Weekend reads: Underage sex comic study removed following outrage; postdoc claims retaliation; plagiarism in COVID-19 papers

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Company’s Alzheimer’s treatment study earns a flag ‘A significant departure’: Former Kentucky researcher faked 28 figures in grant applications and papers, say Feds Science retracts coral reef recovery paper more than a year after a … Continue reading Weekend reads: Underage sex comic study removed following outrage; postdoc claims retaliation; plagiarism in COVID-19 papers

Company’s Alzheimer’s treatment study earns a flag

A journal has issued an expression of concern for a federally-funded paper on Alzheimer’s disease after a sleuth on PubPeer noted potentially duplicated figures in the article.  We shouldn’t forget to mention, as the paper did, that one of the authors – a prominent scientist who happens also to be a co-editor in chief of … Continue reading Company’s Alzheimer’s treatment study earns a flag

Doctor faces apparent retaliation after alleging data manipulation in published trial

A rheumatologist was suspended from a professional society and his license to practice medicine was threatened after he raised concerns about data manipulation in a published study for which he recruited patients, according to documents seen by Retraction Watch.  The study, “Added Value of Anti-CD74 Autoantibodies in Axial SpondyloArthritis in a Population With Low HLA-B27 … Continue reading Doctor faces apparent retaliation after alleging data manipulation in published trial

University of Fukui professor called out for fake peer review, loses “love hormone” paper

A researcher in Japan appears to have written laudatory comments about her articles that a colleague passed off as his own during peer review. This may have happened for as many as five papers, two of which have been retracted. Akemi Tomoda, of the Child Development Research Center at the University of Fukui, collaborated with … Continue reading University of Fukui professor called out for fake peer review, loses “love hormone” paper

Crystallography database flags nearly 1000 structures linked to a paper mill

A chemistry database of crystal structures has marked nearly 1000 entries with expressions of concern after finding they were linked to articles identified as products of a paper mill.  The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) added notes to 992 structures in its database, according to a notice posted to its website in May. And a crystallography … Continue reading Crystallography database flags nearly 1000 structures linked to a paper mill

Exclusive: OSU investigation finds dishonesty and “permissive culture of data manipulation” in cancer research lab

A university investigation found an emeritus professor had committed research misconduct after reviewing dozens of allegations, culminating in a recommendation to retract 10 papers and revoke his emeritus status.  The Ohio State University investigated 20 manuscripts by the cancer research group of Samson Jacob after the university received allegations in 2017 of image manipulation stretching … Continue reading Exclusive: OSU investigation finds dishonesty and “permissive culture of data manipulation” in cancer research lab

Weekend reads: Harvard sued over retracted paper; ‘retraction with honor’; critiquing our fake peer review coverage

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Papers in Scientific Reports – and their expressions of concern – raise questions 250th COVID-19 retraction is for faked ethics approval Papers in Croce case with “blatantly obvious” problems still aren’t retracted after misconduct investigation: … Continue reading Weekend reads: Harvard sued over retracted paper; ‘retraction with honor’; critiquing our fake peer review coverage

Author objects to “irrelevant reviewers” as journal retracts four papers

Springer Nature’s Scientific Reports has retracted four papers by a researcher in Saudi Arabia who claims “irrelevant reviewers” just couldn’t understand “a new area of statistics.”  Here’s the notice for one of the articles, “Neutrosophic statistical test for counts in climatology,” which appeared in September 2021 and has been cited once, according to Clarivate’s Web … Continue reading Author objects to “irrelevant reviewers” as journal retracts four papers

‘Our deepest apology’: Journal retracts 30 likely paper mill articles after investigation published by Retraction Watch

A journal has retracted 30 papers that “could be linked to a criminal paper mill.” The move comes six and a half months after Retraction Watch published an investigation into the operation.  The investigation, by Brian Perron of the University of Michigan, high school student Oliver Hiltz-Perron, and Bryan Victor of Wayne State University, identified … Continue reading ‘Our deepest apology’: Journal retracts 30 likely paper mill articles after investigation published by Retraction Watch

The Lancet more than doubles its impact factor, eclipsing NEJM for the first time ever

The Lancet has overtaken the New England Journal of Medicine as the medical journal with the highest impact factor, according to Clarivate’s 2022 update to its Journal Citation Reports. And the jump wasn’t subtle: The Lancet’s impact factor – a controversial measure of how often a journal’s papers are cited on average – more than … Continue reading The Lancet more than doubles its impact factor, eclipsing NEJM for the first time ever