Six months after we reported that journals had slapped expressions of concern on more than three dozen papers by a group of nutrition researchers in Iran, the retractions have started to trickle in. But clock started nearly two years ago, after data sleuths presented journals with questions about the findings in roughly 170 papers by … Continue reading “Yep, pretty slow”: Nutrition researchers lose six papers
Readers may roll their eyes at the various excuses authors use — including flooded labs and “my laptop was stolen” — when their data are unavailable for further scrutiny following questions. But here’s a case in which a stolen laptop is a real story. On April 5, Daniel Bolnick, the editor-in-chief of The American Naturalist, … Continue reading Ecologist who lost thesis awards earns expressions of concern after laptop stolen
Collaborations can be fraught. Ask David Ojcius. Ojcius, an emeritus professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Merced, and a department chair at the University of the Pacific, is up to four retractions, five corrections and an expression of concern in papers he wrote with collaborators in China and elsewhere. Ojcius … Continue reading On the perils of scientific collaboration from thousands of miles away
A retired Nepali professor and six others have been barred from research after plagiarism and duplicated images were found in 11 of their papers. Parashuram Mishra, a retired crystallographer at Tribhuvan University, in Nepal, is the lead author on all the studies. Most of the papers contain image duplications; the same figures were reused across … Continue reading Seven barred from research after plagiarism, duplications in eleven papers
A study co-authored by an editor who has previously opined on common excuses by authors about research misconduct has received an expression of concern. The paper’s first author defended the work, explaining that the experiments in question were repeated multiple times, and that the results are “valid and reproducible.” The study, titled, “CK1δ modulates the … Continue reading Editor who opined on author excuses has paper subjected to an expression of concern
Jasti Rao, a former star scientist at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria whose career flamed out over concerns about misconduct, gambling and allegations that he had mistreated employees, is now up to 16 retractions. The International Journal of Oncology, a Spandidos title, has retracted three of Rao’s papers dating back to … Continue reading “Falsifying elements” prompt retraction of three more papers by former “Peorian of the Year”
A journal has issued a dozen expressions of concern over articles that a group of data sleuths had flagged last year on PubPeer as showing signs of having been cranked out by a paper mill. The 12 articles were published between 2017 and 2019 in the International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology and were written … Continue reading Journal flags a dozen papers as likely paper mill products a year after sleuths identified them
An investigation by the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, in Memphis, into a 2006 Science paper found evidence that three figures in the article had been manipulated. Science sleuth Elisabeth Bik first flagged the paper, titled “Molecular Linkage Between the Kinase ATM and NF-κB Signaling in Response to Genotoxic Stimuli,” to the editors of … Continue reading University of Tennessee investigation finds manipulated images in Science paper
In August 2015, bioengineers gathered in Milan, Italy, for the 37th annual conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. About 2,000 papers were accepted and published online for the conference. But an author of one of those articles says he’s been trying to retract it since 2016. As a PhD student at … Continue reading Meet the postdoc who says he’s been trying to retract his own paper since 2016
A former researcher at the Cleveland Clinic who studied cardiac genetics has lost three papers for what an institutional investigation concluded was “more likely than not” a case image falsification. As we reported last year, the work of Subha Sen, once a highly funded scientist at Cleveland Clinic but who left the institution in 2011, … Continue reading Former Cleveland Clinic researcher’s papers “more likely than not” included falsified images, says investigation