Last week, we started a new series at Retraction Watch, “Retractions we haven’t had a chance to cover.” The first edition had sort of an environmental theme. This one has a duplication and self-plagiarism theme. But it’s not always the authors’ fault, as you’ll learn.
The president of the Kyoto Institute of Technology (KIT) has corrected two of his papers and is set to correct another amid allegations of duplication – sometimes inelegantly referred to as “self-plagiarism” – despite a university committee clearing him of misconduct. Employees at the university have accused president Masahiro Yoshimoto of duplication between 11 sets … Continue reading University president faces allegations of duplication, institution says no misconduct
An anesthesiologist who had his funding revoked for fabricating data has earned a fourth retraction for publishing the same data in two Springer Nature journals. Wen-fei Tan, an anesthesiologist at The First Hospital of China Medical University in Shenyang, is the first author of the recently retracted paper “Changes in the first postoperative night bispectral … Continue reading University cuts anesthesiology researcher’s funding amid four retractions
A biochemistry study has been retracted nearly a year after a whistleblower found significant overlap between the article and one published in a different journal by the same research group. The study, “Berberine ameliorates renal injury in diabetic C57BL/6 mice: Involvement of suppression of SphK–S1P signaling pathway,” appeared in the journal Archives of Biochemistry and … Continue reading “Flagrant and frankly, inexcusable” data duplication leads to retraction
A researcher who used similar, related, or identical research to publish over 30 studies in various academic journals will have four more of those papers retracted, bringing his total to ten retractions, Retraction Watch has learned. Hossein Mohammadhosseini was formerly listed as a researcher at the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Technology, … Continue reading ‘Stop playing with my life,’ researcher about to be up to 10 retractions asks sleuth
A kidney research group led by a medical school dean has accumulated five retractions. All five came within the last year, after commenters on PubPeer pointed out image similarities. Joseph I. Shapiro, vice president and dean of the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, is an author on … Continue reading Medical school dean up to five retractions
The journal Cancer Prevention Research has retracted nine papers at once from a group of cancer researchers led by Andrew Dannenberg, formerly of Weill Cornell Medicine. The bundle of retractions brings Dannenberg’s total to 20, according to our database, nearly doubling the 11 he had previously. Kotha Subbaramaiah, also formerly of Weill Cornell Medicine, is … Continue reading Former Weill Cornell cancer researcher up to 20 retractions; investigation’s findings are with Feds
“The retraction that took years” is a common enough refrain on Retraction Watch that it might as be its own genre. Here’s one that didn’t. A journal wasted no time pouncing on a suspect paper, retracting the 2016 article just three days after a commenter flagged concerns about the images in the work on PubPeer. … Continue reading Often, retractions take years. This one took three days.
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Paper used to support claims that ivermectin reduces COVID-19 hospitalizations is withdrawn by preprint server University president in Japan self-plagiarized and will forfeit some pay French ocean institute goes public about authors who forged … Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Death threats, ghost researchers and sock puppets’; high levels of duplication in Russian science; DNA barcoding fraud?
In September 2018, I wrote to the managing editor of FEBS Letters with my concerns about the extensive textual overlap between a 2011 article by Sonia A. Melo and Manel Esteller and other articles, including some that were not cited, such as a 2009 article in the Annual Review of Pathology by Yong Sun Lee … Continue reading ‘[T]he authors plagiarised a large amount of text, but…retractions should not be used as a tool to punish authors’