Search Results for: nature

Puzzling: Maybe weight loss surgery paper by author who acknowledged fraud is being retracted after all

We’ve been following the case of Edward Shang, a weight loss surgeon who has acknowledged making up most — if not all — of the patients in a now-retracted study in Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases. Last week, we reported that Obesity Surgery, where Shang had published four papers, would not be retracting any of … Continue reading Puzzling: Maybe weight loss surgery paper by author who acknowledged fraud is being retracted after all

A correction for Luk van Parijs and colleagues for a “clerical error”

Luk van Parijs, a former associate professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who was fired in 2005 after confessing to data fabrication and sentenced last year to six months of house arrest, can add another correction to his list of several retractions and errata. Here’s the notice for “Interferon γ is … Continue reading A correction for Luk van Parijs and colleagues for a “clerical error”

JACS temporarily pulls “space dinosaurs” paper for alleged duplication

Duplication has, as we noted on Twitter the other day, been tripping up more and more scientists. And now self-plagiarism has snared a prominent Columbia University chemist in a paper that left many people scratching their heads to begin with. As reported by the Chembark blog and Nature, the Journal of the American Chemical Society … Continue reading JACS temporarily pulls “space dinosaurs” paper for alleged duplication

The HeLa problem: What a retraction says about whether cancer researchers can trust their cell lines

Retraction Watch readers who’ve read Rebecca Skloot’s bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks may remember that decades ago, scientists began realizing that Lacks’s cells, now known as the HeLa cell line and used in labs around the world, were so good at proliferating that they had taken over many other cell lines researchers use … Continue reading The HeLa problem: What a retraction says about whether cancer researchers can trust their cell lines

Whistling the same Tunisia: Serial plagiarists plague the oncology literature

A group of cancer researchers from Tunisia has been seeding the oncology literature with plagiarized articles that steal liberally — both text and data — from the work of others. The group has one retraction, in the journal Obesity — whose splash page has the jaunty, if disconcerting, invite: “Welcome to Obesity!” — and at … Continue reading Whistling the same Tunisia: Serial plagiarists plague the oncology literature

Endocrinologist Shigeaki Kato resigns amidst University of Tokyo misconduct investigation

Shigeaki Kato, an endocrinology researcher at the University of Tokyo who retracted a paper late last month, has resigned amidst an investigation into whether he committed misconduct, Japanese media outlets are reporting. According to the reports, the university has been investigating Shigeaki Kato and his group, affiliated with the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, … Continue reading Endocrinologist Shigeaki Kato resigns amidst University of Tokyo misconduct investigation

Crise de foie: Liver journals retract duplicate biomarker pubs

Two liver journals have retracted articles from a group of Irani researchers who published similar — but not quite identical — versions of the same paper some months apart. A retraction notice in the Journal of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases — which bills itself as the “Official Journal of the Romanian Societies of Gastroenterology” — explains what … Continue reading Crise de foie: Liver journals retract duplicate biomarker pubs

A “retraction in part” for Anil Potti and colleagues, in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics

A partial retraction has joined the ten retractions and five corrections of Anil Potti’s papers, this one of a 2008 paper in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. The move comes 14 months after the retraction of the Nature Medicine paper upon which much of the Molecular Cancer Therapeutics paper was based. Here’s the notice:

Rabbits needn’t worry about cell phones’ effects on their sperm count, say three retractions

If you’re a rabbit and you haven’t figured out where to carry your cell phone, your front pocket is just fine. That’s what you could reasonably infer from the retraction of a paper in the International Journal of Andrology purporting to show that mobile phones affected rabbits’ sperm counts. The notice, signed by the journal’s … Continue reading Rabbits needn’t worry about cell phones’ effects on their sperm count, say three retractions

Society error leads to published — then retracted — Alzheimer’s abstract from top group

Alzheimer’s & Dementia has retracted a meeting abstract the journal published without the OK of the researchers, a top group from Harvard, who submitted it but withdrew the work before the conference. That, as they say, might require some unpacking. Maybe this will make things clearer. Raj Hooli, a graduate student in the lab of … Continue reading Society error leads to published — then retracted — Alzheimer’s abstract from top group