On Tuesday, we reported on the case of a retraction notice in Molecular Biology and Evolution, an Oxford University Press (OUP) journal, that had three problems:
A completely unhelpful retraction notice appears in the September issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution for “Investigating the Role of Natural Selection on Coding Sequence Evolution in Salmonids Through NGS Data Mining,” a paper first published in March. Here’s the entire notice for the paper — which has been removed completely from the journal’s site, … Continue reading Author of retracted Molecular Biology and Evolution paper explains opaque notice that’ll still cost you $32
Citing eLife’s unusual practice of publishing articles without accepting or rejecting them, Clarivate says it is re-evaluating the inclusion of the open-access biology journal in Web of Science, its influential database of abstracts and citations. In contrast to the other journals recently placed on hold from indexing, including Elsevier’s Science of the Total Environment, Clarivate … Continue reading eLife latest in string of major journals put on hold from Web of Science
Zulfiqar Habib, dean of computer science at COMSATS University Islamabad, in Pakistan, was appalled when he discovered part of a former PhD student’s dissertation had been published in a scientific journal. After all, the former student, Kurshid Asghar, had been dead for more than a year by the time the manuscript was submitted to Security … Continue reading Wiley reopens plagiarism case about dead researcher’s work
Pleading emails requesting papers are regular visitors to one’s inbox. These unsolicited and flattering requests promise rapid publication and tempt authors to part with their work. Even master’s and doctoral students, after graduation, receive sweet-talking requests to publish their dissertations as a book, a book chapter, or as a paper. Predatory journals and publishers are … Continue reading Journals going rogue, authors beware
The news of Zahra Jalilian’s death seemed to change as quickly as it spread. On Dec. 4, 2022, the University of Tehran announced that the nanotechnology graduate student had died following “a tragic self-harm incident.” Political opposition groups quickly countered that darker forces were likely at work, attributing the 31-year-old Ph.D. student’s death to Islamic mercenaries, government functionaries, and other … Continue reading In the Death of an Iranian Scientist, Hints of Unchecked Strife
In July 2017, we notified the Journal of Bone and Mineral Metabolism (JBMM) of concerns about a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in rats which featured, among other problems, extensive duplication of data in a separate publication, large numbers of discrepancies in the methods and results between the publications, and serious concerns about the governance and … Continue reading How many ducks do you need to line up to get a publication retracted?
An Elsevier journal has sat for two years on its decision to retract 10 papers by researchers with known misconduct issues, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch. The Journal of the Neurological Sciences had decided by June 2020 to retract the articles by Yoshihiro Sato and Jun Iwamoto, who are currently in positions four … Continue reading An Elsevier journal said it would retract 10 papers two years ago. It still hasn’t.
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Journal about ‘ambient intelligence’ retracts more than 50 papers at once The “internet may be a challenging venue”: Biomedical engineering group up to four retractions Drug researchers in Russia have four papers subjected to expressions … Continue reading Weekend reads: Female driver stereotypes; ‘stealth research’; AI comes to fake scientific images
Stolen data, “gross” misconduct, a strange game of scientific telephone, and accusations of intimidation – Santa came late to Retraction Watch but he delivered the goods in style. Last May, the journal Cureus published a paper titled “Idiopathic CD4+ Lymphocytopenia Due to Homozygous Loss of the CD4 Start Codon.” The paper caught the notice of Andrea … Continue reading ‘A clusterf**K’: Authors plagiarize material from NIH and elsewhere, make legal threats — then see their paper retracted