Search Results for: images

Meet a sleuth whose work has led to the identification of hundreds of fraudulent papers

Last month, Retraction Watch reported on the case of Hironobo Ueshima, an anesthesiology researcher found guilty of misconduct in more than 140 papers. A journal editor, John Loadsman, was the first to suspect there were issues in Ueshima’s work. But this was hardly the first time Loadsman had been the canary in the coal mine … Continue reading Meet a sleuth whose work has led to the identification of hundreds of fraudulent papers

First, this paper was corrected. Now it has an expression of concern. And maybe, just maybe, it will be retracted.

Never let it be said that journals are not deliberative when it comes to correcting the record.  Of course, “deliberative” also means “slow.” Take a 2018 article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases (JID)  by a group of authors in India. 

Exclusive: Six years after a misconduct investigation, more than half of suspect papers remain unflagged

When the University of Colorado at Denver completed an investigation in 2015 into the work of a former faculty member, the school recommended that nine papers be corrected or retracted. But six years after the close of that investigation, the researcher, urologist Hari Koul, has had just two papers retracted and one corrected.  Multiple journal … Continue reading Exclusive: Six years after a misconduct investigation, more than half of suspect papers remain unflagged

Imperial College London researcher fired for research misconduct

Eric Lam, a highly-published cancer specialist, has been fired from his post at Imperial College London following a university investigation that found misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned. Lam’s work has been the subject of scrutiny on PubPeer for some three years, dating back to a 2018 post pointing out suspicious images in a 2003 paper … Continue reading Imperial College London researcher fired for research misconduct

‘Regrettably it took too long to investigate and retract this paper.’

A journal has expressed regret over its sluggish response to image hijinx in a 2017 paper on the antimalarial properties of a kind of pea plant. The article, “Antimalarial efficacy of Pongamia pinnata (L) Pierre against Plasmodium falciparum (3D7 strain) and Plasmodium berghei (ANKA),” was written by P. V. V. Satish and K. Sunita, of … Continue reading ‘Regrettably it took too long to investigate and retract this paper.’

Researcher loses medical degree for using paper mill to write his dissertation

A university in China has revoked the medical degree of a researcher found guilty of having produced his dissertation with the help of a prodigious paper mill.  As Elisabeth Bik noted last year in a post on PubPeer, the thesis by Bin Chen, a lung specialist at Soochow University, was one of 121 articles produced … Continue reading Researcher loses medical degree for using paper mill to write his dissertation

On the perils of scientific collaboration from thousands of miles away

Collaborations can be fraught. Ask David Ojcius.  Ojcius, an emeritus professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Merced, and a department chair at the University of the Pacific, is up to four retractions, five corrections and an expression of concern in papers he wrote with collaborators in China and elsewhere.  Ojcius … Continue reading On the perils of scientific collaboration from thousands of miles away

Editor declines to correct paper with duplicated image after earlier study disappears

Possession is nine-tenths of the law — at least, it seems, for one journal editor, who is refusing to retract a study despite learning that one of its images previously appeared in another journal. The reason? The other study has been removed from the web.  The paper is among 40 articles in Construction and Building … Continue reading Editor declines to correct paper with duplicated image after earlier study disappears

‘Unfair and unsubstantiated’: Journal retracts paper suggesting smoking is linked to lower COVID-19 risk

A paper suggesting that smokers were significantly less likely than nonsmokers to contract Covid-19 has been retracted because the authors failed to disclose financial ties to … the tobacco industry.  The article, which appeared as a preprint and then as an “early view” in the European Respiratory Journal last July, came from a group at … Continue reading ‘Unfair and unsubstantiated’: Journal retracts paper suggesting smoking is linked to lower COVID-19 risk

“[N]o intention to make any scientific fraud” as researchers lose four papers

Researchers in India have lost four papers in journals belonging to the Royal Society of Chemistry over concerns that the images in the articles appear to have been doctored.  The senior author on the articles is  Pralay Maiti, of the School of Material Science & Technology at Banaras Hindu University, in Varanasi.  “Polycaprolactone composites with … Continue reading “[N]o intention to make any scientific fraud” as researchers lose four papers