Weekend reads: Concussion researcher faces more scrutiny; ‘Mendel the fraud?’; seeking redemption after misconduct finding

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: The 21-year-old apology – and retraction from JAMA Harvard eye researchers have eight papers retracted for lack of ethical approval Einstein duo faked data in 16 federal grant applications: ORI So what happened with … Continue reading Weekend reads: Concussion researcher faces more scrutiny; ‘Mendel the fraud?’; seeking redemption after misconduct finding

Einstein duo faked data in 16 federal grant applications: ORI

A pair of researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York faked data in 50 figures in 16 NIH grant applications for six years starting in 2013, according to new findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI). According to the ORI, Daniel Leong, a former lab tech at Einstein, intentionally, … Continue reading Einstein duo faked data in 16 federal grant applications: ORI

Nanotech researchers cleared of fraud but failed to supervise cheating grad student: University

An institutional investigation of a group of nanotechnology researchers in Japan has concluded that a former graduate student in the lab began his cheating ways “on a daily basis from a very early stage” after joining the team in 2015. According to a Google translation of the report, Yuuta Yano – whom the document identifies … Continue reading Nanotech researchers cleared of fraud but failed to supervise cheating grad student: University

Authors request retraction of study in Nature journal and look into four more papers

A group of researchers at the University of Chicago has asked a Nature journal to retract a paper after PubPeer commenters pointed out numerous duplicated images in the article. The paper, “Synergistic checkpoint-blockade and radiotherapy–radiodynamic therapy via an immunomodulatory nanoscale metal–organic framework,” was published last month in Nature Biomedical Engineering. According to its senior author, … Continue reading Authors request retraction of study in Nature journal and look into four more papers

Often, retractions take years. This one took three days.

“The retraction that took years” is a common enough refrain on Retraction Watch that it might as be its own genre. Here’s one that didn’t. A journal wasted no time pouncing on a suspect paper, retracting the 2016 article just three days after a commenter flagged concerns about the images in the work on PubPeer.  … Continue reading Often, retractions take years. This one took three days.

Engineers’ research starts to look shaky as retractions mount

A group of structural engineering researchers based in Iran has lost at least five papers for problems with the data – and a data sleuth says more look shaky, too.  Four of the articles appeared in Construction and Building Materials between 2018 and 2020 and were written by a changing cast of characters with two … Continue reading Engineers’ research starts to look shaky as retractions mount

NASA researchers retract Nature paper on climate change and evapotranspiration

The authors of a 2021 Nature paper on how climate change might affect the amount of evaporation from the earth’s land surface have retracted the article after learning of a crucial error in their analysis.  The crux of the paper, titled “A 10 per cent increase in global land evapotranspiration from 2003 to 2019,”  was … Continue reading NASA researchers retract Nature paper on climate change and evapotranspiration

Philadelphia-area lung researcher up to six retractions

A lung researcher is up to six retractions for problematic images.  Dilip Shah’s last academic post was at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, N.J., where he worked as a post-doc in the lab of Vineet Bhandari. While there, Shah landed first authorship on a 2020 article in the European Respiratory Journal titled “miR-184 mediates hyperoxia-induced … Continue reading Philadelphia-area lung researcher up to six retractions

Paper on “suspicious activities” on India-China border retracted

A journal has retracted a 2020 paper about looking for “suspicious activities” on the India-China border — including an incursion in which 20 Indian soldiers were reportedly killed – citing “legal reasons.” The abstract in Springer Nature’s Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, which alleges that the soldiers were “brutally killed,” is rife … Continue reading Paper on “suspicious activities” on India-China border retracted

Weekend reads: A museum of scientific misconduct?; authorship misconduct; uproar over renamed phyla

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: ‘This is really ridiculous’: An author admitted plagiarism. His supervisor asked for a retraction. The publisher said, “nah.” University of Rochester cancer researchers included ‘incorrect images’ in 13 papers, committee finds Cancer journal with … Continue reading Weekend reads: A museum of scientific misconduct?; authorship misconduct; uproar over renamed phyla