This week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a widely covered paper on marriage and illness, and the resignation of a high-profile lab head in Toronto. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A widely reported finding that the risk of divorce increases when wives fall ill — but not when men do — is invalid, thanks to a short string of mistaken coding that negates the original conclusions, published in the March issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. The paper, “In Sickness and in … Continue reading “To our horror”: Widely reported study suggesting divorce is more likely when wives fall ill gets axed
An HIV researcher has admitted to faking data in a published paper, a manuscript, and two grant applications, according to a notice released today by the the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). Former postdoc Julia Bitzegeio faked data in a 2013 paper, published in the Journal of Virology, about how HIV adapts to interferon. In the paper, “the manipulation … Continue reading HIV postdoc faked data in published paper, 2 grants
The week at Retraction Watch featured a look at why a fraudster’s papers continued to earn citations after he went to prison, and criticism of Science by hundreds of researchers. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A paper that had served as the key aspect of an April New York Times article about a recent surge of violence against immigrants in South Africa has since been retracted for plagiarism. The research, which appeared in the Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, had served as the source of the newspaper’s statement that the country is “home to … Continue reading Paper cited by New York Times for key stat gets retracted
Biophysicists in India have retracted two crystallography papers describing protein binding sites following “concerns,” according to one retraction note. The last author on both papers, however, told us he believed the retractions were the result of “trivial errors.” Although one journal praised him in its retraction note for his “positive engagement,” he said the process left him feeling … Continue reading Two crystallography papers break apart for “trivial errors,” says author
The big news this week at Retraction Watch was the release of more than two dozen retractions for accounting researcher James Hunton, and the sentencing of Dong-Pyou Han for scientific fraud (see more below). Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
This week at Retraction Watch saw us report on thousands of retractions from IEEE, which will have a serious effect on retraction record-keeping, a bizarre case of author impersonation, and a look at dentistry in outer space. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Note: This story has been updated to include the journal’s response. See below. Yesterday, John Bohannon described in i09.com how he successfully”created” health news — he conducted a flawed trial of the health benefits of chocolate, gamed the data to produce statistically significant results, and published the findings in the International Archives of Medicine: It was terrible science. … Continue reading Should the chocolate-diet sting study be retracted? And why the coverage doesn’t surprise a news watchdog
An expression of concern has been published on a paper that taps into a decades-long fight over how to remove lead from the water supply. The paper in question, published in the Journal American Water Works Association, supports the safety of a common but frequently criticized way of incrementally removing lead pipes. The expression of concern came after years of … Continue reading Expression of concern opens floodgates of controversy over lead in water supply