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
Last week, we brought you the story of Thong Duc Le and his colleagues, physicists who were forced to retract four papers, including one that cited, as we noted “their own study that had already been retracted for plagiarism.” The team has now retracted three more papers:
Science doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Even vacuum science. The International Journal of Modern Physics A has retracted a 2011 paper by a physicist who failed to acknowledge the contributions — instrumental, it seems — of his collaborators. The paper, “Measurement of the Casimir Interaction Between a au Sphere and au Gratings” [au in this … Continue reading Vacuum force researcher retracts paper that failed to name collaborators
Graphene has been hot for several years. Here’s what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences had to say about it in 2010 when awarding two researchers the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work: Graphene is a form of carbon. As a material it is completely new – not only the thinnest ever but also … Continue reading Pair of graphene papers retracted
Have a seat, this one’s a howler. According to a retraction notice for “Computer application in mathematics,” published in Computers & Mathematics with Applications:
After five years of operation, the Nature Publishing Group is will no longer accept submissions to its preprint server Nature Precedings, having found the experiment “unsustainable as it was originally conceived.” Here’s the announcement sent to all Nature Precedings registrants this morning:
Late last year, we published an invited commentary in Nature calling for science to more formally embrace post-publication peer review, and stop fetishizing the published paper. One of the models we cited was Faculty of 1000 (F1000), “in which experts flag important papers in their field.” So it’s not surprising that F1000 is announcing today … Continue reading An arXiv for all of science? F1000 launches new immediate publication journal
Last week, we brought you the tale of a paper about camels that was rejected on submission, but published accidentally, and then retracted. It turns out this was not a unique occurrence. An eagle-eyed Retraction Watch reader emailed us about another such paper, this one in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research. The study, “Growth of … Continue reading Another paper rejected, mistakenly published, then retracted, this one in nanotechnology journal
In our 2011 year-end post, we promised to keep …an eye on what may be an emerging trend: The mega-correction. We’ve seen errata notices that correct so many different errors, it’s hard to believe the paper shouldn’t have been retracted. It’s unclear what this means yet, but watch this space for coverage of more examples. … Continue reading A mega-correction, but no retraction, in the Journal of Cell Science
One of the authors of a paper in Physical Review Letters has withdrawn it, after someone pointed out an error. The paper, “Coulomb Forces on DNA Polymers in Charged Fluidic Nanoslits,” was written by Brown University’s Derek Stein and one of his graduate students, Yongqiang Ren. It was published in February of this year, and the retraction ran on July 20. The notice is forthright: