A researcher who is now up to six retractions has left his faculty position at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science following a finding of research misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned.
Gulam Waris, who studies hepatitis, has reused images across multiple papers, according to a retraction notice published this week in the Journal of General Virology:
Continue reading Hepatitis expert out at Chicago university following misconduct findingThe leader of an international team of genetics researchers is seething after a journal responded to critical tweets about their paper by issuing an expression of concern.
The article, “Exome sequencing in multiple sclerosis families identifies 12 candidate genes and nominates biological pathways for the genesis of disease,” was published in PLOS Genetics in early June 2019 by a group led by Carles Vilariño-Güell, of the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Less than a week after publication, according to Vilariño-Güell, the journal notified him that:
Continue reading ‘Science by tweet’ prompts expression of concern, irking authors
A group of arthritis researchers in China have lost a 2019 paper which was effectively an English-language reprint of an earlier article in a Chinese journal. Two of the authors blamed a “misunderstanding of the academic rules” on the part of their colleagues for the duplication.
The article, “The clinical significance of serum sCD25 as a sensitive disease activity marker for rheumatoid arthritis,” appeared in the Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology. But, as the retraction notice explains, the work wasn’t original:
Continue reading ‘Misunderstanding of the academic rules’ leads to retraction of arthritis paper
As some Retraction Watch readers have known, we’ve had off-and-on technological issues with the site. At least in some cases, those problems seem to have been due to DDOS attacks. We’ve been taking steps to ensure the site’s reliability, and we’re taking another one.
Since our inception in 2010, we’ve offered a way to receive an email alert about every new post as it is published. We know that for some readers, such alerts are the preferred way to learn of new posts. However, the various ways to do that all create vulnerabilities on the site, which in turn offer bots ways to compromise us.
As a result, we’re phasing out our email per post subscription, the one that you may have signed up for using the “follow” button that appears on the bottom of your screen. At the end of October, we will no longer offer it.
Continue reading Reminder: We’re phasing out one of our email alerts. Here’s how to keep up with Retraction Watch.
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:
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: A costly code glitch; sparks fly over a heart trial; cancer researcher faced five investigations
Authors are calling “no traveling” on Liver Research for changing their affiliation without permission.
Editors at the publication changed the affiliation of a group of researchers from several institutions in Taiwan– including the Taipei Veterans General Hospital and the National Yang-Ming University School of Medicine, also in Taipei — to mainland China.
The notice for the article, “Do different bariatric surgery procedures impact hepassocin plasma levels in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus?,” reads:
Continue reading A journal has its version of an NBA moment
Nicolas Guéguen has a distinction, albeit even if it’s one he probably wishes he didn’t have: The retraction of his paper on whether high heels make women more attractive was the 20,000th retraction in our database.
That’s right: Earlier this month, the Retraction Watch database — retractionwatchdatabase.org — logged its 20,000th retraction. As our readers may recall, we first announced plans for the database in late 2014 thanks to a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and officially launched it a year ago with a feature package in Science.
At some 1,400 retractions per year, we were bound to reach this milestone at some point. But it’s worth noting that there were fewer than 40 retractions in 2000, meaning that the pace has accelerated, in turn meaning more work for our own indefatigable researcher, Alison Abritis, who has made sure — with help at the start by dozens of librarians, grad students and others — that we could keep up.
Continue reading Our database just reached a big milestone: 20,000 retractions. Will you help us with the next 20,000?
A group of physicists in Morocco have lost a 2018 paper over plagiarism and other concerns.
The article, “A 2D fluid motion model of the estuarine water circulation: Physical analysis of the salinity stratification in the Sebou estuary,” appeared in European Physics Journal Plus. The first author, Soufiane Haddout, is listed as being at Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra.
According to the notice:
Continue reading Pass the salt…off as your own? Plagiarism, meet salinity.
Harvard has investigated work from the lab of a cancer researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center that has been under scrutiny on PubPeer for more than five years.
Questions about the output of the lab, run by James W. Mier, began appearing on PubPeer in 2014, with comments about images that looked manipulated. The pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis sent Gretchen Brodnicki, Harvard Medical School’s dean for faculty and research integrity, an email about those comments on Sept. 27, 2014, and on July 24 of this year, Brodnicki asked Francis to resend that email.
Also that month, the journal Clinical Cancer Research issued an expression of concern for a 2006 paper by Mier and colleagues, which stated:
Continue reading Cancer lab at Harvard subject of inquiry
Retraction Watch readers who have been following our coverage of retractions by Ali Nazari may have noticed that an anonymous whistleblower was the person who flagged the issues for journals and publishers. That whistleblower uses the pseudonym Artemisia Stricta, and we’re pleased to present a guest post written by him or her.
Something is seriously out of place with the roughly 200 publications by Ali Nazari, a scientist at Swinburne University who studies structural materials. Some of these problems have been known by journals and publishers for years — some since 2012 — yet their response has been mixed. Some have retracted papers. Some have decided not to, so far. And others have been mum.
Continue reading A researcher with 30 retractions and counting: The whistleblower speaks
