The first author of a now-retracted paper in Science about the effects of the deadly 2016 Kumamoto earthquake in Japan has been suspended from his university position for one year.
Aiming Lin, of the Department of Geophysics at Kyoto University, was sanctioned by the institution for misconduct stemming from his misuse of data and plagiarism in the 2016 paper:
Continue reading Kyoto University suspends first author of retracted Kumamoto quake paper
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
The week at Retraction Watch featured the story of how “pure, utter nonsense” appeared in a peer-reviewed journal; a cock and bull story; and an expression of concern for a paper about leeches. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: A sleuth whose work has led to hundreds of retractions and corrections; an “unethical, risky and misleading” eye study; genetics’ high retraction rate
Ever wanted to hone your skills as a scientific sleuth? Now’s your chance.
Thanks to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), which is committed to educating authors on best practices in publishing, figure preparation, and reproducibility, we’re presenting the tenth in a series, Forensics Friday.
Take a look at the image below, and then take our poll. After that, click on the link below to find out the right answer.
Continue reading Forensics Friday: Would you flag this paper if it were under review?
The ancients had a thing for hybrids (think animals, not cars): half goat-half humans, horses with human torsos, winged horses and lions, you get the picture. But a chicken-cow mix wasn’t on that list … until now.
A group of researchers in Brazil has lost a paper in a veterinary journal for trying to reuse data from a poultry study in their paper on herpesvirus infections in cattle.
The article, “Bovine Herpesvirus 5 promotes mitochondrial dysfunction in cultured bovine monocyte-derived macrophages and not affect virus replication,” appeared in February in the journal Veterinary Microbiology.
According to the retraction notice:
Continue reading Cock and bull story leads to retraction of bovine herpesvirus paper
A recent article that offered a stark warning about the risks to children of fluoride in the nation’s water has been tagged with an expression of concern after the publication of a new paper which undermines the reliability of the original data.
The article, “Dental fluorosis trends in US oral health surveys: 1986 to 2012,” appeared in March in JDR Clinical & Translational Research, a dental journal. The first author on the paper is Christopher Neurath, of the American Environmental Health Studies Project, which advocates against fluoridation of water.
The article, which used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for the years 2011 and 2012, reported “large increases in severity and prevalence” of fluorosis over that period — continuing a trend dating back to the mid-1980s.
According to the researchers:
Continue reading ‘Not biologically plausible’: questions about survey data earn fluorosis paper a flag
Sometimes, a paper comes along that is so revolutionary, it defies description. So rather than try to do justice to a recent paper in Parasitology Research, we’ll reproduce a few paragraphs here:
Continue reading Gravitational fields, silkworm excrement, and “putor” programs: How did this “pure, utter nonsense” get into in a peer-reviewed journal?
An article claiming to uproot the evolutionary tree of leeches has received an expression of concern after a reader notified the journal about potential problems with the data.
The article, “Phylogenomic analysis of a putative missing link sparks reinterpretation of leech evolution,” appeared online in Genome Biology and Evolution, an Oxford University Press title, on June 19 of this year. According to the authors — an international team that includes researchers at the National Museum of Natural History, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Florida State University and University of Gothenburg in Sweden — their results:
Continue reading Leech paper nets expression of concernBefore we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
The week at Retraction Watch featured an exclusive about a Russian company that claims to have brokered more than 10,000 authorships; a cancer researcher who lost a libel suit against the New York Times; and a criminologist who wrote a 27-page article about why he wants his own paper retracted. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: A vaping study gets muddied; the “F-word” in science; prof quits following allegations of cocaine bacchanals
Carlo Croce, a prolific cancer researcher at The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus who was the subject of a 2017 front page story in The New York Times about allegations of misconduct against him, has lost a libel suit that he filed against the newspaper.
As first reported by Courthouse News Service earlier this week, the Sixth Circuit upheld a lower court’s November 2018 ruling tossing most of Croce’s claims. In the ruling, U.S. Circuit Judge Karen Moore writes:
Continue reading OSU cancer researcher Carlo Croce loses appeal of New York Times libel suitEver wanted to hone your skills as a scientific sleuth? Now’s your chance.
Thanks to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), which is committed to educating authors on best practices in publishing, figure preparation, and reproducibility, we’re presenting the ninth in a series, Forensics Friday.
Take a look at the image below, and then take our poll. After that, click on the link below to find out the right answer.
Continue reading Forensics Friday: Can you find clues that indicate these two blots have been spliced?.png){kind=link}
