The careers site of Science magazine has pulled an advice column posted today from virologist Alice Huang, who suggested a postdoc tolerate an advisor’s roving eye.
In the retraction note, Science Careers apologizes for publishing the post, even if it was for just a few hours. “We regret that the article had not undergone proper editorial review prior to posting.”
Luckily, we found a web archive, courtesy of Kelly Hills (@rocza).
Here’s the question, from a reader whom we presume to be female:
Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, an Elsevier publication, has retracted a 2014 paper by researchers in China and the United Kingdom for data misuse and authorship issues.
The article, “Optimization of fluidized bed spray granulation process based on a multiphase hybrid model,” was purportedly written by Dapeng Niu, of the College of Information Science and Engineering at Northeastern University, in Shenyang, China, Ming Li, of De Montfort University, in Leicester, England, and Fuli Wang, a vice-president at Northeastern.
But Niu apparently didn’t perform any experiments, lifted the data from other sources, and published the paper without his co-authors’ okay.
Here’s more from the retraction notice: Continue reading Sub-optimal: Industrial optimization paper crushed by author’s “serious error of judgment”
West Virginia University biologists have retracted two papers on insecticides for fruit pests due to a confidentiality agreement with a chemical manufacturer stating that the “results should not be published.”
The retracted 2014 articles in Arthropod Management Tests, “Control of Internal Lepidoptera and other insect pests in apple, 2013” and “Control of Oriental Fruit Moth and other insect pests in peach, 2013,” were written by WVU entomologist Daniel Frank and plant pathologist Alan Biggs.
We’ve been unable to find abstracts for the papers, but here is a sister paper Frank and Biggs published in 2012,“Control of Internal Lepidoptera and other insect pests in apple, 2012,” evaluating various insecticides for the control of internal lepidoptera on an experimental plot of Red Delicious apple trees in West Virginia.
Here’s the to-the-point retraction note, which is identical for each paper: Continue reading The “results should not be published:” Company confidentiality agreement squashes two insecticide papers
As might have been expected, continuing developments in the Michael LaCour gay canvassing study retraction have drowned out coverage of stories that ordinarily might capture a lot of attention, such as fake case reports making their way into CDC data. A sampling:
But just like last week, there was plenty happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Gay canvassing study saga continues; Elsevier policy sparks concern; a string of scandals
As promised, Michael LaCour, the co-author of the now-retracted Science paper on gay canvassing, has posted a detailed response to the allegations against him.
In the 23-page document — available here — LaCour claims to
introduce evidence uncovering discrepancies between the timeline of events presented in Broockman et al. (2015) and the actual timeline of events and disclosure.
He also says that the graduate students who critiqued his work failed to follow the correct sampling procedure and chose an incorrect variable in what LaCour calls “a curious and possibly intentional ‘error.'” He writes: Continue reading Data “were destroyed due to privacy/confidentiality requirements,” says co-author of retracted gay canvassing study
A former employee in the public health division of the Oregon Health Authority committed misconduct in 56 case reports about Clostridium difficile infections in Klamath County, Oregon, as well as in a manuscript submitted to JAMA Internal Medicine and a published report in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in March, 2012.
Ryan Asherin, previously a Surveillance Officer and Principal Investigator at the OHA, was a busy man. According to the details from a report by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, Asherin:
Continue reading Oregon public health employee faked 56 infection case reports: ORI
The Journal of Neuroscience is retracting a 2012 paper on how estrogen produced in the brain shapes the auditory system on the basis of “a report from Northwestern University that describes substantial data misrepresentation” in the paper.
The paper, “Mechanistic Basis and Functional Roles of Long-Term Plasticity in Auditory Neurons Induced by a Brain-Generated Estrogen,” is, according to PubMed, the last one published by its last (and corresponding) author Raphael Pinaud, and first author Liisa Tremere, who were both at Northwestern University at the time. Before his position at Northwestern, Pinaud held positions at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Rochester.
Pinaud and Tremere jointly published a handful of papers on the role of estrogen in the auditory system of the brain starting in 2009, some of which are co-authored by two of the other researchers on the current paper, which has been cited 8 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Here’s the retraction notice:
Following revelations in io9.com this week from John Bohannon about how he successfully “created” health news by conducting a flawed trial of the health benefits of chocolate and gaming the data to produce statistically significant results, the journal that ultimately published the findings is now claiming the paper wasn’t accepted.
Trouble is, we’ve got correspondence from Bohannon showing that’s false. Here’s a quote from an email from publisher Carlos Vazquez to which Bohannon responded on March 2:
Following revelations of data issues and other problems (which crashed our server last week), Science is retracting a paper claiming that short conversations could change people’s minds on same-sex marriage.
The co-author who admitted to faking the data “does not agree” to the retraction, according to Science. Here’s more from the note: Continue reading Science retracts troubled gay canvassing study against LaCour’s objections
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. The results are meaningless, and the health claims that the media blasted out to millions of people around the world are utterly unfounded.
Given that the author himself says the study is meaningless, clearly, the journal will retract it, yes? Continue reading Should the chocolate-diet sting study be retracted? And why the coverage doesn’t surprise a news watchdog