The fake peer review retraction count continues to mount.
Elsevier is retracting nine papers from five journals because fake email addresses for reviewers were provided during submission of the original manuscripts. According to a statement from the publisher: Continue reading Elsevier retracting nine papers for fake peer review
Despite acknowledging in its own pages that two recent high-profile retraction notices turned out to not tell the whole story, Nature will not be updating the original retraction notices, the journal tells us.
We checked in with Nature after it published two Brief Communications Arising regarding two high-profile retractions of papers describing a new method of reprogramming cells to a pluripotent state. (This method is also known as stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency, or STAP.)
We were particularly intrigued by the journal’s plans for the retractions, published in 2014, when an editorial in the September 23 issue about the new BCAs (here and here) suggested the wording of the notices might be problematic: Continue reading Nature: No plans to change wording of STAP retractions
We’ve found two recent retractions and an expression of concern for Joachim Boldt, former prominent anesthesiologist and currently Retraction Watch leaderboard’s 2nd place titleholder. He now has 94 retractions.
One of the retracted articles contains falsified data, along with a researcher who didn’t agree to be a co-author, according to an investigation by the Justus Liebig University Giessen, where Boldt used to work. The expression of concern is regarding some questionable data. The other new retraction is actually one of 88 papers that a group of editors agreed to retract back in 2011, after they were “unable to verify” approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the studies.
One of those 88 papers, we’ve discovered, has still has not been retracted. According to an editor at the journal, they haven’t removed it because one of Boldt’s co-authors has threatened them with legal action. Continue reading Boldt’s retraction count upped to 94, co-author takes legal action to prevent 95th
The week at Retraction Watch featured a mysterious retraction from PLOS ONE, and a thoughtful piece by a scientist we’ve covered frequently on where we went wrong in that coverage. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: FDA nominee authorship questions; low economics replication rates
A 13th retraction has been published for Jesús Ángel Lemus, the Spanish veterinary researcher whose work colleagues have had trouble verifying.
This paper was pulled for similar reasons as his other retractions: After retrying the experiments in two independent labs, fellow authors were “unable to arrive to any sound conclusion about the validity of his analyses.”
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences posted the notice September 16, three years after the paper received an expression of concern.
The retraction notice, signed by every co-author but Lemus, reads:
Continue reading 13th retraction issued for Jesús Ángel Lemus
This week’s issue of Science includes a retraction of a highly cited paper about manipulating the current in a string of molecules with a magnet, after an investigation by the co-authors revealed “inappropriate data handling” by the first author.
According to the note, the co-authors’ suspicions arose when they tried to follow-up on the data. Following a “thorough investigation,” they concluded that first author Rabindra N. Mahato had handled the data in such a way that they could no longer trust the conclusions. In the end, Mahato agreed to the retraction.
Here’s more from the note: Continue reading Authors pull Science paper on molecular wires for “inappropriate data handling”
We are pleased to present a guest post by Paolo Macchiarini, a surgeon best known for pioneering the creation of tracheas from cadavers and patients’ own stem cells. Macchiarini has faced some harsh criticisms over the years, including accusations of downplaying the risks of the procedure and not obtaining proper consent. We have covered the investigation, including the recent verdict by Karolinska Institutet that he acted “without due care,” but was not guilty of misconduct. He has taken issue with some aspects of our coverage, and has written a guest post to present his side of the story. We welcome such debate, and have included a short response at the end of his post.
I admire the underlying aims of Retraction Watch. That might come as a surprise to some readers of the site, given that it has a whole page devoted to me in its archives. However, I believe passionately that scientific misconduct is a serious crime. It not only undermines the very purpose of science, but has victims as well, especially in clinical specialisms. It is vital that misconduct is detected, that fraudulent work is retracted and those retractions made public. That is why I support Retraction Watch’s aims. But I am not writing in wholehearted support of the site. Continue reading Where I think Retraction Watch went wrong: A guest post from Paolo Macchiarini
This is the third and final article in a series by John R. Thomas, Jr., a lawyer at Gentry Locke [Editor’s note, 3/26/19: He has since moved to Haley, Hafemann, Magee and Thomas] who represents whistleblowers in a variety of False Claims Act cases. His first article discussed the background of the False Claims Act (“FCA”) and how it might apply to scientific misconduct, and his second article provided advice on how to know if you have a viable FCA case. In this installment, he writes about the procedure for bringing an FCA case and how the damages and whistleblower’s share are calculated.
Suppose you are a potential whistleblower. You believe that your PI is manipulating data in publications. You suspect that a fellow lab technician is tampering with experiments. You are a PI who knows that your colleague is “double dipping” on Federal grants. What should you do? Continue reading So you want to be a whistleblower? Part III
An environmental journal is retracting an article about the risks of pesticides to groundwater after determining it contained data that “the authors did not have permission (implicit or explicit) to publish.”
According to the retraction note in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, the paper said the data came from a non-author’s PhD thesis, but it’s not there. Those mysterious data were used to validate a model for pesticide exposures, described in an excerpt from the abstract: Continue reading Authors “did not have permission” to use pesticide data
A group of researchers in Hong Kong and China have lost a pair of papers on liver transplantation after concerns were raised about the “origin of images” in the two studies.
The articles appeared in the American Journal of Transplantation in January and February of 2006, and came from the lab of S. T. Fan, of the University of Hong Kong. When the authors were asked about the images, they “were unable to satisfactorily mitigate the concerns.”
According to this bio from the journal Hepatobiliary Surgery and Nutrition, Fan: Continue reading Image issues force retraction of liver transplant papers