A researcher at Shanxi Normal University in China has notched two retractions, once for plagiarism and one for duplication. Here’s the most recent notice, which appeared in Chemical Physics Letters on September 25:
Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation has retracted a pair of articles by a group of chemists from Iran and the United States after finding evidence of plagiarism in the papers. The researcher team included authors from Islamic Azad University, Ferdowski University of Mashhad and, perhaps somewhat incongruously, Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. … Continue reading Journal retracts two chemistry papers for plagiarism
In 2005, Barbara Fredrickson and Marcial Losada published a paper in American Psychologist making a bold and specific claim: …the authors predict that a ratio of positive to negative affect at or above 2.9 will characterize individuals in flourishing mental health. The paper made quite a splash. It has been cited 360 times, according to … Continue reading Fredrickson-Losada “positivity ratio” paper partially withdrawn
Earlier this week, in a story by Richard van Noorden, Nature revealed the hidden workings of a scheme referred to as “citation stacking” that has landed a number of journals in trouble. The story begins: Mauricio Rocha-e-Silva thought that he had spotted an easy way to raise the profiles of Brazilian journals. From 2009, he and … Continue reading Journal retracts two papers after being caught manipulating citations
The Journal of Theoretical and Applied Physics has retracted a 2012 paper by a pair of Iranian cosmologists who failed to adequately cite one of the critical references on which they based their work. We think that falls under the broader category of plagiarism — after all, as Heisenberg famously postulated, the same text cannot simultaneously … Continue reading Gravity paper yanked for plagiarism by another name
Leukemia & Lymphoma has retracted 2004 paper by a group of authors in Mexico after concluding that, well, the article never should have been accepted to begin with. The article, “Adjuvant radiotherapy in stage IV diffuse large cell lymphoma improves outcome,” came from oncologists at the National Medical Center. Its abstract (still available on Medline) … Continue reading Lacking “scientific and analytical rigor,” 8-year-old lymphoma paper falls to retraction
The Journal of Mathematical Physics has retracted a paper by a prolific mathematician in Turkey who doesn’t agree that he plagiarized. Here’s the notice, for “Homotopy perturbation method to obtain exact special solutions with solitary patterns for Boussinesq-like B(m,n) equations with fully nonlinear dispersion:”
The Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering ran a retraction yesterday that’s left us scratching our heads. The paper, “Wettability-gradient-driven micropump for transporting discrete liquid drops,” was published on February 8 of this year. For a paper published in a journal run by the Institute of Physics, the retraction notice reads like a mix of Hindenburg … Continue reading How does a paper get published without the alleged corresponding author knowing?
A group of researchers at Bristol-Myers Squibb has had a paper retracted for reasons we can’t quite figure out. All the notice for “Simultaneous expression of antibody light and heavy chains in Pichia pastoris: improving retransformation outcome by linearizing vector at a different site,” published in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, says is:
BMC Genomics has issued an expression of concern for a 2011 paper by a prominent Argentine chemist, Ariel Fernandez, whose work covers several disciplines — “His research spans representation theory in algebra, physical chemistry, molecular biophysics, and more recently, molecular evolution and drug discovery” — and institutions. And therein lies the tale. Fernandez appeared as … Continue reading “Conflicting investigations” prompt expression of concern in BMC Genomics