The authors of a 2021 paper on a method of male enhancement have been forced to retract the paper after losing a legal battle over the technology. At the heart (er, groin?) of the matter is a dispute over the ownership of a penile implant. According to court documents, James Elist, a urologist in Beverly … Continue reading Contempt judgment in penile implant spat leads to retraction
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 279. There are more than 37,000 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 … Continue reading Weekend reads: Fringe race science and journals; flags for Stanford president’s papers; rise and fall of peer review
A former research center director and professor emeritus of urology has lost a fourth paper after a joint investigation by the University of California San Francisco and the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center found faked data in several of his articles. The other three retractions for Rajvir Dahiya, who directed the UCSF/VAMC Urology Research … Continue reading Professor emeritus loses fourth paper after UCSF-VA investigation, five years after other retractions
Mere days after tweets went viral pointing out that the purported error bars in one figure of a paper were really just the capital letter T, the publisher has marked it with an expression of concern. [12/22/22: The paper has now been retracted; see an update on this post.] And that’s not all that’s strange about … Continue reading A paper used capital T’s instead of error bars. But wait, there’s more!
Dear Retraction Watch reader: Sometime this week or early next week, we will publish our 6,000th post. That means we’ve averaged nearly 500 per year since we launched a bit more than 12 years ago. Wow. And yet that’s not nearly all we do here at Retraction Watch. We — and by that I mean … Continue reading This Giving Tuesday, please consider supporting Retraction Watch
A pioneer in the field of exosome biology engaged in research misconduct by reusing images he had falsely relabeled in two published papers and several grant applications, according to a U.S. government research watchdog. The case goes back several years, as the scientist’s former institution seems to have been investigating his work for nearly a … Continue reading Biotech exec stole an image and reused others while in academia, US federal watchdog says
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. This week, it’s a special double edition of Weekend Reads, thanks to a site outage that meant we couldn’t post last Saturday. The last two weeks at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 267. … Continue reading Weekend reads, double edition: Science’s ‘nasty Photoshopping problem’; Dr. Oz’s publication ban; image manipulation detection software
Nick Wise had always been “slightly interested” in research integrity and fraud, just from working in science. Then, last July, from following image sleuth Elisabeth Bik on Twitter, he learned about the work of Guillaume Cabanac, Cyril Labbé, and Alexander Magazinov identifying “tortured phrases” in published papers. Such phrases – such as “bosom peril,” meaning … Continue reading Meet a sleuth whose work has resulted in more than 850 retractions
Another article co-authored by Australian journalist Maryanne Demasi will be marked with an expression of concern for image duplication, Retraction Watch has learned. Demasi’s reporting has cast doubt on statins and raised the possibility of a link between wi-fi and brain tumors – controversial claims she and co-authors have previously told us they believe made … Continue reading Paper co-authored by Australian journalist Maryanne Demasi to be marked with expression of concern
Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published a letter to the editor and a response reflecting a quite modest correction. Essentially, the three letters “miR” will be removed from throughout a manuscript as the data, to date, do not support there being a human novel microRNA blood-based biomarker for myocarditis, as the … Continue reading Catch and kill: What it’s like to try to get a NEJM paper corrected