As a reporter on the police beat many years ago, one of us (Adam) used to hang out with a press officer whose desk at the station had the following sign: “Uma boca fechado não recolhe nenhum pé.” At least, that’s what it would have been had we been in Rio. In Palmer Park, Maryland, … Continue reading Researcher who called plagiarism “the worst type of fraud” retracts paper for…plagiarism
We have a second retraction from a group of neuroscience researchers in Belgium who discovered fatal errors in their work on how the brain sets about the task of reading written language. Spoiler alert: Turns out those errors weren’t errors after all. As we reported back in May, the group, from the University of Leuven, … Continue reading Fraud topples second neuroscience word processing paper
A bumper crop of material about misconduct, peer review, and related issues came to our attention this week, so without further ado:
Another busy week at Retraction Watch, beginning with a story we broke about faked HIV vaccine results that was picked up by the Des Moines Register and other outlets. Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web:
It’s really hard to get papers retracted, police might be best-equipped to handle scientific misconduct investigations, and there’s finally software that will identify likely image manipulation. Those are three highlights from a number of pieces that have appeared in Nature and Nature Medicine in the past few weeks. Not surprisingly, there are common threads, so … Continue reading Should scientific misconduct be handled by the police? It’s fraud week at Nature and Nature Medicine
The University of Queensland has decided to get out in front of a serious research misconduct scandal by issuing a press release about the item even before, well, we could get a hold of the story. The affair involves Bruce Murdoch (all of his links at UQ are defunct), an expert in movement disorders such … Continue reading Aussie university asks for retraction, investigates former neurology researcher for fraud
A researcher at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands has been fired for research fraud, and the university is retracting two papers, the Dutch press is reporting. But don’t ask us who the employee was. That information is conspicuously absent from the medical center’s communications on the subject. Here’s a press release from Leiden, … Continue reading Leiden University fires employee for research fraud, two retractions to follow
The University of São Paulo and Brazil’s National Council of Technological and Scientific Development funding agency (CNPq) have cleared a researcher of fraud following a six-month investigation. The CNPq’s Commission on Integrity in Scientific Activity noted, however, that “there was failure to exercise rigor in the conduct and dissemination of results [in Rui Curi’s work], … Continue reading University, funding agency clear researcher Rui Curi of fraud charges
Earlier this month we wrote about the retraction by Nature of a 19-year-old paper by Karel Bezouska, a former star researcher at Prague’s Charles University whose “dangerous and irresponsible deviations” from acceptable practice went as far as tampering with refrigerated samples to cover his tracks. BMC Biotechnology has retracted another Bezouska paper, this one from … Continue reading Second retraction for Czech fraudster Bezouska, who broke into lab
A fraud investigation at a New York state research institution has led to two retractions of papers looking at genetic links to autism. The 2011 papers, which appeared in Genes, Brain and Behavior, involve work conducted at the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities’ (OPWDD’s) Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, … Continue reading Autism genetics papers retracted after fraud inquiry at NY research agency