An Elsevier journal is wearing an omelet on its face after accepting a paper by a group of authors who have completely disavowed the work. Oh, and no one seems to know who one of the authors is, which makes the second time inside of a month that we’ve reported on a case like this. … Continue reading Meet Bo Liu, international man or woman of scientific mystery
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: The withdrawal of a COVID-19 scoring tool based on Surgisphere … Continue reading Weekend reads: A wake-up call?; paper’s author accused of racism; an editor resigns over personal attacks
In April of this year, Corneel Vandelanotte realized something had gone wrong with a paper he had recently published. First, there was a post about his paper by Nick Brown, a scientific sleuth, questioning the results, ethics, and authors behind the work. That was followed by a comment on PubPeer by Elisabeth Bik, another scientific … Continue reading ‘How I got fooled’: The story behind the retraction of a study of gamers
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. It was a particularly busy week at Retraction Watch, featuring retractions from four of the top … Continue reading Weekend reads: Top journals under scrutiny; a toxic legacy; science by press release
Following an investigation prompted by a whistleblower, a university in Australia has recommended that one of its researchers retract two papers, Retraction Watch has learned. The reviews, “Cryptography and State-of-the-art Techniques” and “An Advanced Survey on Cloud Computing and State-of-the-art Research Issues,” were both published in 2012 in the International Journal of Computer Science Issues … Continue reading University recommends retraction of two computing papers for plagiarism
Some words do more work in sentences than others. Take the example of the word “negligence,” which in the case of the following retraction notice is a veritable beast of burden. The 2019 article, “Conservative management of subglottic stenosis with home based tracheostomy care: A retrospective review of 28 patients,” appeared in the International Journal … Continue reading ‘Negligence’ — a lot of it — leads to a retraction
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time. The week … Continue reading Weekend reads: Hamsters, cats, dogs, and other fake authors; a fraudster regains her medical license; how to ruin journal titles
Talk about the publish-or-perish version of the circle of life. A Springer Nature journal has retracted 33 articles — 29 from one special issue, and four from another — for a laundry list of publishing sins, from fake peer review to plagiarism to stealing unpublished manuscripts. And an Elsevier journal has retracted ten papers recently … Continue reading The circle of life, publish or perish edition: Two journals retract more than 40 papers
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time. The week … Continue reading Weekend reads: Retracted COVID-19 papers; a coronavirus study kept under wraps; Harvard and Jeffrey Epstein
We’ve been tracking retractions of papers about COVID-19 as part of our database. Here’s a running list, which will be updated as needed. (For some context on these figures, see this post, our letter in Accountability in Research and the last section of this Nature news article. Also see a note about the terminology regarding … Continue reading Retracted coronavirus (COVID-19) papers