not be resolved because “no underlying research data” were … Continue reading Harvard surgeon has five papers pulled following internal investigation
Two Korean journals last month pulled papers by a prominent cardiologist at Yonsei University, Professor Hui-Nam Pak, with one retraction notice citing “issues related to scientific misconduct.” Commenters on PubPeer had raised several concerns about data integrity, “mixed-up” data and “statistical nonsense” in “eNOS3 Genetic Polymorphism Is Related to Post-Ablation Early Recurrence of Atrial Fibrillation,” … Continue reading Prominent Korean heart doctor earns two retractions in a month
A group of cancer researchers once all based at Harvard have earned a retraction after acknowledging data duplication “errors” in an article published more than eight years ago. The paper, “Synthetic lethality of combined glutaminase and Hsp90 inhibition in mTORC1-driven tumor cells,” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in … Continue reading Former Harvard researchers lose PNAS paper for reusing data
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 289. There are more than 38,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or … Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Against Reviewer 2;’ forced to grant guest authorships; problems in oversight of bat virus research in China
The publisher Frontiers has published an expression of concern for an article that proposed “ivermectin protects against COVID-19” via effects on the microbiome. The article, “Microbiome-Based Hypothesis on Ivermectin’s Mechanism in COVID-19: Ivermectin Feeds Bifidobacteria to Boost Immunity,” was published in July 2022 in Frontiers in Microbiology. The sole author, Sabine Hazan, is affiliated with … Continue reading Publisher investigating “serious concerns” about article on ivermectin, COVID, and the microbiome
There shouldn’t have been many differences between the women recruited for the three clinical trials: All of them gave birth at the same two Cairo hospitals over a period of less than three years, and all of them were treated to prevent or manage postpartum bleeding. Three samples from this pool of patients, Ben Mol … Continue reading Ob-gyn who called criticism ‘racist’ and ‘hate speech’ earns retraction, several expressions of concern
A study in the journal Smart Materials in Medicine has earned a retraction, seemingly not because of scholarly malfeasance or an inadvertent oversight, but because of a “lack of agreement on affiliation format.” The crucial fact seems to be that almost all of the article’s authors, including its two senior authors, list affiliations in Taiwan, … Continue reading Was a paper from Taiwan retracted because of a geopolitical dispute?
An oral surgeon in Japan falsified images in several papers, granted authorship to whomever he saw fit and stored experimental data sloppily, according to an investigation by Showa University in Tokyo, where the physician was a lecturer at the time of the misconduct. As a result of the findings, the university has recommended retracting eight … Continue reading Japanese university asks surgeon to retract eight ‘fraudulent’ papers