Plagiarism prompts retraction of 25-year-old article by prominent priest

Fr. Thomas Rosica

Retraction Watch readers may have heard about Fr. Thomas Rosica, a priest who recently apologized for plagiarism and resigned from the board of a college. The case, which involved Rosica’s speeches and popular columns, prompted at least two observers to take a look at his scholarly work.

One of those observers was Michael Dougherty, who has a well-earned reputation as the plagiarism police squad in certain fields and recently published Correcting the Scholarly Record for Research Integrity: In the Aftermath of Plagiarism. Dougherty wrote a letter to the journal in question, Worship, on February 20th.

In the letter, which we have posted here, Dougherty writes: Continue reading Plagiarism prompts retraction of 25-year-old article by prominent priest

Weekend reads: The fake sex doctor and his bizarre research; prof alleged to have stolen student’s work; worst scientific scandal of all time?

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a highly cited paper on the effects of discrimination on gay lives; a look at the possibility of scientific error checkers; and a study of deficiencies in institutional misconduct investigations. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: The fake sex doctor and his bizarre research; prof alleged to have stolen student’s work; worst scientific scandal of all time?

Retraction Watch readers, we need your help to be able to continue our work

Dear Retraction Watch readers:

Maybe you’re a researcher who likes keeping up with developments in scientific integrity. Maybe you’re a reporter who has found a story idea on the blog. Maybe you’re an ethics instructor who uses the site to find case studies. Or a publisher who uses our blog to screen authors who submit manuscripts — we know at least two who do.

Whether you fall into one of those categories or another, we need your help. Continue reading Retraction Watch readers, we need your help to be able to continue our work

Author, author? Dispute over authorship leads to two retraction notices, and confusion

Testosterone

An endocrinology journal has pulled a 2017 paper by a group from Russia and Romania because, well, maybe it’s just better if you read for yourself.

The article, “Testosterone promotes anxiolytic-like behavior in gonadectomized male rats via blockade of the 5-HT1A receptors,” appeared in General and Comparative Endocrinology, an Elsevier publication.

The paper in fact has two retraction notices. One, which is rather less informative than the second, reads: Continue reading Author, author? Dispute over authorship leads to two retraction notices, and confusion

Will scientific error checkers become as ubiquitous as spell-checkers?

Jonathan Wren

How common are calculation errors in the scientific literature? And can they be caught by an algorithm?  James Heathers and Nick Brown came up with two methods — GRIM and SPRITE — to find such mistakes. And a 2017 study of which we just became aware offers another approach.

Jonathan Wren and Constantin Georgescu of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation used an algorithmic approach to mine abstracts on MEDLINE for statistical ratios (e.g., hazard or odds ratios), as well as their associated confidence intervals and p-values. They analyzed whether these calculations were compatible with each other. (Wren’s PhD advisor, Skip Garner, is also known for creating such algorithms, to spot duplications.)

After analyzing almost half a million such figures, the authors found  that up to 7.5% were discrepant and likely represented calculation errors. When they examined p-values, they found that 1.44% of the total would have altered the study’s conclusion (i.e., changed significance) if they had been performed correctly.  

We asked Wren — who says he thinks automatic scientific error-checkers will one day be as common as automatic spell-checkers are now — to answer a few questions about his paper’s approach. This Q&A has been slightly edited for clarity.

Retraction Watch (RW): What prompted you to perform your study? Continue reading Will scientific error checkers become as ubiquitous as spell-checkers?

Study claiming hate cuts 12 years off gay lives retracted

Low Library, Columbia University

After years of back and forth, a highly cited paper that appeared to show that gay people who live in areas where people were highly prejudiced against them had a significantly shorter life expectancy has been retracted.

The paper, “Structural stigma and all-cause mortality in sexual minority populations,”  was published in 2014 by Mark Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University and colleagues. As we reported last year, Mark Regnerus, of the University of Texas at Austin, published a paper describing his failed attempts to replicate the study in 2016: Continue reading Study claiming hate cuts 12 years off gay lives retracted

New study finds “important deficiencies” in university reports of misconduct

via NASA

Retraction Watch readers may recall the name Yoshihiro Sato. The late researcher’s retraction total — now at 51 — gives him the number four spot on our leaderboard. He’s there because of the work of four researchers, Andrew Grey, Mark Bolland, and Greg Gamble, all of the University of Auckland, and Alison Avenell, of the University of Aberdeen, who have spent years analyzing Sato’s papers and found a staggering number of issues.

Those issues included fabricated data, falsified data, plagiarism, and implausible productivity, among others. In 2017, Grey and colleagues contacted four institutions where Sato or his co-authors had worked, and all four started investigations. In a new paper in Research Integrity and Peer Review, they describe some of what happened next:

Continue reading New study finds “important deficiencies” in university reports of misconduct

Weekend reads: Retractions at Nature and NEJM; editor resigns after paper with “racist characterizations;” CRISPR babies ethics paper retracted

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured a new record for most retractions by a journal; the story of what was missing from a retraction; and authors who blamed language barriers for why they forged their co-authors’ emails. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Retractions at Nature and NEJM; editor resigns after paper with “racist characterizations;” CRISPR babies ethics paper retracted

Journal to retract article from 2000 that plagiarized one from 1984

Image by Nick Youngson via Image Creator CC BY-SA 3.0

When it comes to plagiarism, there is apparently no statute of limitations.

That’s one lesson one might take from this tale of two papers, one published in 1984 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG), and the other published in 2000 in the Medical Journal of The Islamic Republic of Iran (MJIRI). Both are titled “The use of breast stimulation to prevent postdate pregnancy.”

Here’s the abstract of the AJOG article, written by two researchers at the Letterman Army Medical Center in San Francisco, California: Continue reading Journal to retract article from 2000 that plagiarized one from 1984

Why journal editors should dig deeper when authors ask for a retraction

Imagine you’re a journal editor. A group of authors sends you a request to retract one of their papers, saying that “during figure assembly certain images were inappropriately processed.”

What do you do next? Do you ask some tough questions about just what “inappropriately processed” means? Do you check your files for whether the author’s institution had told you about an investigation into the work? Do you Google the author’s names? Do you…search Retraction Watch?

It seems unlikely that any of those things happened in the case of a recent retraction from Nature Communications, or, if they did, they don’t seem to have informed the notice. We don’t know for sure, because, as is typical, the journal isn’t saying much. But here’s what we do know. Continue reading Why journal editors should dig deeper when authors ask for a retraction