Dear Retraction Watch readers: In recent months, since we switched to Google AdSense, we’ve heard from a number of you that you find some of the ads on our site annoying. Here’s a secret: Continue reading Don’t like annoying ads on Retraction Watch? Here’s how to keep them turned off
“Unreliable” data suffocates third paper for Duke pulmonary team
Once again, a team of Duke University scientists has retracted a paper, this time due to “unreliable” figure data.
With co-authors at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Duke team has withdrawn a paper from the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology after concern about data in three figures led them to repeat one of their main experiments. They subsequently found “no evidence” supporting their previous conclusion.
By our count, it is the third retraction from a team that includes William Foster, a pulmonary researcher at the Duke Medical Center. The Duke team retracted a paper in 2013 on a related topic—the effect of early life ozone exposure on airways—from the Journal of Applied Physiology when it was discovered that, familiarly, data in a figure were “unreliable”. Recently, they also retracted a PNAS paper on asthma treatment earlier this month, due to missing primary data and mismatched data from two sources.
Continue reading “Unreliable” data suffocates third paper for Duke pulmonary team
Weekend reads: Stress tests in psychology; writing advice to ignore; how to have fun in the lab
This week at Retraction Watch featured a sexist peer review seen around the world, and settlement of the malpractice case against Duke and Anil Potti. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Stress tests in psychology; writing advice to ignore; how to have fun in the lab
Malpractice case against Duke, Anil Potti settled
A lawsuit filed in October 2011 against Duke University and Anil Potti, who has retracted 11 papers and corrected a number of others amidst investigation into his work, has been settled, Retraction Watch has learned.
Potti resigned from Duke in 2010 following questions about his work, and revelations that he had lied on grant applications about being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. He now works at a cancer center in North Dakota.
The lawsuit was filed by subjects in clinical trials based on Potti’s work. Plaintiff’s attorney Thomas W. Henson, who confirmed the settlement, tells Retraction Watch: Continue reading Malpractice case against Duke, Anil Potti settled
Editor of Medical Journal of Australia fired after criticizing decision to outsource to Elsevier
Public health expert Stephen Leeder has been ousted as editor of Australia’s top medical journal after he questioned the decision to outsource the journal’s production and other tasks to publishing giant Elsevier.
Leeder, emeritus professor at the University of Sydney, told the Medical Observer he was asked to leave when he and the journal’s publisher, AMPCo, couldn’t see eye to eye on the decision:
NIH neuroscientist loses second paper, again the result of first author misconduct
Stanley Rapoport, a neuroscientist in the National Institute on Aging, isn’t having a lot of luck with his first authors. One committed misconduct and cost him a paper in the journal Age last year, and now he’s lost another paper with a different first author, but for the exact same reason.
The latest paper, in Neurochemical Research, examined whether chronic doses of aspirin reduce brain inflammation. It has been cited 14 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Here’s more from the note: Continue reading NIH neuroscientist loses second paper, again the result of first author misconduct
Misconduct earns researcher a five-year ban on federal funding
A University of Minnesota former chemistry graduate student has been banned from receiving federal funding for five years based on “a preponderance of the evidence that the Respondent intentionally and knowingly engaged in research misconduct.”
Venkata J. Reddy appears to have manipulated findings in one R01 grant application. In recent years, bans are less common than having research supervised. What’s also unusual is that the sanction appeared to have begun two years ago, in 2013, because it lifts August 26, 2018. The report, which is scheduled to published tomorrow in the Federal Register, says the debarment has a “joint jurisdiction,” suggesting another agency may be involved. [See first update at end of post.]
According to the ORI notice, Reddy “intentionally and knowingly engaged in research misconduct by falsifying and/or fabricating data that was provided to his mentor” for an R01 application to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). More specifically: Continue reading Misconduct earns researcher a five-year ban on federal funding
Drug study pulled after researchers admit altering trial protocol
The Egyptian Journal of Anaesthesia is retracting a 2014 paper by a pair of researchers at Cairo University who appear to have tinkered with their protocol after having received ethics approval.
The paper, titled “Can Sugammadex improve the reversal profile of Atracurium under Sevoflurane anesthesia?” was written by Heba Ismail Ahmed Nagy and Hany Wafik Elkadi, both in the department of anesthesiology.
Sugammadex, or Bridion, is given to rapidly reverse the effects of drugs that keep patients motionless during surgery. It is available throughout the world but not, as it happens, in the United States, where the Food and Drug Administration has refused to approve the agent because of fears that it might provoke severe allergic-like reactions.
According to the retraction notice:
Continue reading Drug study pulled after researchers admit altering trial protocol
It’s a man’s world — for one peer reviewer, at least
We’ve written quite a lot about the perks and pitfalls of the peer review system, but one thing we never really touched on was the risk that a reviewer might be … well, not to put too fine a point on it: a dope.
But Fiona Ingleby can speak to that. Ingleby, a postdoc in evolutionary genetics at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, co-wrote an article on gender differences in the transition from PhD-dom to postdoc land and submitted it to a journal for consideration. What she heard back was lamentably ironic — and grossly sexist. Continue reading It’s a man’s world — for one peer reviewer, at least
Chem paper fails to catalyze when wrong files are “inadvertently used”
Three chemists at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in India have retracted a paper from the Journal of Organic Chemistry because the “incorrect files were inadvertently used.”
The article, “Room-Temperature Cu(II)-Catalyzed Chemo- and Regioselective Ortho-Nitration of Arenes via C–H Functionalization,” described a protocol to perform nitration — the addition of nitro groups onto an organic compound — using an inexpensive copper catalyst.
All three authors signed the one-sentence notice:
Continue reading Chem paper fails to catalyze when wrong files are “inadvertently used”