We have a follow-up from last week’s story about a University College London (UCL) investigation into the work of Giulio Cossu that found errors but no “deliberate intention to mislead.”UCL said it will not make the full report available:
A cell biologist at University College London (UCL) who has had one paper retracted and another corrected has been cleared of misconduct by the university. The news, first reported by Times Higher Education, comes after a retraction of a paper by Giulio Cossu prompted by pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis that we wrote about in January. … Continue reading UCL finds errors in work by biologist Cossu, but no “deliberate intention to mislead”
A 1984 paper in Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B is now subject to a notice of redundant publication because a lot of it had been published in Cell the same year. Whether 28 years — 27 years and 9 months, to be precise — is any kind of official record is unclear, since … Continue reading A new record? 27-plus years later, a notice of redundant publication
A second investigation into work co-authored by Paul Morgan, a dean at Cardiff University, has cleared him of research misconduct, but has found that Rossen Donev, a former researcher at the university — who has already retracted one study — falsified images in four papers. As we reported last August, Cardiff “initiated its Procedure for … Continue reading Cardiff clears dean of misconduct allegations, but finds former researcher falsified images
Duplication is a frequent reason for the retractions we cover. Such duplication retractions are so common that we don’t get to most of them. While many have argued that duplication pollutes the literature, and can bias meta-analyses when the same study ends up being counted more than once, others say the need to come up … Continue reading How much self-plagiarism, aka duplication, is too much?
Today brings two journal editorials about misconduct and retractions. They take, if we may, a bit of an optimistic and perhaps even blindered approach. In an editorial titled “Scientific misconduct occurs, but is rare,” Boston University’s Richard Primack, editor of Biological Conservation, highlights a Corrigendum of a paper by Jesus Angel Lemus, the veterinary researcher … Continue reading Not in my journal: Two editors take stock of misconduct in their fields — and don’t find much
An endocrinologist who resigned from the University of Tokyo last March as the university was investigating his work has retracted another paper. Here’s the notice for the paper by corresponding author Shigeaki Kato and colleagues in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research:
If you’re a journal editor or publisher, there’s a good chance your email inbox has seen its share of emails from “Clare Francis,” who has been crusading against text and image duplication in papers for some years now. Some editors have grown quite weary of those emails, sometimes because they don’t want to deal with … Continue reading Clare Francis scores a bullseye: Journal of Cell Biology paper retracted for image manipulation
Eric Smart, who as we reported in November was sanctioned by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) for faking dozens of images in ten papers and seven grants over the past decade, has had his first retraction. Here’s the December 24 notice, from PNAS:
One of the owners of the whistleblower site Science Fraud, which went dark yesterday in response to legal threats, has identified himself, and explained what happened. In a post on his personal blog (since removed)* — give the whole post a read if it reappears — Paul Brookes, a scientist at the University of Rochester, … Continue reading Owner of Science Fraud site, suspended for legal threats, identifies himself, talks about next steps