The week at Retraction Watch featured an inscrutable retraction notice, and a raft of new retractions for a cancer researcher who once threatened to sue us. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Manuscript submission headaches; Trophy Generation goes to grad school; is science fucked?
Researcher notches fourth retraction, has left university
A researcher with four retracted papers has left his former institution in Malaysia, according to an official at the university.
In March, we reported on the retractions of two studies in Environmental Geochemistry and Health co-authored by Muhammad Aqeel Ashraf. Both papers were pulled citing a “compromised” peer review process. The now-retracted work was carried out at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where Ashraf was previously based.
However, Ashraf later moved to University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia; but now, according to an official at the institution, Ashraf is no longer based at UMS after “suspicion” arose into his work. Continue reading Researcher notches fourth retraction, has left university
Meet the researcher with 13 retractions who’s trying to sue PubPeer commenters: Fazlul Sarkar
Fazlul Sarkar has not had a good month: In the last few weeks, he has earned 13 retractions across four journals, the latest in the fallout from a string of legal cases that have pitted him against one of science publishing’s major players.
Sarkar gained attention in 2014 when he sued anonymous commenters of PubPeer for defamation, and for potentially costing him a new gig at the University of Mississippi. But before all that, he was a respected researcher with hundreds of published papers, 38 of which were cited at least 100 times each. He’d also received $12.8 million in NIH funding for his research. So how did it all fall apart?
With the involvement multiple lawsuits, multiple institutions, and multiple people — some of whom are anonymous — it can get complex trying to keep track of it all. So for your convenience, we’ve compiled a timeline of recent events in the case: Continue reading Meet the researcher with 13 retractions who’s trying to sue PubPeer commenters: Fazlul Sarkar
Author loses five papers, most for “compromised” peer review
PLOS ONE has retracted three papers after the first author admitted to submitting the manuscripts without co-authors’ consent, and an investigation suggested that two out of the three papers had received faked reviews.
Last August, the same author — Lishan Wang of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University — lost two more papers (one in Tumor Biology and the other in Gene), also after the peer review process was found to be compromised. All five papers — which share other authors in common — were originally published in 2013, and four list Wang as the first author. The retractions follow an investigation by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Here’s the retraction notice for two of the PLOS ONE papers, issued on July 26: Continue reading Author loses five papers, most for “compromised” peer review
Authors retract study with contaminated cell lines
Authors of a molecular biology paper have pulled it after realizing that their cell lines were contaminated.
According to the notice in Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC), the contamination occurred by “unknown means” in the senior authors’ laboratory, who told us the mistake was a difficult one to catch. He added that they discovered the problem after other researchers published conflicting results.
He also noted that the contaminated cell lines were not used for experiments in any other papers.
Here’s the retraction notice, issued on August 1: Continue reading Authors retract study with contaminated cell lines
Second retraction for bone researcher with lifetime funding ban
A researcher banned from funding by a Canadian agency for misconduct has earned her second retraction, after a reanalysis uncovered problems with the paper’s conclusions.
The retraction follows an investigation by Sophie Jamal‘s former workplace, the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, which has led to a recent retraction of a JAMA paper due to data manipulation, and a lifetime funding ban from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
The latest retraction stemmed from a re-analysis of the paper by the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study Group, of which the paper was a part; all authors but Jamal have requested the retraction. In the notice, the authors say that they believe no patients were harmed as a result of the “possibly invalid conclusions” in the paper, which showed patients with kidney problems were at higher risk of bone loss. A researcher told us a third paper by Jamal is also due to be retracted soon.
Here’s the retraction notice, issued by the American Journal of Kidney Diseases (AJKD): Continue reading Second retraction for bone researcher with lifetime funding ban
Journal flags two papers by prominent diabetes researcher, more questioned on PubPeer
Diabetes has issued two expressions of concern (EOCs) for papers co-authored by leading diabetes researcher Kathrin Maedler, adding to her previous count of one retraction and three corrections.
Both papers were questioned on PubPeer, alongside several others co-authored by Maedler, who is based at the University of Bremen in Germany. As we previously reported, PubPeer comments have led to one retraction for Maedler in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), and corrections in various other journals.
One of those corrections has now earned an EOC from Diabetes, which also extends to the original paper. Here are the notices, which asks the University of Bremen to investigate further: Continue reading Journal flags two papers by prominent diabetes researcher, more questioned on PubPeer
You’ve been dupe’d: Results so nice, journals published them twice
With so many retraction notices pouring in, from time to time we compile a handful of straight-forward retractions.
Once again, this list focuses on duplications — but unlike other duplications, these authors were not at fault. Rather, these retractions occurred because the publishers mistakenly published the same paper twice — the result of a transfer between publishers, for instance, or accidentally publishing the unedited version of the paper. We’re forced to wonder, as we have before, whether saddling researchers’ CVs with a retraction is really the most fair way to handle these cases.
So without further ado, here’s five cases where the journal mistakenly duplicated a paper, and had to retract one version: Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Results so nice, journals published them twice
Beg pardon? Researchers pull cancer paper because, well, um, you see …
We’ve been writing about retractions for six years, and things tend to fall into easily recognizable categories — plagiarism, fabricated data, rigged peer review, etc.
So it’s always interesting to come across a notice sui generis, such as one that appeared in July in OncoTargets and Therapy, a Dove title, about a new way to detect tumor markers.
According to the retraction notice:
Continue reading Beg pardon? Researchers pull cancer paper because, well, um, you see …
Seven retractions for prominent cancer researcher brings total to 18
A cancer researcher has earned seven more retractions following an investigation into his work by his former employer, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, bringing his total to 18 retractions.
Bharat Aggarwal‘s name will be familiar to some readers, as he has threatened to sue Retraction Watch for reporting on his case.
All of the new retraction notices, issued by The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), stem from image-related issues. The now-retired Aggarwal has seven papers that have each been cited at least 1,000 times, and in 2015, he was on Thomson Reuters Web of Science’s list of The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. With these new notices, he also has made it to our leaderboard of individual researchers who’ve racked up the most retractions.
An MD Anderson spokesperson sent us this statement: Continue reading Seven retractions for prominent cancer researcher brings total to 18