This week’s Weekend Reads, which appears below, was preempted yesterday by the news that the Office of Research Integrity had issued a finding of misconduct in the long-running case of Anil Potti. The week also featured news about a child psychiatry trial halted for unexplained reasons, and saw the launch of our new weekly column … Continue reading Weekend reads: Elsevier mutiny; babies as co-authors; what to do after rejection
The week at Retraction Watch featured the correction of a widely covered study claiming to find evidence of the plague and anthrax on New York City subways, and rulings against scientists suing Harvard, a journal, and the CBC. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A team of Harvard and Yale biologists have retracted an Infection and Immunity paper due to data duplication. After the duplication came to light, the erroneous figures were corrected using original data, but the results affected “some of the manuscript’s conclusions.” An ethics panel subsequently recommended retraction, according to the journal, and the authors agreed. The paper, “NOD2 … Continue reading “Evidence of data duplication” infects lung inflammation paper from Harvard and Yale
A new study suggests that much of what we think about misconduct — including the idea that it is linked to the unrelenting pressure on scientists to publish high-profile papers — is incorrect. In a new paper out today in PLOS ONE [see update at end of post], Daniele Fanelli, Rodrigo Costas, and Vincent Larivière performed a retrospective analysis of … Continue reading Pressure to publish not to blame for misconduct, says new study
Scientists have pulled their 2013 Infection and Immunity paper after a reader noticed duplicated data in three figures, and the first author was “unable to provide the original data used to construct the figures,” according to the journal’s editor-in-chief. According to the retraction note, “the first author has accepted responsibility for these anomalies” — similar to … Continue reading Another “first author has accepted responsibility” retraction from immunity journal
Authors of a 2012 article in Infection and Immunity investigating a malaria vaccine strategy are retracting it because it “contains several images that do not accurately reflect the experimental data.” The paper, “Fine Specificity of Plasmodium vivax Duffy Binding Protein Binding Engagement of the Duffy Antigen on Human Erythrocytes,” has been cited 9 times, according to Thomson … Continue reading “The first author assumes all responsibility:” Malaria vaccine article retracted for image manipulation
How should scientists think about papers that have undergone what appears to be a cursory peer review? Perhaps the papers were reviewed in a day — or less — or simply green-lighted by an editor, without an outside look. That’s a question Dorothy Bishop, an Oxford University autism researcher, asked herself when she noticed some … Continue reading Poll: What to do when peer review feels inadequate?
The volunteer members of the Board of Directors of The Center For Scientific Integrity (CSI) are deeply knowledgeable about scientific publishing, scientific integrity, and other issues relevant to the missions of Retraction Watch and CSI. They offer CSI management and staff strategic advice, feedback on specific proposals, and guidance on our work. The management and … Continue reading Board of Directors
A paper on apoptosis in mice has been retracted by Infection and Immunity after a reader tipped them off that several figures were “not faithful representations of the original data.” When the journal, published by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), contacted the authors at Anhui Medical University in Hefei, China, they claimed they couldn’t provide the … Continue reading “Not faithful” figures kill apoptosis paper
There are a number of fields that seem to punch above their weight on Retraction Watch: Anesthesiology, home to the world record holder (and runner-up), and psychology, home to Diederik Stapel and others. But the red-hot field of stem cell research is another that makes frequent appearances, last year’s STAP controversy being particularly prominent. There’s … Continue reading Are retractions more frequent in stem cell research?