Jatinder Ahluwalia, whose story Retraction Watch has been following since last fall, is no longer working at the University of East London, according to a report in today’s Times Higher Education. Ahluwalia, Retraction Watch readers may recall, came to our attention in the fall after he and his colleagues were forced to retract a paper … Continue reading Jatinder Ahluwalia out at University of East London: report
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) ran two retractions this week. One of those papers was “Properdin homeostasis requires turnover of the alternative complement pathway,” which first appeared online in October of last year. The researchers were looking at the interaction between complement — a sort of primitive immune system — and … Continue reading On second thought: PNAS retracts two papers after results fail replication
The journal Blood has retracted an article after the authors determined that they could not longer trust in the validity of the data. The paper has been cited 22 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. From the retraction notice: Niessen F, Furlan-Freguia C, Fernández JA, Mosnier LO, Castellino FJ, Weiler H, Rosen H, … Continue reading No confidence vote on sepsis paper data leads to Blood retraction
Yesterday, we reported that Peter Zabel, managing director of Germany’s Research Center Borstel, had stepped down amid allegations that he had duplicated one of his German papers in English. It turns out, however, that the reason for his resignation was plagiarism of a 2008 paper in Nature Reviews Immunology by a group at the University … Continue reading Borstel update: Former director’s plagiarized 2009 paper to be retracted
The scientific literature has started to hint at the fallout of a case of potential fraud in Denmark. As Nature reported in January: A high-profile neuroscientist in Denmark has resigned after facing allegations that she committed research misconduct and misspent grant money. Meanwhile, the administration at the university where she worked has been accused of … Continue reading Expressions of Concern arrive in Milena Penkowa case
We have an update to our coverage of the retractions involving papers from a group of researchers in Iran that were published in Computational and Theoretical Chemistry (formerly called the Journal of Molecular Structure: THEOCHEM) Although we have not received a response from the first author of those studies, Siavash Riahi, one author, Mohammad Reza … Continue reading Chemist: “corresponding author should answer” questions regarding retracted papers
Retraction Watch readers may have been following the case of Silvia Bulfone-Paus, whose lab has been forced to retract 12 papers amid allegations of scientific misconduct. As is often true in such cases, the story doesn’t end with those retractions. We’ve just become aware of a fascinating exchange in March and April between Bulfone-Paus’s supporters … Continue reading Bulfone-Paus saga continues: Her supporters and home institution exchange sharp letters
At a time when you can set up a Google alert to find out when your name appears anywhere on the Web — not that we’d know, of course — it puzzles us that some researchers are trying to get away with using others’ names on papers without their knowledge. But they’re not just trying. … Continue reading We wrote what? The problem of forged authorship. Plus, a guest appearance on MedPage Today
The journal Blood has two retractions this month, one of which seems particularly interesting. So let’s deal with the other one first. The paper, “MicroRNAs 15a/16-1 function as tumor suppressor genes in multiple myeloma,” appeared online in October 2010. But according to the retraction notice, the authors have recently discovered that the cell lines used … Continue reading Blood retracts two, including a disputed paper from the Karolinska Institute
The debate — in entrenched medical circles, anyway — over whether it’s safe to give birth at home can be fierce. Just last month, for example, Nature reported that a review of the subject in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology that found home births more dangerous than those in the hospital generated so … Continue reading Feminism & Psychology study of UK birthing classes draws ire, winds up retracted