Should residents and fellows be encouraged to publish systematic reviews and meta-analyses?

The ‘publish or perish’ culture is no longer reserved for academic faculty and post-doctoral fellows. The paradigm has spilled over (or bled into) medical training,  aided by the digital revolution. The widespread availability of online library catalogs and referencing software has enabled the mass production of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.  In short, medical research no … Continue reading Should residents and fellows be encouraged to publish systematic reviews and meta-analyses?

‘A clusterf**K’: Authors plagiarize material from NIH and elsewhere, make legal threats — then see their paper retracted

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

‘Why did this take over five years?’ Reflecting on two new retractions

In September 2015, after a lengthy investigation, the Committee on Scientific Integrity (CSI) of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) advised the LUMC Board of Directors to ask for retraction of two publications because of major data manipulation in images. The case involved Maria Fousteri, who by then had left LUMC. In the Netherlands it … Continue reading ‘Why did this take over five years?’ Reflecting on two new retractions

IEEE retracts plagiarized paper after Retraction Watch inquiries

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers  (IEEE) has retracted a paper it published in 2006 that was identical to another paper it published that same year. We learned of the two identical papers — both titled “Delay-dependent robust stability of uncertain discrete singular time-delay systems,” one published in the Proceedings of the 2006 American … Continue reading IEEE retracts plagiarized paper after Retraction Watch inquiries

Lancet retracts 10-year-old case report

The Lancet has retracted a decade-old case report by a group from Japan after concluding that the authors misrepresented the originality of the work.  The paper was a case report, titled “Hidden Harm,” by a team at Nihon University School of Medicine in Tokyo. The authors described a 46-year-old woman with a history of self-harming … Continue reading Lancet retracts 10-year-old case report

Elsevier corrects a retraction notice following questions from Retraction Watch

An Elsevier journal has corrected a retraction notice after we asked questions about what exactly it was saying — but not before the journal’s editor tried to defend what turned out to be a mistaken passage. The article, “Measurement of performance parameters and improvement in optimized solution of WEDM on a novel titanium hybrid composite,” … Continue reading Elsevier corrects a retraction notice following questions from Retraction Watch

Publisher retracting more than 30 articles from paper mills

The publisher SAGE is in the process of retracting more than 30 papers across three of its journals after determining that they were churned out by paper mills — prompting the company to take a closer look at its policies and procedures.  The suspect papers were initially flagged by Elisabeth Bik and others as part … Continue reading Publisher retracting more than 30 articles from paper mills

Biotech’s data supporting Alzheimer’s trials under scrutiny

A law firm known for filing shareholder suits says that data supporting a drug company’s plan for trials of its experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s disease show evidence of manipulation. Stock in the company, Cassava Biosciences, tumbled yesterday after the FDA posted material from the firm, Labaton Sucharow, and a top research integrity expert tells Retraction … Continue reading Biotech’s data supporting Alzheimer’s trials under scrutiny

Second time’s the charm: The author who requested a retraction twice

As Jason Isbell sings, doing the right thing is the hardest thing to do. But sometimes it’s even harder than it needs to be. Ask Cory Xian.  When Xian, a bone researcher at the University of South Australia, in Adelaide, and his colleagues found an error in their 2018 paper in the Journal of Bone … Continue reading Second time’s the charm: The author who requested a retraction twice

Paper from company claiming phototherapy could treat COVID-19 is retracted

A study that touted phototherapy as a way to combat the COVID-19 pandemic has been retracted after Elisabeth Bik noted a litany of concerns about the article, from duplications in the figures to the authors’ failure to disclose conflicts of interest.  The article, “Methylene blue photochemical treatment as a reliable SARS-CoV-2 plasma virus inactivation method … Continue reading Paper from company claiming phototherapy could treat COVID-19 is retracted