It was déjà vu last month when a university in Belgium stripped Egyptian physician Hatem Abu Hashim of his doctorate after he was found to have fabricated data in his thesis. Just weeks earlier, another Egyptian doctor, Ahmed Badawy, lost the PhD degree he had earned at a Dutch university in 2008. Abu Hashim and … Continue reading Ob-gyn loses PhD after committee finds he made up research
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to more than 300. There are nearly 39,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — … Continue reading Weekend reads: A whistleblower speaks; an ecologist’s suspension is questioned; ‘massive plagiarism’ allegations
A university investigation in Hong Kong found that a professor used the email account of a former student to conduct all the correspondence needed to edit special issues of two journals, Retraction Watch has learned. The two special issues, which were published last year, are full of articles with the hallmarks of paper mills, said … Continue reading Exclusive: Prof stole former student’s identity to edit two journal special issues
Citing an investigation by Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, two journals last week retracted five articles by Edward Whang, an associate professor of surgery at the school. The journals, Oncogene and Surgery, both refer to problems with images of Western blots that could not be resolved because “no underlying research data” were … Continue reading Harvard surgeon has five papers pulled following internal investigation
Eric Ross was listening to a popular psychiatry podcast one day last spring when “some pretty remarkable” research findings caught his attention. A team of researchers in Egypt had shown that adding a cheap diabetes drug—metformin—to antidepressant therapy nearly doubled the treatment’s efficacy in people with moderate to severe depression. That meant the drug worked … Continue reading ‘I was fired up’: Psychiatrist effort prompts retraction of antidepressant treatment paper
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 289. There are more than 38,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or … Continue reading Weekend reads: Autism researcher up to 24 retractions; former prof sues Penn State; vice chancellor under criminal probe for plagiarism
Two Korean journals last month pulled papers by a prominent cardiologist at Yonsei University, Professor Hui-Nam Pak, with one retraction notice citing “issues related to scientific misconduct.” Commenters on PubPeer had raised several concerns about data integrity, “mixed-up” data and “statistical nonsense” in “eNOS3 Genetic Polymorphism Is Related to Post-Ablation Early Recurrence of Atrial Fibrillation,” … Continue reading Prominent Korean heart doctor earns two retractions in a month
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 286. There are more than 38,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or … Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Breakthroughs’ slowing down?; self-publishing among editors; data tampering in space science
A highly cited economics paper that suggested people raised during recessions were more likely to vote for left-leaning political parties has been retracted, apparently due to a coding error that rendered the results invalid. The retraction marks a rarity among economics papers, which research has shown are infrequently retracted compared to papers on other subjects. … Continue reading Influential paper linking recessions and left-wing voting patterns retracted
There shouldn’t have been many differences between the women recruited for the three clinical trials: All of them gave birth at the same two Cairo hospitals over a period of less than three years, and all of them were treated to prevent or manage postpartum bleeding. Three samples from this pool of patients, Ben Mol … Continue reading Ob-gyn who called criticism ‘racist’ and ‘hate speech’ earns retraction, several expressions of concern