On Feb. 10, 2022, Avinash Kumar, a PhD student at one of India’s top technical schools, sent a trove of research data to his adviser. But when the same data appeared in a paper in a scientific journal earlier this year, Kumar’s name wasn’t on it.
“I have done the experimental and analysis part of this work,” Kumar, who has since graduated, wrote in an email to Retraction Watch. “I am in deep shock after seeing this article online.”
A professor at the University of Pittsburgh who sued the institution for racial discrimination and retaliation has refiled his suit after a federal judge dismissed his claims.
As we’ve previously reported, Moses Bility, an assistant professor of infectious diseases and microbiology in the university’s School of Public Health, sued the school earlier this year.
Among many claims of racial discrimination, Bility alleged the school’s response to a 2020 paper he published and later withdrew that proposed jade amulets may prevent COVID-19 was discriminatory. (In the process of our previous reporting on the article, Bility accused Retraction Watch of racism.)
According to Bility’s complaint, Pitt officials demanded an investigation of his research, which found he “did not violate any academic integrity standard.” However, at a departmental town hall meeting over Zoom, presenting the investigation’s findings, “students in Defendant Pitt’s School of Public Health called Dr. Bility derogatory names, such as stupid, retarded, unintelligent, etc.” Bility later received two emails “from anonymous individuals who Dr. Bility assumes came from the Defendant Pitt community” that included racial slurs.
Photo by Bilal Kamoon via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/bilal-kamoon/
Researchers apparently don’t need to be real to publish in scientific journals.
Take Nicholas Zafetti of Clemson University, in South Carolina, who has at least nine publications to his name. Or Giorgos Jimenez of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with 12 papers under his belt.
Both identities seem to be bogus, according to Alexander Magazinov, a scientific sleuth and software engineer based in Kazakhstan. They add to a short but growing list of ostensibly fictitious researchers who appear as coauthors on real papers.
A former PhD student at Auburn University in Alabama relabeled and reused images inappropriately in a grant application, published paper, and several presentations, a U.S. government watchdog has found.
The Office of Research Integrity says Sarah Elizabeth Martin “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally or knowingly falsifying and/or fabricating experimental data and results obtained under different experimental conditions,” according to a case summary posted online.
A public health journal intends to retract an article that estimated how many unintentional pesticide poisonings happen each year worldwide, Retraction Watch has learned.
In response, the authors hired a lawyer to represent them in contesting the retraction, and maintain the journal’s decision “undermines the integrity of the scientific process.” This is the second time within a few months that the journal retracted an article through a process authors said was problematic.
Around Christmas last year, Preston Sowell received an unpleasant delivery.
An archaeologist who knew about Sowell’s work in southeastern Peru sent him a paper about new findings in a particular part of the country Sowell, an independent environmental scientist, was familiar with. The paper, written by several of Sowell’s former colleagues, contained a “shocking” surprise.
“I almost immediately recognized there were errors in the paper,” Sowell said. “I recognised, literally with my first read, some of those artifacts.”
A large U.S. university press has stopped selling two scholarly books about the philosophers Slavoj Žižek and John Venn due to problems with how the authors cited – or didn’t cite – source material.
In both cases, the University of Chicago Press stated on its website that the titles, released in 2023 and 2022, respectively, were “no longer available for sale.” But only “John Venn: A Life in Logic” by Lukas M. Verburgt was “retracted,” according to the publisher.
“The publisher has given me the opportunity to correct the book and resubmit it for review,” said Eliran Bar-El, a sociologist at the University of York, in England. “In light of it being an ongoing process, I cannot provide further details until there is a review outcome, which will be reflected appropriately in my publication list. At this time, I would like to genuinely thank the observant readers who have brought this to my attention.”
A year after the authors of two papers contacted the marketing journal where they had been published requesting retraction, the journal has pulled one, but decided to issue a correction for the other.
The authors had asked to retract the papers in October 2022 after other researchers found inconsistencies in the statistical calculations of the “Super Size Me” paper and could not replicate the results. The article had been cited nearly 200 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. It attracted attention from The New York Times and NPR, among other outlets, which linked the findings to the rise in obesity in the United States. An analyst also found issues in the 2016 paper, which has been cited 71 times.
When we published our previous story, Carolyn Yoon, the chair of the journal’s policy board and a professor of management and marketing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, told us the board was still waiting on a report from the special committee investigating the matter. “We hope to have a decision by the end of this month,” she said in April 2023.
