This week at Retraction Watch featured polar opposites: Two new entries in our “doing the right thing” category, and one in our plagiarism euphemism parade. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
This week at Retraction Watch witnessed the fall of a “golden boy” and a “NASA Patriot Boy.” Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A pair of cell biologists have taken responsibility for extensive figure errors that scuttled their paper in the Journal of Cell Biology. While there were five authors, first and last authors Eva Szabo and Michal Opas took responsibility in the notice. A number of figures “contain incorrect data and/or presentation errors,” and the original data isn’t available … Continue reading Fat cell paper earns unusually detailed retraction
The International Association for Dental Research has retracted a student travel award after discovering that the recipient had previously published the work he used to secure the grant, including in an abstract he presented at the same conference last year. The self-plagiarism was uncovered by an anonymous group of students at the Hong Kong University … Continue reading Dentistry student loses travel grant for duplicating his own work
News elsewhere about scientific integrity, publishing, and related issues abounded this week:
A one-time media favorite is being accused of serious misconduct in three cases where he inserted artificial windpipes into patients and treated them with stem cells. Two of the patients have died; one survives, but needs her airway cleaned every four hours by hospital staff to keep her alive. A little over two years ago, thoracic … Continue reading “Super-surgeon” who created artificial tracheas facing new misconduct allegations
Harvard stem cell researcher Doug Melton got a lot of press last year for research on a hormone he named betatrophin, after its supposed ability to increase production of beta cells, which regulate insulin. Now, the conclusions from that paper, which has been cited 59 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, have been called … Continue reading “I kind of like that about science:” Harvard diabetes breakthrough muddied by two new papers
This week we learned that Fazlul Sarkar, who is suing PubPeer commenters, claiming he lost a job offer at the University of Mississippi because of their critiques, declined an opportunity to respond to said comments. Here’s another installment of PubPeer Selections:
The week at Retraction Watch featured papers by a fake author with a brilliant if profane name, and the unmasking of fraudster Diederik Stapel as a sock puppet. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Nature, as we and others have noticed, has had what Paul Knoepfler referred to as a “torrent” of retractions in the past two years. That torrent — 13 research papers — has prompted a welcome and soul-searching editorial, as it did in 2010 when the journal had what it called an “unusually large number” of … Continue reading Nature, facing “considerable rise” in retractions, blames lawyers for opaque and delayed notices