The former president of Tohoku University in Japan has just had a tenth paper retracted, because it duplicated one of his earlier works.
One of the most recent retractions by materials scientist Akihisa Inoue, late last month, was of a paper in Materials Transactions that had duplicated a now-retracted paper and was subject to an expression of concern in 2012: Continue reading Former university president up to ten retractions
.JPG)
In what seems like another entry in our occasional “Retraction Watch Mad Libs” series, Elsevier has withdrawn a paper that claimed to link the aluminum in vaccines to behavioral changes in sheep.
The paper, which appeared online in Pharmacological Research in November of last year, was swiftly picked up by antivaccine advocates such as Celeste McGovern, whose article about it was posted on Children’s Health Defense, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s, site.
But it also earned harsh criticism from Skeptical Raptor and Orac, who called it Continue reading Here we go again: Paper linking vaccines to cognitive damage (in sheep) retracted
The Journal of Clinical Investigation has retracted a 2011 paper involving researchers at the National Institutes of Health after the NIH concluded that some of the data were wonky.
But the retraction notice reads like a Congressional roll call, with ayes, nays and even — in something we don’t believe we’ve seen before — an abstention. Continue reading Bartleby the author: Did you know you could abstain from a retraction notice?
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has won a judgment against a publisher and conference organizer that has been widely viewed as predatory.
As reported in brief by Courthouse News Service, U.S. District of Nevada Judge Gloria M. Navarro ordered OMICS International to pay the U.S. government $50,130,810. Among other findings, Navarro writes: Continue reading Court orders publisher OMICS to pay U.S. gov’t $50 million in suit alleging “unfair and deceptive practices”
Edward J. Fox, a former faculty member at the University of Washington in Seattle, faked data in a manuscript submitted to Nature and in an NIH grant application, according to new findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
Fox, who initially confessed to some of the misconduct when confronted by the university, “neither admits nor denies ORI’s finding of research misconduct related to grant application R01 CA193649-01A1,” the ORI said in an announcement. However, he Continue reading Former University of Washington researcher faked data, say Feds
First it was there. Now it’s gone.
In March 2018, three researchers at Atatürk University in Turkey published“Investigation Of The Critical Factors Affecting E-Government Acceptance: A Systematic Review And A Conceptual Model” at the Innovative Journal of Business and Management, where it was freely available during 2018. It has no DOI, and no citations (that I know of).
Now it is gone; the link is redirected to the journal’s general search engine. A search for the title or authors there yields no hits; neither do the Google references to the article nor resources around it. The March 2018 issue has now an unexplained hole from pages 77–84. The Google Scholar index for this article disappeared in March 2019.
What happened? Continue reading A “clandestine retraction” as a paper disappears from a management journal without a trace
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 $112.5 million settlement at Duke following allegations of misconduct; a bizarre paper featuring ancient astronauts; and the retraction of two papers about homeopathy. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Autism-“male brain” paper retracted; impact factor poison; meet a data detective
JAMA Oncology has retracted a 2018 paper by a group from Sweden and the UK after the researchers discovered critical errors in their analysis that significantly altered the conclusions of the study.
The paper, “Risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma after antireflux surgery in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease in the Nordic countries,” purported to find that Continue reading Scientific integrity “a rare commodity these days:” Cancer journal makes its first retraction
Homeopathy may not cure disease, but it continues to give journal editors fits, particularly at the hands of a group in Russia that has managed to publish a slew of papers on the spurious practice.
The architect of the effort appears to be one Oleg Epstein, whose company, OOO NPF Materia Medica Holding, makes homeopathic products.
Last May, PLOS ONE retracted a paper by Epstein et al titled “Novel approach to activity evaluation for release-active forms of anti-interferon-gamma antibodies based on enzyme-linked immunoassay.”
The lengthy retraction statement includes the following passages: Continue reading Russian homeopaths strike again (twice) in virology journal — and a skeptic strikes right back
Elsevier is looking into how one of its journals published a paper which makes bizarre claims about the knowledge of the ancients and contains an acronym with unmistakable and horrific historical significance.
The article, “Puratana Aakasha-Yantrika Nirmana Sadhanavasthu (Ancient Aero-mechanical manufacturing materials),” appeared in a 2017 issue of Materials Today Proceedings and was written by a group of aeronautical engineers in India.
The abstract states: Continue reading Elsevier looking into how “unorthodox” paper featuring ancient astronauts was published