Search Results for: pubpeer

Urology researcher under investigation for double-dipping has another paper retracted

A urology researcher who stepped down from his post as department chair after an institutional investigation prompted by Retraction Watch reporting has lost another paper.  The article apparently was not flagged during a misconduct investigation, but a PubPeer commenter noted overlapping images in August 2021.  Hari Koul had been interim chair of the department of … Continue reading Urology researcher under investigation for double-dipping has another paper retracted

The “internet may be a challenging venue”: Biomedical engineering group up to four retractions

A group of biomedical engineering researchers has lost four papers because they appear to be recycling their images from other papers.  The retractions for the group, from Banaras Hindu University in India, span papers published between 2011 and 2014. The retractions began in 2020, after anonymous PubPeer commenters pointed out the similarities between images. The … Continue reading The “internet may be a challenging venue”: Biomedical engineering group up to four retractions

Failed to properly register your trial? Just use a different study’s number. Actually, don’t.

Researchers in China have lost a 2019 paper on sedation in people undergoing cardiac surgery after readers complained that the authors had failed to properly register the trial.  The paper, “Effect of Perioperative Administration of Dexmedetomidine on Delirium After Cardiac Surgery in Elderly Patients: a Double-Blinded, Multi-Center, Randomized Study,” appeared in Clinical Interventions in Aging, … Continue reading Failed to properly register your trial? Just use a different study’s number. Actually, don’t.

Kale ‘miracle food’ paper retracted for being ‘word salad’

Kale may be a superfood, but for one paper on the vegetable, Twitter proved to be its Kryptonite. We’ll explain. Last November, Food Science & Nutrition published an article titled “Kale (Brassica oleracea var. sabellica) as miracle food with special reference to therapeutic and nutraceuticals perspective.” How miraculous? As the authors, from Government College University … Continue reading Kale ‘miracle food’ paper retracted for being ‘word salad’

Journal retracts paper listed on authorship for sale site following Retraction Watch report

An Elsevier journal has retracted a paper that was listed by a firm claiming to sell authorships months after we reported on the site. On Sept. 7, 2021, we published a story about the company, Teziran. On Sept. 14, pseudonymous sleuth Artemisia Stricta wrote to Ioannis Ieropoulos, the editor of Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments, … Continue reading Journal retracts paper listed on authorship for sale site following Retraction Watch report

Nanotech group up to nine retractions

A group of nanotechnology researchers in Iran is up to nine retractions after losing four papers in a go for problematic figures. The work was led by Abolfazl Akbarzadeh, a medicinal chemist at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, who has spent time as a visiting professor at Boston University and UCLA. Commenters on PubPeer including … Continue reading Nanotech group up to nine retractions

Dermatology journal calls for investigation into Bordeaux-INSERM work

Two and a half years after critics raised concerns, a dermatology journal says it has called on two French institutions to launch an inquiry into a 2017 paper. The Journal of Investigative Dermatology has issued an expression of concern for the article, “NADPH Oxidase-1 Plays a Key Role in Keratinocyte Responses to UV Radiation and … Continue reading Dermatology journal calls for investigation into Bordeaux-INSERM work

More than 300 at once: Publisher retracts entire conference proceedings

The tip came from the leadership of another scientific conference. Did the Association for Computing Machinery know that they had published the proceedings of a conference with essentially the same name as that organization, IEEE, on the same dates, in the same venue, and with lots of overlapping authors? The two versions of the meeting … Continue reading More than 300 at once: Publisher retracts entire conference proceedings

What we’ve learned from public records requests. Please help us file more.

Dear Retraction Watch reader: You may have noticed an increasing number of posts over the past few years that contain the phrase “obtained through a public records request.” Some examples: It’s how we learned that a pharmacology researcher was demoted after a misconduct investigation – and then became chair at another school. That story led … Continue reading What we’ve learned from public records requests. Please help us file more.

Hundreds of dead rats, sloppy file names: The anatomy of a retraction

It all started – as more and more retractions do – with a post on PubPeer, this one in November 2021. The comment was about a paper titled “Efficient in vivo wound healing using noble metal nanoclusters” that had appeared in Nanoscale in March of that year:  Figure 5: There is an overlap between two … Continue reading Hundreds of dead rats, sloppy file names: The anatomy of a retraction