Here’s a physics question: How is it possible to be in two places at the same time? Answer: Submit the same manuscript twice and hope the editors forget to feed Schrödinger’s cat. The journal Condensed Matter Physics is retracting a 2013 paper by a Ukrainian scientist who’d published essentially the same paper seven years earlier.The … Continue reading Duplication in physics journal questions key tenet of quantum mechanics
Last December, we brought you the story of a math paper that was retracted because it made “no sense mathematically.” Today, we have that retraction’s cousin: A physics paper retracted because some of the data are “unphysical.” Here’s the notice for “Room temperature ferromagnetism in pure and Co- and Fe-doped CeO2 dilute magnetic oxide: effect … Continue reading That’ll do it: Physics paper retracted for a “pattern that is unphysical”
In February, we brought you the story of Konstantin Meyl, a professor who claims to have developed “a self-consistent field theory which is used to derive at all known interactions of the potential vortex” At the time, one of Meyl’s papers — which a reviewer had called “way out there” — had just been retracted, … Continue reading Author of “way out there” paper merging physics and biology has second paper retracted
A trio of researchers from the United States and China are in, um, hot water for inappropriately reusing figures that had appeared in previous publications about liquids. The article, “Temporally resolved imaging on quenching and re-ignition of nanosecond underwater discharge,” appeared last year in AIP Advances, a title of the American Institute of Physics. The … Continue reading Physics journal retracts underwater discharge paper for figure reuse
Two different teams of physicists have retracted papers from Physical Review B after realizing that a sample used in the paper published first — and which formed the basis of the second paper — was mislabeled. Here’s the notice for the first paper, “s-wave superconductivity in barium-doped phenanthrene as revealed by specific-heat measurements,” by Jianjun … Continue reading Mislabeled sample leads to a chain reaction of physics retractions
A pair of Iranian physicists is facing the retraction of one of their papers after editors found out some of the work was plagiarized from two textbooks and an encyclopedia. Here’s the notice:
Every now and then, we see retraction notices that refer vaguely to legal issues. Sometimes, we can dig up the actual reason. But the European Biophysics Journal has two retractions that leave us completely in the dark. The two notices basically say the same thing. Here’s one:
A German professor who claims to have developed “a self-consistent field theory which is used to derive at all known interactions of the potential vortex” will have at least two papers retracted, thanks to the scrutiny of a concerned economist. The first retraction has already appeared, in DNA and Cell Biology, for a paper by … Continue reading “Way out there” paper claiming to merge physics and biology retracted
In August of last year, Mladen Pavičić, chair of physics at the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Civil Engineering, published a paper in Physical Review Letters on quantum teleportation, “Near-Deterministic Discrimination of All Bell States with Linear Optics.” Just six days later, after hearing from a physicist in China, Pavičić — who is also affiliated with … Continue reading Poignancy in physics: Retraction for “fatal error” that couldn’t be patched
Plasma Processes and Polymers has retracted a paper it published in March 2012 for what it describes as a “possible breach of ethics.” That certainly sounds bad — if inconclusive — but the authors maintain the whole thing was a simple misunderstanding. The article, “Plasma Acid: Water Treated by Dielectric Barrier Discharge,” came from the … Continue reading Authors dispute ethical lapse in case of double physics publication that wasn’t