Editor of Remote Sensing resigns over controversial climate paper; co-author stands by it

The editor of a journal that published a highly contentious article challenging claims of global warming has stepped down over the paper. In a remarkable letter to his readership, Wolfgang Wagner, who until today was editor of Remote Sensing, an open-access journal that we’ve written about before, said he felt forced to resign because the … Continue reading Editor of Remote Sensing resigns over controversial climate paper; co-author stands by it

The $240,000 retraction: Scientist responsible gives back company shares

In December, we reported on how a Swedish company that was about to go public dealt with a retraction of a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that formed some of the basis of their work. The company, Wnt Research, was scheduled to go public on November 26, 2010, but after the … Continue reading The $240,000 retraction: Scientist responsible gives back company shares

Following investigation, FASEB Journal retracts paper after agreeing to run a correction

A contested retraction has punctuated the complicated saga of a 2003 paper in the FASEB Journal. (FASEB stands for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.) A retraction notice for the paper, “Molecular analysis of Nogo expression in the hippocampus during development and following lesion and seizure,” appeared in mid-June:

India’s Kalasalingam University swiftly fires professor, kicks out six students after data manipulation scandal

Kalasalingam University in India has fired a professor who last month blamed unethical students for data manipulation that forced the retraction of three papers amid questions about five more. As Krishna Pillai of the K2P blog reports, Sangiliyandi Gurunathan, head of Kalasalingam’s biotechnology department, was asked to resign, and did so on Friday, August 5. Kalasalingam also revoked … Continue reading India’s Kalasalingam University swiftly fires professor, kicks out six students after data manipulation scandal

Happy anniversary, Retraction Watch: What we’ve learned, and what’s in store for year two

Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the launch of Retraction Watch. We’d like to thank our readers, tipsters, and fans for your support and feedback — and our helpful critics who have spurred us to do better. Over the past 12 months we’ve written more than 250 posts about retractions ranging from the extraordinary — think … Continue reading Happy anniversary, Retraction Watch: What we’ve learned, and what’s in store for year two

Carsten Carlberg out at University of Luxembourg

The University of Luxembourg has fired researcher Carsten Carlberg after concluding that his name was a drag on the institution. Here’s an English  translation of an article about the firing, which many readers were kind enough to forward to us:

No confidence vote on sepsis paper data leads to Blood retraction

The journal Blood has retracted an article after the authors determined that they could not longer trust in the validity of the data. The paper has been cited 22 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. From the retraction notice: Niessen F, Furlan-Freguia C, Fernández JA, Mosnier LO, Castellino FJ, Weiler H, Rosen H, … Continue reading No confidence vote on sepsis paper data leads to Blood retraction

Tangled leads: Cardiac study retraction reveals a company’s stopped trials, and lots of questions

A retraction in an obscure journal. An equally obscure retraction notice. An Israeli company with no web presence. Conflicts of interest involving authors and editors. That’s what we’ve uncovered so far after noticing the other day that the American Journal of the Medical Sciences (AJMS) had retracted a May 2010 article by a group of … Continue reading Tangled leads: Cardiac study retraction reveals a company’s stopped trials, and lots of questions

Top Retraction Watch posts of 2010, and a short wish list for 2011

2010 was a busy year at Retraction Watch. (Well, actually the first seven months of it weren’t busy at all, since we didn’t launch until August.) We’ve published 88 posts, an average of about four per week. We no longer wonder whether we’ll have enough material to post frequently, as Adam told The New York … Continue reading Top Retraction Watch posts of 2010, and a short wish list for 2011

Wnt Research: How a retraction delayed an IPO, shrunk investment — but should build public trust

It’s easy to focus on the downstream scientific effects of retractions. But sometimes they have financial implications, too. Two weeks ago, we covered the retraction of a PNAS paper on a potential breast cancer treatment, one that would make tumors that didn’t respond to tamoxifen respond to the drug. We learned earlier this week from … Continue reading Wnt Research: How a retraction delayed an IPO, shrunk investment — but should build public trust