Harvard has investigated work from the lab of a cancer researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center that has been under scrutiny on PubPeer for more than five years. Questions about the output of the lab, run by James W. Mier, began appearing on PubPeer in 2014, with comments about images that looked manipulated. The … Continue reading Cancer lab at Harvard subject of inquiry
A major new report about the dramatic warming of the oceans cites a 2018 Nature paper on the topic that was retracted earlier this week — the same day, in fact, that the report dropped. But one of the authors of that paper tells Retraction Watch that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report, … Continue reading Did the IPCC’s new oceans report mean to cite a now-retracted paper?
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper that claimed that scientists were … Continue reading Weekend reads: Citation manipulation gone wild; astrology meets research; a classic mistake in a study of free will
A cancer researcher in England says he will be retracting a 2011 paper after acknowledging “unacceptable” manipulation of some of the figures in the article. Richard Hill, of the University of Portsmouth, this week agreed to retract the article, “DNA-PKcs binding to p53 on the p21WAF1/CIP1 promoter blocks transcription resulting in cell death,” which appeared … Continue reading “I sincerely apologise:” UK cancer researcher calls for retraction of his work years after it’s flagged on PubPeer
Evidently meth is a gateway drug … for publishing misconduct. Researchers in China have lost a 2019 paper on how LSD can damage eyesight because they’d lifted much of the paper from an article that had appeared the year before in a different journal — about methamphetamine. The retracted article, “Long-term systemic treatment with lysergic … Continue reading Drug researchers trip up, lifting meth paper to write one on LSD
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. Retraction Watch came back online on Wednesday of this week, after a 10-day outage for technical … Continue reading Weekend reads: Questions swirl over kidney transplant papers from China; author apologizes for paper of whether women performed medical procedures as well as men; reports detail widespread fraud in UK lab
With the 6th World Conference on Research Integrity (WCRI) underway in Hong Kong, C.K. Gunsalus, who has served as a research integrity officer, expert witness in scientific integrity cases, and consultant, argues in Nature this week that universities should “Make reports of research misconduct public.” We asked her a few questions about why she has … Continue reading “Our current approaches are not working:” Time to make misconduct investigation reports public, says integrity expert
Nature has republished a paper on glacier melt that was retracted more than a year ago after the author became aware that he had made an error that underestimated such melt. The paper, originally titled “Asia’s glaciers are a regionally important buffer against drought,” was subjected to an expression of concern in 2017 after two … Continue reading “This is a case of good science:” Nature republishes retracted glacier paper
On March 30, 2018, The Ohio State University (OSU) released a 75-page report concluding that Ching-Shih Chen, a cancer researcher, had deviated “from the accepted practices of image handling and figure generation and intentionally falsifying data.” The report recommended the retraction of eight papers. By the end of August of 2018, Chen had had four … Continue reading A university requested retractions of eight papers. It took journals a year to yank four of them.
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured a profile of an image detective who works for free; … Continue reading Weekend reads: Ghostwritten peer reviews; is failure to report results misconduct?; scientific sabotage common in at least one country