Search Results for: pubpeer

Exclusive: NIH researcher resigned amid retractions, including Nature paper

A tenure-track investigator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a division of the National Institutes of Health, resigned in March, as questions mounted about her work, Retraction Watch has learned.  Jennifer Martinez has retracted at least two papers, including a 2016 Nature paper with the chair of the immunology department at St. … Continue reading Exclusive: NIH researcher resigned amid retractions, including Nature paper

Didier Raoult papers earn expressions of concern as criminal investigation gets underway

A leading microbiology society has issued expressions of concern for four six papers from a group in France led by the controversial scientist Didier Raoult, whose lab is under investigation by the  University of Aix Marseille for “serious malfunctions.”  The move follows the release last month of a 157-page report by investigators related to France’s … Continue reading Didier Raoult papers earn expressions of concern as criminal investigation gets underway

Brain tumor researchers retract paper from Science journal

A brain tumor researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, has retracted a paper from Science Translational Medicine, and is a co-author on an article that another journal is examining.  The problems in both papers, and several others with shared authors, came to light via comments on PubPeer by Elisabeth Bik and a pseudonymous … Continue reading Brain tumor researchers retract paper from Science journal

Publisher says it will investigate allegations despite editor’s refusal

A journal whose editor who has refused to investigate strong claims of misconduct by an anonymous whistleblower appears to be investigating anyway following our coverage of the case. Meanwhile, the editor has found other ways to express his lack of concern for nonsense that may appear in the journal’s pages. As we reported late last … Continue reading Publisher says it will investigate allegations despite editor’s refusal

Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza retracts four papers

A Johns Hopkins researcher who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology has retracted four papers from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) for concerns about images in the articles. Gregg Semenza is “one of today’s preeminent researchers on the molecular mechanisms of oxygen regulation,” the work for which he … Continue reading Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza retracts four papers

An editor on why he ignores anonymous whistleblowers – and why authors are free to publish ‘bullshit and fiction’

Just over a decade ago, in the second year of Retraction Watch’s existence, we wrote a column in the now-defunct Lab Times urging journal editors to stop ignoring complaints from anonymous whistleblowers. The Committee on Publication Ethics didn’t think anonymity was a problem as long as the complaints were evidence-based, so why should editors?  And … Continue reading An editor on why he ignores anonymous whistleblowers – and why authors are free to publish ‘bullshit and fiction’

Exclusive: Cancer researcher sues med school for retaliation after research misconduct finding

A breast cancer researcher at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn has sued the university for sex discrimination and retaliation after an institutional investigation found she committed research misconduct.  Stacy Blain, an associate professor in the departments of pediatrics and cell biology at Downstate, has alleged that the university violated the Equal Pay Act by paying her … Continue reading Exclusive: Cancer researcher sues med school for retaliation after research misconduct finding

Company’s Alzheimer’s treatment study earns a flag

A journal has issued an expression of concern for a federally-funded paper on Alzheimer’s disease after a sleuth on PubPeer noted potentially duplicated figures in the article.  We shouldn’t forget to mention, as the paper did, that one of the authors – a prominent scientist who happens also to be a co-editor in chief of … Continue reading Company’s Alzheimer’s treatment study earns a flag

Crystallography database flags nearly 1000 structures linked to a paper mill

A chemistry database of crystal structures has marked nearly 1000 entries with expressions of concern after finding they were linked to articles identified as products of a paper mill.  The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) added notes to 992 structures in its database, according to a notice posted to its website in May. And a crystallography … Continue reading Crystallography database flags nearly 1000 structures linked to a paper mill

Papers in Scientific Reports – and their expressions of concern – raise questions

Has Springer Nature’s Scientific Reports been targeted with an authorship for sale scheme? At least one expert in such matters thinks so.  The journal has issued two recent expressions of concern for papers by researchers from Indonesia, Iran and Russia with highly unusual – and oddly similar – constellations of authors.  One 2021 article, “Numerical … Continue reading Papers in Scientific Reports – and their expressions of concern – raise questions