A slide from a presentation by the U.S. NSF OIG’s Jim Kroll
A pair of grief scholars in Denmark have lost a 2018 paper on ghostly apparitions after one of the researchers copied text from another article.
The study, “How many bereaved people hallucinate about their loved one? A systematic review and meta-analysis of bereavement hallucinations,” appeared in the Journal of Affective Disorders, an Elsevier publication. Authors Karina Stengaard Kamp and Helena Due — yes, a second author named Due — are with The Aarhus Bereavement Research Unit at Aarhus University.
PLoS ONE has retracted a meta-analysis on mindfulness after determining that the authors used dubious methodology and failed to adequately report their financial interest in the psychological treatment the article found effective.
The authors, from Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and Harvard University, included Herbert Benson, of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. The institute (which has taken down its link to the paper) offers a raft of services for patients, including a Stress Management and Resiliency Program, a Mind Body Program for Health and Fertility, a Mind Body Program for Cancer, yoga, Tai Chi and initiatives to help foster “resilient youth.”
We often praise authors for doing the right thing by retracting with transparency. Here’s a journal that deserves recognition for its handling of a case of duplicate publication.
Acta Dermatovenerologica Alpina, Pannonica et Adriatica (ADAPA), a European derm publication, has retracted a 2018 article in smack-down fashion, calling out a co-author for deceit. The paper was a case study titled “Inflamed bilateral linear atrophoderma of Moulin in an adult woman: a case report.” According to ADAPA, a reader noticed that a virtually identical article — with the same title — had appeared in a Turkish dermatology publication in late 2017.
As William Faulkner wrote in Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Farzad Kiani learned that lesson the hard way.
Kiani, of Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, was the “author” of a 2018 review article in Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing titled “A survey on management frameworks and open challenges in IoT.” According to the abstract: Continue reading Caught stealing a manuscript, author blames a dead colleague
A University of Cambridge researcher — Steve Jackson — and a former researcher at the University of Bristol — Abderrahmane Kaidi — have accomplished a two-fer: Retracting a paper in Nature, and one in Science, on the same day.
Maybe you’re a researcher who likes keeping up with developments in scientific integrity. Maybe you’re a reporter who has found a story idea on the blog. Maybe you’re an ethics instructor who uses the site to find case studies. Or a publisher who uses our blog to screen authors who submit manuscripts — we know at least two who do.
The stars did not align for a 2016 paper ancient astronomy in the Amazon region after the author discovered errors in his work that the journal deemed fatal to the case, although the author has objected to the retraction.
And the author feels as though he was punished for being honest.
On the afternoon of Friday, April 5, Edwards had just learned that her blog, “All Models Are Wrong,” had disappeared from the PLOS Blogs Network, where it was hosted. No warning. No communication from PLOS.