There have been a number of developments in the unraveling of two Nature studies out of the RIKEN Institute in Japan and Harvard purporting to show an easy way to create stem cells. There was an interim report of RIKEN’s investigation last Friday, and more details emerged this week. And today, the Japan Times reported that last week, … Continue reading Authors of controversial STAP stem cell study author correct 2011 paper
It’s been a busy month for retractions at the Pan African Medical Journal (PAMJ) — dedicated to “Better health through knowledge sharing and information dissemination.” The journal has retracted a 2013 article by a group from Bangalore, India, for plagiarism. And unlike the authors, the editors didn’t mince words. The paper, “Detection of ESBL among … Continue reading “Protracted and unresolved authors dispute” and “striking similarities” lead to two retractions
We have a curious case for the “avoiding the p word” files from the Journal of East Asia & International Law. The paper in question, “Border Enforcement of Plant Variety Rights: A Comparison between Japan and Taiwan,” was written by Shun-liang Hsu and appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of the journal. Here are the … Continue reading Heads up: “Borrowing” your student’s work will earn you a partial retraction — and a five-year publishing ban
Alejandra Bravo and Mario Soberon, a wife-husband research team at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) who received sanctions — later lifted — for manipulating images in a number of papers have corrected another article. The paper, “The mitogen-activated protein kinase p38 is involved in insect defense against Cry toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis,” appeared … Continue reading Another correction appears for husband-wife team found to have manipulated images
A complicated case involving two microbiology researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) appears to have come to some conclusion. In November of last year, we reported that
Holy Chutzpah, Batman! A team of researchers in India has retracted their 2012 paper in PLoS One on botulinum toxin for plagiarism — while blaming the journal for failing to use its “soft wares” to catch the plagiarism. The article, “Small-Molecule Quinolinol Inhibitor Identified Provides Protection against BoNT/A in Mice,” was written by a group … Continue reading Chutzpah: Authors blame PLOS ONE for failing to find plagiarism in paper on Botulinum toxin
The Journal of Lower Genital Tract Disease is retracting a paper it published online in April by a group of Egyptian researchers in the wake of a dispute they couldn’t resolve. The article, “The Patterns and Criteria of Vaginal Douching and the Risk of Preterm Labor Among Upper Egypt Women,” came from a team at … Continue reading Study on douches and delivery retracted for authorship issue
An assistant professor of neuroscience at Tufts has withdrawn a paper published last year after one round of corrections wasn’t enough to fix all of the study’s problems. The study, “Sirtuin 2 (SIRT2) enhances 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-induced nigrostriatal damage via deacetylating forkhead box O3a (Foxo3a) and activating Bim protein,” by Gizem Donmez and colleagues, had already … Continue reading Authors withdraw already-corrected JBC paper questioned on PubPeer
What are the chances of successfully duplicating publication in the Journal of Theoretical Probability? Not too high, it seems. A pair of South Korean authors have gotten a five-year ban from the journal for double-publishing a paper in the math literature. The article, “Convergence of Weighted Sums for Arrays of Negatively Dependent Random Variables and … Continue reading Double submission leads to retraction of probability paper — and a publishing ban
Regrets were had, mistakes were made, but gosh-darn-it, they’re gonna resubmit that retracted paper in the future. Such is the message from a retraction of “Tsg101 Interacts with Herpes Simplex Virus 1 VP1/2 and Is a Substrate of VP1/2 Ubiquitin-Specific Protease Domain Activity,” from Italian virologists who admitted to copying and pasting their way into the … Continue reading Authors hit for image manipulation cycle, but don’t worry, they’ll resubmit retracted paper