The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has sanctioned Bryan William Doreian, a former postdoc in dermatology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, for falsifying data in his dissertation and a 2009 paper in Molecular Biology of the Cell (for which it provided a cover image, at right). ORI says Doreian’s bad NIH-funded data also appeared … Continue reading ORI says Case Western skin scientist falsified data
Last year, an audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found “a potential for unnecessary duplication” among the billions of dollars in research grants funded by national agencies. Some researchers, it seemed, could be winning more than one grant to do the same research. Prompted by that report, Virginia Tech’s Skip Garner and his colleagues … Continue reading Has “double-dipping” cost U.S. science funding agencies tens of millions of dollars?
A new study in Clinical Chemistry paints an alarming picture of how often scientists deposit data that they’re supposed to — but perhaps not surprisingly, papers whose authors did submit such data scored higher on a quality scale than those whose authors didn’t deposit their data. Ken Witwer, a pathobiologist at Hopkins, was concerned that … Continue reading Study finds many authors aren’t sharing data when they publish — and leads to a PLOS ONE retraction
An endocrinologist who resigned from the University of Tokyo last March as the university was investigating his work has retracted another paper. Here’s the notice for the paper by corresponding author Shigeaki Kato and colleagues in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research:
Partial retractions — as opposed corrections or the full monty — are unusual events in scientific publishing. But they appear to come in twos. The journal Infection and Immunity, the work of whose editor, Ferric Fang, is much admired by this blog, has a fascinating example of the breed in its February issue. The article … Continue reading Plague paper partially retracted
Jesús A. Lemus, he of the likely ghost author and questionable data, has earned his sixth retraction, this one in Biology Letters. Here’s the notice for “Stress associated with group living in a long-lived bird:”
Yesterday, we reported on two retractions in the Journal of Neuroscience whose notices referred to a University of Lisbon report that had determined there was “substantial data misrepresentation” in the original articles. The notice didn’t say anything about misconduct, but when we see “misrepresentation,” we tend to think — as do many others — that … Continue reading University of Lisbon investigation that spawned neuroscience retractions found no evidence of misconduct
Retraction Watch Rule 5.1, which governs ironic article titles (and does not actually exist), clearly states that researchers who plagiarize should avoid the use of words like “new” or “novel” when describing their research (or lack thereof). Failure to adhere to Rule 5.1 can lead to embarrassment — as in the case below. A pair … Continue reading Note to authors: Please don’t use the word “novel” when you plagiarize
Royal jelly — “the goo that sustains honeybees destined for royalty” and is touted dubiously for everything “from youthful skin to virility,” as Nature put it — is apparently a hot research topic. So when a Retraction Watch tipster sent us a corrigendum that seemed to have done something we hadn’t seen before — retract … Continue reading Royal jelly figure flushed: Author removes figure from 2002 paper
An anti-terrorism researcher at the University of Southern Denmark has had a number of papers in conference proceedings retracted for plagiarism. Debora Weber-Wulff, who has researched plagiarism for a decade, reports on her blog Copy, Shake, and Paste that eight papers by Nasrullah Memon have been retracted after the Vroniplag website revealed similarities between his … Continue reading Eight papers by anti-terrorism professor retracted for plagiarism