The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper that had been called “anti-vaccine pseudoscience,” a retraction following threats of violence against an editor, and an editorial board member’s resignation over how a journal handled a case of plagiarism. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A social psychology journal has added an expression of concern to a paper by prominent social psychologist Jens Förster, whose work has been subject to much scrutiny. This is the latest in a long-running saga involving Förster. The 2012 paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology had been flagged by a 2015 report describing … Continue reading Journal adds concern notice to paper by psychologist Jens Förster
Carlo Croce, a cancer researcher at The Ohio State University who has faced numerous allegations of research misconduct, has filed a lawsuit against the New York Times, claiming the newspaper defamed him in a March 8 story. Croce filed the civil suit May 10, in the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, … Continue reading Carlo Croce, Ohio State researcher facing misconduct allegations, suing New York Times for defamation
A psychiatry journal has retracted a 2011 paper exploring the use of ketamine to treat patients with severe depression following an investigation at Yale University. According to the retraction notice, Yale determined that the paper, published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, did not accurately describe the research. But the study’s lead author, Gregory Larkin, … Continue reading Ketamine-depression paper retracted following investigation at Yale
The week at Retraction Watch featured an update on a Harvard lab whose PI is subject to a restraining order by one of his grad students, and the retraction of a paper that used male-only pronouns. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Longtime readers of Retraction Watch may recall a 2011 post about a research team that retracted a paper after realizing that they had ordered the wrong mice. Maureen Gannon and Raymond Pasek of Vanderbilt University contacted us earlier this week to alert us to a similar case: Their retraction, earlier this month, of a 2016 paper … Continue reading “We were devastated:” Authors retract paper after realizing they had used the wrong mice
An exercise scientist who ran a study of the CrossFit exercise program without an approved human subjects protocol has lost two more papers to retraction. Both papers were retracted on June 26 by the editors of the International Journal of Exercise Science (IJES) with the agreement of last author Steven Devor, a former professor at … Continue reading Researcher who tangled with CrossFit loses two more papers
The problem of fake peer reviews never seems to end — although the research community has known about it since 2014, publishers are still discovering new cases. In April, one journal alone retracted 107 papers after discovering the review process had been compromised. By tracking individual reviewers’ contributions, Publons — recently purchased by Clarivate Analytics — … Continue reading Can a tracking system for peer reviewers help stop fakes?
In the fall of 2015, out-of-work stem cell biologist Mavi Camarasa decided she had waited long enough. It had been three years since she and a colleague were, best they could tell, the first to successfully correct the most common cystic fibrosis mutation in stem cells derived from a patient. But her former lab director, … Continue reading Author of retracted gene editing paper alleges “bullying” by former PI
A Rutgers computer scientist is retracting conference proceedings via an unusual channel: his personal blog. On April 7, Anand Sarwate wrote that he was retracting a mathematical proof from the proceedings from the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), after discovering errors that invalidated the result. He explains in the blog … Continue reading Rutgers prof announces retraction on his blog