Here’s how to keep clinical trial participants honest (and why that’s a big deal)

NEJMAdditional lab tests, creating a clinical trial patient registry, and rewards for honesty are among the advice doled out in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine for researchers to help avoid the major issue of participants lying to get into clinical trials.

In the Perspective, David B. Resnik and David J. McCann, both based at the National Institutes of Health, address concerns raised by a 2013 survey of clinical trial participants that revealed “high rates” of “deceptive behavior.” Specifically: Continue reading Here’s how to keep clinical trial participants honest (and why that’s a big deal)

Investigation ups nursing researcher’s retraction count to 3

Journal of Clinical NursingThe Journal of Clinical Nursing is retracting a paper “due to major overlap with a previously published article” from the same journal, following an investigation by the National University of Singapore.

By our count, this is the third retraction for first author, Moon-fai Chan, all for “overlap” with other papers.

As we reported in May, the Journal of Advanced Nursing retracted a paper co-authored by Chan for “major overlap” with a paper in JCN, that too the result of the investigation. We’ve also learned that the journal Nursing & Health Sciences issued a similar notice last year for another pair of overlapped papers.

Chan said in a statement to Retraction Watch Continue reading Investigation ups nursing researcher’s retraction count to 3

Duke researcher with 7 retractions earns two Expressions of Concern

American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care MedicineData issues continue to plague pulmonary papers co-authored by Duke University professor William Foster and former Duke researcher Erin Potts-Kant. Yesterday, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine posted an Expression of Concern for two articles from the pair while the findings are “under review.”

The notice was published after the paper’s corresponding author, John Hollingsworth (also at Duke), told the journal that “some of the data published in these articles may be unreliable,” a term that we’ve gotten used to seeing from previous retractions.

Another Expression of Concern from the journal published earlier this year for another paper co-authored by Foster and Potts-Kant turned into a retraction months later. Hollingsworth was a co-author on that paper and another paper retracted from Environmental Health Perspectives in July.

Continue reading Duke researcher with 7 retractions earns two Expressions of Concern

Author appeals retraction after co-authors dispute Nature Comm paper

nature comm

Two weeks after Nature Communications published a paper on asymmetric cell division in July, it posted a retraction notice saying the paper was submitted “without the knowledge or consent” of all but the corresponding author.

The following day the journal “amended” the retraction note to include the initials of the corresponding author, Aicha Metchat, then based at European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany.

The final notice for “An actin-dependent spindle position checkpoint ensures the asymmetric division in mouse oocytes” reads:

Continue reading Author appeals retraction after co-authors dispute Nature Comm paper

Marine mammal injury study retracted for using restricted gov’t data

Integrative ZoologyA 2012 paper that analyzed injuries to aquatic mammals in China has been retracted “due to the usage of restricted data from the Ministry of Agriculture of China.”

The authors — from Shandong University in China, The University of Hong Kong and the Peruvian Centre for Cetacean Research — “organized the collection of official documents related to strandings, bycatches and injuries of aquatic mammals in the waters of mainland China from provincial fishery administrations for the years 2000 to 2006,” according to the abstract. However, they may not have been supposed to do that.

Here’s the retraction notice from Integrative Zoology (which is paywalled, tsk, tsk):

Continue reading Marine mammal injury study retracted for using restricted gov’t data

Crime journal’s meteoric rise due to questionable self-citation: analysis

JCJShould it be a crime for editors to cite work in their own journal?

Last year, the Journal of Criminal Justice became the top-ranked journal in the field of criminology, but critics say that its meteoric rise is due in part to the editor’s penchant for self-citation.

As Thomas Baker of the University of Central Florida, writes in the September/October issue of the The Criminologist, a newsletter of the American Society of Criminology: Continue reading Crime journal’s meteoric rise due to questionable self-citation: analysis

Journal corrects CrossFit injury data in paper at center of lawsuit

XLargeThumb.00124278-201509000-00000.CVA study on the trendy and grueling workout regimen known as CrossFit has a correction concerning the number of participants hurt during 10 weeks of training. The paper has been the center of multiple lawsuits  — one by CrossFit, and one by a CrossFit gym owner — for allegedly over-inflating the risks associated with the regimen.

The original paper claimed that 9 of 54 participants dropped out of the study due to “overuse or injury.” The correction note says that just two left for those reasons.

The paper, published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research actually concludes that CrossFit has some benefits. According to the abstract: Continue reading Journal corrects CrossFit injury data in paper at center of lawsuit

Meet the new Retraction Watch researcher, Alison Abritis

Alison Abritis
Alison Abritis

Retraction Watch readers, please join us in welcoming the newest member of our staff, Alison Abritis.

To say that Abritis is a good fit for Retraction Watch would be a colossal understatement. Abritis started her PhD in public health at the University of South Florida several years ago, intending to focus on toxicology. But her advisor noticed that every time they met, she would describe problematic papers she was reading. So he suggested that she focus on scientific publishing in her research.

The result was a fascinating dissertation, Continue reading Meet the new Retraction Watch researcher, Alison Abritis

When the title states the wrong result, a paper gets corrected

PLOS ONE

Ever wonder why, on a round-trip, the leg home often feels shorter? A group of researchers found that’s only true in hindsight, as people look back on which leg felt shorter — the trouble is, when the paper first appeared, the title mistakenly stated the opposite was true.

One June 10, PLOS ONE published a paper entitled “The Return Trip Is Felt Longer Only Postdictively: A Psychophysiological Study of the Return Trip Effect”; 17 days later, it was republished under the correct title, “The Return Trip Is Felt Shorter Only Postdictively: A Psychophysiological Study of the Return Trip Effect.”

On July 15, the journal posted a correction notice explaining its mistake:

Continue reading When the title states the wrong result, a paper gets corrected

“Inability to reproduce” retracts inflammation paper

InflammationA 2015 paper on how proteins work to reduce inflammation in cow cells has been retracted by the authors “because of inappropriate statistical analysis and inability to reproduce some of the results.”

The journal Inflammation posted the retraction in August, just six months after it was published in February. It has only been cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the full retraction notice:

Continue reading “Inability to reproduce” retracts inflammation paper