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: Continue reading Weekend reads: LaCour loses job offer; new Science data guidelines; Macchiarini grant funding frozen
A tale of two journals: Elsevier retracts paper after publishing it in the wrong journal
If you happen to pick up this month’s issue of Economic Modelling, there’s a little surprise on page 307—blank pages. Publisher Elsevier has retracted a paper from that space because it “inadvertently published” the paper in the journal. In fact, Elsevier meant to include the paper in the pages of its other journal, Energy Economics.
The paper, “An Approach to Computing Marginal Land-Use Change Carbon Intensities for Bioenergy in Policy Applications,” is most assuredly not about economic modeling. Rather, it describes an approach for assessing carbon emissions from the production of bioenergy crops.
Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading A tale of two journals: Elsevier retracts paper after publishing it in the wrong journal
PubPeer Selections: correction for Cell paper on stem cells; why omit controls; peer review report surfaces
One publisher appears to have retracted thousands of meeting abstracts. Yes, thousands.
Here at Retraction Watch, we’ve covered somewhere shy of 2,000 retractions in our nearly five years of existence. With this post, we may be more than doubling that total count.
That’s because it looks like IEEE may have retracted thousands of meeting abstracts. Yes, thousands.
We don’t know the exact number, but a search for “retraction” in the abstracts of the 2011 International Conference on E-Business and E-Government (ICEE), held May 6-8 2011, brings up 1,281 results.
The same search on the site of the 5th International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering (iCBBE), May 10-12, 2011, brings up 1,085 results.
We only opened the first few retraction notices, but they seem to all be the same. Headed “Notice of Retraction,” they read: Continue reading One publisher appears to have retracted thousands of meeting abstracts. Yes, thousands.
Lost your data? Blame an earthquake
A natural disaster is to blame for a retraction about lethal brain tumors. At least, that’s where the authors say the problem started: with a 2010 earthquake that caused a loss of “substantial data.”
The paper, “Superoxide-dependent uptake of vitamin C in human glioma cells,” looks at how the cells of lethal brain tumors interact with the vitamin commonly used to reduce side effects of therapies.
Post earthquake, someone digitally filled in a western blot analysis of proteins from a cell line and rat brains, as a “temporary solution.” And then the temporary solution made its way into the Journal of Neurochemistry.
Here’s the retraction note from the journal, including an image of the sneaky western blot:
Oncogene to retract breast cancer paper following years-old misconduct investigation
Oncogene is retracting a 2010 paper on the molecular details of breast cancer cells as they undergo metastasis following an investigation that discovered the first author had committed misconduct.
The thing is, the investigation concluded in 2012, and the paper — “miR-661 expression in SNAI1-induced epithelial to mesenchymal transition contributes to breast cancer cell invasion by targeting Nectin-1 and StarD10 messengers” — isn’t being retracted until next week.
According to Lucinda Haines, senior publishing manager at Nature Publishing Group, the paper will be retracted June 29.
We heard from Iris Behrmann, Head of the Life Sciences Research Unit at the University of Luxembourg:
Lancet Oncology updates conflicts of interest statement for cancer-cell phone paper
The Lancet Oncology is correcting a 2011 article about the cancer risks of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, such as those from cell phones, to clarify information about potential conflicts of interest for one of the experts who was involved in its preparation.
The assessments appeared as a monograph for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
However, after the 2011 paper “Carcinogenicity of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields” appeared, a reader raised allegations of conflicts of interest among its participants, which sparked a reconsideration of their disclosures.
The correction concerns the conflicts of interest for Niels Kuster of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, also a board member of the non-profit IT’IS foundation.
Kuster told Retraction Watch he disclosed everything upfront:
Continue reading Lancet Oncology updates conflicts of interest statement for cancer-cell phone paper
Beekeeper association stung by retraction after posting accusations about major honey processor
The American Honey Producers Association has apparently retracted an online article that said Honey Holding — a.k.a Honey Solutions, an industrial honey processor — had been charged with tax evasion and illegally selling Chinese honey containing corn syrup and sugar. According to the note:
AHPA has removed the article from its website, and is correcting and retracting the inaccurate statements with this posting.
The allegations were posted in the News section of the AHPA’s website in March, according to Honey Holding. The company said that the information was obtained from a since retracted Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article published two days before.
Here’s more from the note from the AHPA:
“Proven plagiarism” extracts paper on keeping teeth healthy in outer space
Aeronautic dentistry seems like a fairly unique field, but a review article about keeping teeth healthy in outer space has been retracted from the International Journal of Stomatology & Occlusion Medicine for not being quite unique enough.
“Aeronautic dentistry: an upcoming branch,” a review article, appears to have lifted pieces of other works “verbatim and without citation,” according to a representative from the journal’s publisher.
According to the first author, any plagiarism was purely accidental:
The amount of material which seems to be plagiarised was not done intentionally.
The retraction note is a single line: Continue reading “Proven plagiarism” extracts paper on keeping teeth healthy in outer space
Northwestern pulls bioethics publication with oral sex essay, reposts one year later
Northwestern University has reposted a publication from the Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program at the Feinberg School of Medicine that included a controversial essay about oral sex, after it was pulled for more than a year.
The essay was included in an issue guest edited by faculty member Alice Dreger—who penned a post for us in March about the ways in which attacks on academic freedom have increased, during the time her own publication had been taken offline.
The essay, “Head Nurses,” presents the story of William Peace, who wrote that he received oral sex from a nurse after he became paralyzed at the age of 18: