Work with someone who later commits misconduct? You may pay the price

Katrin Hussinger
Maikel Pellens

It makes sense that scientists would adopt a sort of “buyer beware” attitude towards fraud — if researchers choose to collaborate with someone who’s been found guilty of some type of misconduct, their reputation among their peers might take a hit. But what about people who work with someone who is later convicted of misconduct — do they pay a price, as well? Yes, according to a preprint published recently by Katrin Hussinger and Maikel Pellens at the Centre for European Economic Research. We spoke with Hussinger and Pellens about how the “reputational damage” of misconduct can spread to prior collaborators.

RW: It’s not a surprise to think that people who collaborate with a known fraudster might see some impact, but were you surprised to see that people who worked with a “fraudster” in the past were potentially affected?

Continue reading Work with someone who later commits misconduct? You may pay the price

Caught Our Notice: Columbia researcher up to five retractions

Via Wikimedia

Title: Endotoxaemia during left ventricular assist device insertion: relationship between risk factors and outcome

What Caught Our Attention: Robert J. Frumento first caught our notice in 2013, as a coauthor on a paper retracted with a nonspecific reference to author misconduct.  Three years later, Frumento was clearly identified as having fabricated data and a master’s degree, and added three retractions to his name. Now he’s got a fifth retraction, this one citing missing data and a lack of proof that data blinding was performed correctly.   Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Columbia researcher up to five retractions

Weekend reads: Weaponized plagiarism; bias against low-income country research; the uncited papers

The week at Retraction Watch featured commentary on yet another paper claiming a link between autism and vaccines, a welcome useful retraction notice, and a rewrite of a paper that influenced car seat guidelines. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Weaponized plagiarism; bias against low-income country research; the uncited papers

University requests 4th retraction for psychologist under fire

Jens Förster

The University of Amsterdam has requested another retraction for a prominent social psychologist, after reviewing the dissertations he supervised while at the university.

The university made the announcement this week after reviewing the theses supervised by Jens Förster, whose own work has been subject to considerable scrutiny.

The results of this investigation come more than two years after an initial probe into Förster’s work, which found several of his papers likely contained unreliable data; three of these papers have been retracted and four have received expressions of concern. Förster, who recently left his position at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany to start a private psychology practice, has always maintained that he did not manipulate his data. In 2015, he turned down a professorship, citing the toll the investigation had taken. Continue reading University requests 4th retraction for psychologist under fire

“This is about saving kids’ lives:” Authors update pivotal car seat safety results

A BMJ journal has published an updated analysis of a 2007 paper that shaped current car seat safety recommendations, which reports less conclusive findings about the safest way to install the seat.

The updated analysis follows an expression of concern the journal Injury Prevention added to the paper in June 2017, after the authors and an outside expert could not replicate the results.

The 2007 paper made a big claim: Children ages one to two years old are five times more likely to sustain serious injuries in a crash when restrained in a forward-facing car seat than a rear-facing seat.

Benjamin Hoffman, a professor of pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland who was not involved in the 2007 research, told us: Continue reading “This is about saving kids’ lives:” Authors update pivotal car seat safety results

Mathematician protests retraction, alleging “manhunt”

A math journal has retracted a 2015 paper after three outside experts informed the editors that “the paper contains errors which invalidate its main results.”

According to the retraction notice, published in the July 2017 issue of Manuscripta Mathematica, the author Ilya Karzhemanov “has not admitted to the alleged errors and disagrees with the retraction.”

It’s unclear when exactly the paper was retracted, but Karzhemanov, now associate professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, posted the now-retracted paper on arXiv in June 2017 and explained his “strong disagreement” with the retraction: Continue reading Mathematician protests retraction, alleging “manhunt”

Caught Our Notice: A retraction that is “useful for investigators”

Via Wikimedia

Title:  Yeast CAF-1 assembles histone (H3-H4) 2 tetramers prior to DNA deposition

What Caught Our Attention: Informative retraction notices can be infrequent, but rarer still are notices that fulfill an oft-ignored function: To be a source of learning for others in the field. Here, the authors offer a nearly 800-word “detailed description of the issues” with “some observations that may be useful for investigators conducting similar studies.” These authors embraced the retraction process, carefully explaining their findings or the lack thereof, for each figure from their now-retracted paper.     Continue reading Caught Our Notice: A retraction that is “useful for investigators”

Doctor with 9 retractions loses lawsuit over work as expert witness

Cory Toth

A Canadian doctor with nine retractions due to misconduct has lost a court case seeking payment for an expert medical exam he performed in August 2014. The exam took place several months after his university found he had allowed a breach of research integrity in his lab and a month before news of the investigation and his departure from the school made national news in Canada.

On Dec. 5, Cory Toth, a former professor at the University of Calgary (U of C), appeared in an Edmonton, Alberta courtroom as the plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in Provincial Civil Court. The story was first reported by the Edmonton Journal.

Court documents, which we’ve made available here, show that in April 2016 Toth sued Western Medical Assessments (WMA) — the company that hired him to perform the exam, which was used in another case — and Michele Reeves — the lawyer who hired WMA. Toth alleged that he never received payment for his work and sought Can$2,000 (US$1,552) plus interest. In his claim, he said that despite the U of C finding: Continue reading Doctor with 9 retractions loses lawsuit over work as expert witness

“Utterly awful:” David Gorski weighs in on yet another paper linking vaccines and autism

David Gorski, via Wayne State

Retraction Watch readers may be forgiven for thinking that there has been at least a small uptick in the papers that claim to link autism and vaccines, and yet tend to raise more questions than they answer. Sometimes, they are retracted. See here, here and here, for example. We talk to David Gorski, well known for his fights against pseudoscience, about the most recent example.

Retraction Watch (RW): You describe a recent paper reporting high levels of aluminum in the brains of people with autism as “utterly awful.” What are your main criticisms of the paper? Continue reading “Utterly awful:” David Gorski weighs in on yet another paper linking vaccines and autism

Lesson one: How to design a good experiment

Len Freedman. Credit: Judy Licht/GBSI
Vivian Siegel. Credit: Maria Nemchuk

It’s clear science has a reproducibility problem. What’s less clear is how to address it. Recently, the U.S. National Institutes of Health awarded the Global Biological Standards Institute (GBSI) $2.34 million to train students in good experimental design (also covered by The Scientist). The first week begins June 2018 at Harvard Medical School. We spoke with Leonard P. Freedman, Founding President and Chief Scientific Officer of GBSI and Vivian Siegel, the education director of the program.

Retraction Watch: Why do students need extra training in experimental design? Continue reading Lesson one: How to design a good experiment