Here at Retraction Watch, the week featured the revelations of the peer reviews of an early version of the STAP stem cell paper, and an announcement about a new partnership. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
In what seems to be an example of researchers swiftly and transparently correcting the literature, and acknowledging errors, a pair of scientists have retracted a 2013 paper from Nature. Here’s the retraction notice for “Genomic organization of human transcription initiation complexes,” by Bryan Venters and Frank Pugh:
After typing up 96 citations, researchers from the National Institute for Digestive Diseases, I.R.C.C.S. “S. de Bellis,” in Bari, Italy, apparently ran out of steam for the last five, earning themselves a retraction for plagiarism in a literature review of the effects of probiotics on intestinal cancer. Here’s the notice for “Intestinal Microbiota, Probiotics and … Continue reading Yogurt to be kidding me: Five articles plagiarized in one retracted paper
A group of urologists in China has lost their 2012 paper in the Journal of Surgical Research because one of the authors was evidently rather naughty. The article, “Is the impact of the extent of lymphadenectomy in radical prostatectomy related to the disease risk? A single center prospective study,” purported to show that:
Rehabilitation Research and Practice has retracted a 2012 review article on stiff big toes. The article, “Therapeutic Management of the Hallux Rigidus,” came from a group in India. According to the abstract:
The Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary Medicine (JEBCAM) has retracted a 2013 review on probiotics by an author from Turkey who patched the paper together from a variety of other sources — and then appears to have reused his own work elsewhere without attribution. The article was written by Öner Özdemir, a pediatric allergy specialist at … Continue reading Plagiarism spells demise of complementary medicine paper
Xenon may be an inert gas, but that doesn’t mean papers about the molecule aren’t subject to change. Indeed, the journal Anaesthesia has retracted a 2010 article about xenon-based anesthesia, and corrected a 2005 article by some of the same researchers, for what appears to be a case of wurst slicing. The 2005 paper, “Comparison … Continue reading Failure to cite leads to ignoble end for xenon paper, and a correction
We have some updates on the case of more than 120 fake SCIgen conference proceedings papers that slipped into IEEE and Springer journals.
The journal Tropical Animal Health and Production has retracted a 2013 paper by a group from India whose data on feeding young cows special wheat wasn’t quite what it was cracked up to be. The article, “Nutritional evaluation of wheat straw treated with Crinipellis sp. in Sahiwal calves,” found that:
Mohammad Reza Safarinejad, a urologist in Iran, has had three papers retracted recently for reasons that are not entirely clear. Here’s the most recent notice, from the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, of a paper that has been cited 23 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: