Title: Bioethics and Medical Education
What Caught Our Attention: As we’ve said before, you can’t make this stuff up: An article on bioethics had its own ethical issues to deal with. It turns out, the authors had “substantial unreferenced overlap” with another article, that “overlap” including the article’s title. Here’s a side by side comparison of the first page, highlighting the matching text: Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Bioethics article retracted for…ethics violation
When Saidur Rahman learned last month that his 2010 review paper about nanoparticles in refrigeration systems had been retracted, he was concerned—no one at the journal had told him it was going to be pulled.
Rahman, a professor of engineering at Sunway University in Selangor, Malaysia, had recently corrected his 2010 review in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews—specifically, in January, the journal published a two-page correction rewriting the parts of the paper that were “appear close to some materials we had included in some of our other review research.” But Rahman was not anticipating a retraction. Continue reading Oops: Elsevier journal retracts the wrong paper
In 2004, a survey of editors of economic journals found 3 out of 10 had seen at least one case of plagiarism within the past year. More than a decade later, has the problem gotten better? Or worse? Gary Hoover at the University of Oklahoma, who co-authored the 2004 paper, decided to revisit the issue by resurveying editors in economics, along with others working in different fields. What he found — and reported in Social Science Quarterly — was plagiarism is still a problem, which economists want to address.
Retraction Watch: Why did you want to revisit the findings from the 2004 survey of editors in economics 10 years later?
Continue reading Is plagiarism a problem in economics? Survey of editors says … yes
A biology journal has retracted a 2011 paper after the University of California, Los Angeles determined that the data in three figures “cannot be supported.”
In February, the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology retracted the paper, which explores efforts to engineer bacteria to convert plant biomass into biofuel.
Claudia Modlin, assistant director of UCLA’s Office of Research Policy and Compliance, told Retraction Watch that the university informed the journal about the issues last October, after reviewing the work. Continue reading Data in biofuel paper “had either been grossly misinterpreted or fabricated”
Nowadays, there are many ways to access a paper — on the publisher’s website, on MEDLINE, PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and other outlets. So when the publisher retracts a paper, do these outlets consistently mark it as such? And if they don’t, what’s the impact? Researchers Caitlin Bakker and Amy Riegelman at the University of Minnesota surveyed more than one hundred retractions in mental health research to try to get at some answers, and published their findings in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. We spoke to Bakker about the potential harm to patients when clinicians don’t receive consistent notifications about retracted data.
Retraction Watch: You note: “Of the 144 articles studied, only 10 were represented as being retracted across all resources through which they were available. There was no platform that consistently met or failed to meet all of [the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s] guidelines.” Can you say more about these findings, and the challenges they may pose?
Continue reading Want to tell if a paper has been retracted? Good luck
Title: Homocysteine as a predictive factor for hip fracture in elderly women with Parkinson’s disease
What Caught Our Attention: In a letter to the editor, researchers led by Mark Bolland recently outlined the many reasons why a study by Yoshihiro Sato and colleagues in The American Journal of Medicine was “unreliable,” including evidence that the patient numbers were not achievable as described, and inconsistencies and errors in the study data. And let’s not forget a 2016 analysis (co-authored by Bolland) which cast doubt on Sato’s body of work, suggesting that more than 30 of his papers could be problematic. Continue reading Caught Our Notice: No retraction for “likely fraudulent” study
Shocked, confused, disappointed — these are the reactions of authors who recently published in a cancer journal that was delisted by a company that indexes journals.
Recently, Clarivate Analytics announced it would discontinue indexing Oncotarget after the first few issues of 2018 — as a result, the journal would not receive a current impact factor. The company did not tell us a specific reason why, simply saying it “no longer meets the standards necessary for continued coverage.” Last year, the journal was also removed from the U.S. government biomedical research database MEDLINE, also with no explanation. (At the time, the National Library of Medicine’s Associate Director for Library Operations told us readers who are familiar with the guidelines MEDLINE follows when deselecting journals “can draw their own conclusions” as to why Oncotarget was removed.)
After we covered Clarivate’s decision to delist Oncotarget, many posted comments on the story, including suggestions the move could hurt authors who submitted papers before the announcement. (Some comments also appeared to be versions of the same request that the journal be indexed through January 15.)
We reached out to many of the corresponding authors on papers in the January 26 issue, the seventh issue published in 2018. Many are based at leading institutions around the world; all had submitted their manuscripts months ago. Some noted that they were surprised by the decision, as the review process appeared quite rigorous; some told us that if they’d known the journal was going to be delisted, they would not have submitted their papers there.
Continue reading When a journal is delisted, authors pay a price
An independent analysis of how The Ohio State University reviewed allegations of misconduct against a high-profile cancer researcher has found that the institution “complied with applicable law and with relevant institutional policies and reached reasoned and supportable conclusions.”
The review follows numerous allegations of research misconduct against Carlo Croce, described in a March 8 story in the New York Times. According to the Times article, Croce has been the subject of multiple investigations; at least five of those inquiries from OSU cleared him of wrongdoing.
Croce has denied the allegations, and is now suing the New York Times and an outside researcher who served as a key source in the story. As a result of the story, however, OSU — where Croce is based — told us last year it had “launched an independent review of our systems for ensuring research integrity.”
A researcher who is facing a criminal investigation in Italy for research misconduct has seen five more papers retracted, for a total of 16 15.
Molecular and Cellular Biology has retracted four papers published between 1987 to 2001 by Alfredo Fusco, a cancer researcher in Italy; the Journal of Virology retracted one 1985 paper. Fusco was first author on two papers and last author on three. Both journals are published by The American Society for Microbiology (ASM), which issued identical retraction notices for all five papers, mentioning “evidence of apparent manipulation and duplication.”
Carlo Croce, a cancer researcher now at the Ohio State University, who has been dogged by misconduct allegations, co-authored one of the papers. Croce now has eight retractions.
Here’s the notice presented for all five retractions: Continue reading Retraction count for Italian researcher swells to 15 as five papers fall
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support it?
The week at Retraction Watch featured the story of how two highly cited papers turned out to be wrong; a big prize for a researcher who has been dogged by allegations; and a mass resignation at a journal. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: 20th anniversary of a fraud; uses and misuses of doubt; how common is scooping?