When a researcher encountered two papers that suggested moonlight has biological effects — on both plants and humans — he took a second look at the data, and came to different conclusions. That was the easy part — getting the word out about his negative findings, however, was much more difficult. When Jean-Luc Margot, a … Continue reading Why publishing negative findings is hard
A company headed by a former astrophysicist at the University of California, San Diego, has agreed to forfeit $180,000 after admitting to defrauding the government. If SciberQuest, Inc. is unable to pay back the money — the result of fraudulently obtaining government grants and contracts — then its CEO Homayoun Karimabadi will be personally liable, the lawyer for … Continue reading Former UCSD prof’s company admits to grant fraud
Here’s our first post of 2016. The week at Retraction Watch featured a retraction from JAMA, and our list of most-cited retracted papers. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The week at Retraction Watch featured our annual roundup of the year’s top retractions for The Scientist, a retraction from Science, and claims about a book Aristotle never wrote. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
SEOUL — In one of the single biggest instances of misconduct we’ve ever come across, prosecutors in South Korea are seeking up to 18 months’ prison time for 75 professors who are among those charged with plagiarizing science and engineering textbooks wholesale. Prosecutors say that since the 1980s, 179 professors at 110 universities across the … Continue reading Korean prosecutors seek jail time for professors in massive plagiarism scheme
A group of astrophysicists has notched a pair of corrections for papers on galaxy clusters, thanks to an error that affected several figures in the papers, but not the overall conclusions. The errors came in the catalog of “mock” galaxies that first author Fabio Zandanel, a postdoc at the University of Amsterdam, created to model features that are found in … Continue reading Astrophysicists issue two detailed corrections
When two chemists based in China couldn’t reproduce experiments in their paper on opal films, they retracted it. As the retraction note explains: In this article we report a method to fabricate 2D TiO2–WO3 composite inverse opal films via a mechanical co-assembly route with a template of polystyrene spheres. Upon repeating the experiments described, we found that this … Continue reading Chemists pull non-reproducible paper on method to make opal films
The week at Retraction Watch featured a move by the Journal of Biological Chemistry that we’re applauding, a retraction by a high-profile nutrition researcher, and an announcement about a new partnership to create a retraction database. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
An astrophysics journal is retracting a paper on black holes whose first author is a teenager about to earn his PhD, after learning the paper “draws extensively” from a book chapter by the last author. Many papers are pulled for duplication, but few get a news release from the publisher about it. In a move that we … Continue reading Black hole paper by teenaged prodigy retracted for duplication
This morning, our thoughts are with the people of Paris. The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper claiming dramatically higher rates of sexual trauma among men in the military, and a look at whether gender plays a role in peer review. Also: We’re hiring. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: