The week at Retraction Watch featured a particularly misleading retraction notice, and a university stripping a graduate of her PhD for misconduct. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The Huffington Post has retracted two blog posts by prominent Yale nutritionist David Katz after learning he had posted incredibly favorable reviews of a new novel — and not revealed that he had written the novel himself, under a pseudonym. There’s no doubt Katz is a prolific writer — in addition to a couple hundred scientific articles … Continue reading Yale doc loses 2 HuffPo blog posts after secretly promoting his novel
An article about a dietary plan to help people lose weight has been retracted after other researchers raised concerns, and the authors failed to provide the data that supported their findings. The retraction is accompanied by a Letter to the Editor by a group of outside researchers — including David Allison at the University of Alabama … Continue reading Food article pulled when authors can’t serve up data
This week’s Weekend Reads, which appears below, was preempted yesterday by the news that the Office of Research Integrity had issued a finding of misconduct in the long-running case of Anil Potti. The week also featured news about a child psychiatry trial halted for unexplained reasons, and saw the launch of our new weekly column … Continue reading Weekend reads: Elsevier mutiny; babies as co-authors; what to do after rejection
Today, The BMJ retracted a 1989 paper about the role of breastfeeding and formula in infant eczema — 20 years after the data were called into question by a university report. However, the report was kept secret — due, by some accounts, to alleged threats of a lawsuit. That is, until this year, when author Ranjit Kumar … Continue reading After court verdict, BMJ retracts 26-year-old paper
The BMJ has published a correction to a critique of the U.S. dietary guidelines report that has received heavy criticism from nutrition experts. The author, journalist Nina Teicholz, has also posted a response to the criticism of the article. The BMJ investigation, released in September, asserted that the guidelines committee used “weak scientific standards” to make its recommendations. It also criticized several aspects … Continue reading BMJ corrects controversial critique of US dietary guidelines report
We’ve found two recent retractions and an expression of concern for Joachim Boldt, former prominent anesthesiologist and currently Retraction Watch leaderboard’s 2nd place titleholder. He now has 94 retractions. One of the retracted articles contains falsified data, along with a researcher who didn’t agree to be a co-author, according to an investigation by the Justus Liebig University Giessen, where Boldt … Continue reading Boldt’s retraction count upped to 94, co-author takes legal action to prevent 95th
A group of researchers in Hong Kong and China have lost a pair of papers on liver transplantation after concerns were raised about the “origin of images” in the two studies. The articles appeared in the American Journal of Transplantation in January and February of 2006, and came from the lab of S. T. Fan, … Continue reading Image issues force retraction of liver transplant papers
The BMJ has issued two “clarifications” to an investigation it published last week that questioned whether the new U.S. dietary guidelines were evidence-based. The article criticized several aspects of the new dietary guidelines, such as “deleting meat from the list of foods recommended as part of its healthy diets” — without, according to author Nina Teicholz, reviewing the scientific literature … Continue reading Following criticism, BMJ “clarifies” dietary guidelines investigation
Earlier this year, Food and Nutrition Sciences retracted two papers from an author who criticized highly popular fish oil supplements after an additional round of peer review concluded his papers present a “biased interpretation,” among other issues. Last year, Brian Peskin lost a paper for an “undeclared competing interest” — namely, that he held patents and directed a … Continue reading Anti-fish oil researcher netted two more retractions