Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: The scale of misconduct in China; toxic peer reviews; license to publish?; an editorial revolt

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The week at Retraction Watch featured a researcher at Northwestern who’s up to five retractions; a retraction because editors found it implausible that a researcher could perform a clinical trial single-handedly; and seven retractions at once when a researcher blamed a flood for lost data. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Criminology saga leads to an expression of concern, and a correction

Earlier this year, Justin Pickett, a criminologist at the University of Albany at the State University of New York, asked journals to look into potentially problematic data in five papers — including one on which he had been a co-author.

As we reported in July, Pickett’s request came after he’d received an anonymous email pointing out issues with the data — concerns ranging from “Anomalies in standard errors, coefficients, and p-values” to “Unlikely survey design and data structure.”

At the time, one of the five articles had already received a correction for a “coding error” that changed the results. Pickett requested that the journal retract the paper entirely, but was rebuffed.

Now, two other journals have taken action on the articles on the list.

Northwestern researcher has four more papers retracted, making five

A pathologist in Chicago has lost five papers for image manipulation and other problems.

The first retraction for Yashpal Kanwar, of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, appeared in 2013, for a review article published earlier that year in the American Journal of Physiology Renal Physiology. According to the notice:

“Questioned as implausible:” Journal retracts paper because a researcher claimed to perform a large clinical trial single-handedly

Is it possible for just one researcher to perform a clinical trial of more than 200 participants?

According to the editorial board of the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, an Elsevier title, the answer would seem to be no. The journal has decided to retract a 2016 paper in which the author claimed to have conducted such a large trial on their own.

Here’s the notice for “Calcium versus oral contraceptive pills containing drospirenone for the treatment of mild to moderate premenstrual syndrome: A double blind randomized placebo controlled trial:”

“A flooding accident:” Engineer has seven papers retracted at once

A chemical engineer in China who claims his supporting data were wiped out in a flood has notched his ninth retraction, seven from a single journal, for suspicious images and related issues.

The work of Dong Ge Tong, of Chengdu University of Technology, had come under scrutiny in PubPeer, and several of his articles received expressions of concern before ultimately falling to retraction.

Last week, the Journal of Materials Chemistry A pulled seven papers on which Tong was an author. Here’s the notice for one of those articles, “Hollow amorphous NaFePO4 nanospheres as a high-capacity and high-rate cathode for sodium-ion batteries,” first published in 2015:

Weekend reads: PhD sues alma mater for alleged retaliation; an unexpected rejection; saying no to peer review requests

The week at Retraction Watch featured a former postdoc who faked nearly 60 experiments; an apology and retraction from a cancer researcher; and three retractions from UCLA. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Forensics Friday: What’s wrong with this image?

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 fifteenth in a series, Forensics Friday.

Take a look at the image below, and then take our poll. (We recommend using the Chrome browser.) After that, click on the link below to find out the right answer.

UCLA group has three papers retracted

The Journal of Biological Chemistry has retracted three papers by a group from the University of California, Los Angeles, citing problems with the figures.

Two of the papers, published in 2002, 2004 and 2009, have the same last author, Mark H. Doolittle, who is the first author of the most recent article. Doolittle, who appears to be a highly talented woodworker, has left UCLA and did not respond to a request for comment.

The retraction notice for the 2002 paper, “Maturation of lipoprotein lipase in the endoplasmic reticulum: Concurrent formation of functional dimers and inactive aggregates,” states:

“I sincerely apologise:” UK cancer researcher calls for retraction of his work years after it’s flagged on PubPeer

A cancer researcher in England says he will be retracting a 2011 paper after acknowledging “unacceptable” manipulation of some of the figures in the article.

Richard Hill, of the University of Portsmouth, this week agreed to retract the article, “DNA-PKcs binding to p53 on the p21WAF1/CIP1 promoter blocks transcription resulting in cell death,” which appeared in the journal Oncotarget.

The paper, which Hill wrote while he was at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, had drawn scrutiny on PubPeer four years ago, with one poster noting “many indications of blot image manipulation” in the figures. Additional comments appeared earlier this month.

In a comment on PubPeer posted this week, Hill wrote:

Cancer researcher up to five retractions

A researcher in India is up to five retractions, by our count, for problematic data and image issues.

The latest retractions involve articles published in 2008 and 2013 in the journal Life Sciences. The last author on the papers is Yogeshwer Shukla, of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, about whom we have previously written.

The first paper, “Resveratrol induces apoptosis involving mitochondrial pathways in mouse skin tumorigenesis,” is rife with image problems:

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