Search Results for: idea retraction notice

Wash U psychologist sheds light on inquiry against former psychology grad student

On Tuesday, we reported on the case of Adam Savine, a former graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis who was found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have committed misconduct. Today, Blythe Bernhard, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has an illuminating Q and A with Todd Braver, whose lab Savine worked … Continue reading Wash U psychologist sheds light on inquiry against former psychology grad student

“Way out there” paper claiming to merge physics and biology retracted

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

How is Elsevier promoting ethical publishing? A guest post

As Retraction Watch readers know, we cover Elsevier’s journals frequently, including a story just last week about their peer review system being hacked.  And they’ve written about us, too. So we’re pleased to present a guest post by Elsevier’s Linda Lavelle, General Counsel-North America, about the publisher’s take on plagiarism and other unethical behavior — … Continue reading How is Elsevier promoting ethical publishing? A guest post

Math paper retracted because some of it makes “no sense mathematically”

What do you do when a math paper that contains some “constructions and arguments [that] make no sense mathematically” gets published? If you’re Applied Mathematics Letters, you retract the paper, “For the origin of new geometry.” Here’s the notice:

High school whiz kid retracts PLoS ONE herd immunity paper

It’s pretty impressive to publish two peer-reviewed papers on complicated vaccination models while you’re still in high school. So it’s not surprising that Nathan Georgette, who grew up outside of Jacksonville, Florida, earned a prestigious fellowship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. But perhaps even more impressive is realizing you’ve made a fundamental error … Continue reading High school whiz kid retracts PLoS ONE herd immunity paper

South Korean plant compound researcher faked email addresses so he could review his own studies

Scientists frustrated by the so-called “third reviewer” — the one always asking for additional experiments before recommending acceptance — might be forgiven for having fantasies of being able to review their own papers. But one Korean scientist, Hyung-In Moon, managed to do just that, through what must have seemed like clever subterfuge at the time. … Continue reading South Korean plant compound researcher faked email addresses so he could review his own studies

Author retracts PNAS paper about alleged Pliocene cheetah fossil that critics said was a fake

A paper about an alleged cheetah fossil from the Pliocene epoch, dogged by questions since its publication in 2008, has been retracted after one of the authors acknowledged it wasn’t what they thought it was. Here’s the notice for the paper, “A primitive Late Pliocene cheetah, and evolution of the cheetah lineage:“

Oh, snap: Cable wakeboarding injury paper falls to duplication

A team of what you might call daredevil researchers has lost a paper about a sport called cable wakeboarding after they tried to publish, in English, a very similar version of what they’d published in German. We have a confession to make: Before sitting down to write this post, we had no idea what cable … Continue reading Oh, snap: Cable wakeboarding injury paper falls to duplication

Biochemistry journal retracts paper for being, well, less than conclusive

Here’s a new one that may stoke the debate about whether a paper deserves retraction merely for being wrong or less than fully right. The journal Cell Biochemistry and Function, a Wiley title, has retracted an article it published earlier this year by a pair of Chinese authors — or, rather, from one author an … Continue reading Biochemistry journal retracts paper for being, well, less than conclusive

Circulation retracts four papers by author who misled on IRB approval

Circulation has retracted four articles by a pediatric cardiologist in Japan who failed to obtain ethics approval for the studies in question but evidently lied about it to the journal. The researcher, Hideaki Senzaki, of Saitama Medical University, is a highly-published investigator who trained for a time with at Johns Hopkins. According to the Circulation … Continue reading Circulation retracts four papers by author who misled on IRB approval