Retraction Watch

Texas dept. chair no longer in position amid university investigation and retraction

The chair of the Department of Pulmonary Immunology at the University of Texas at Tyler Health Science Center lost a paper last year after an institutional investigation found several issues with the data in the article.

Although the researcher, Ramakrishna Vankayalapati, is still identified as the chair on his online profile and the department’s website, he no longer holds that position, Retraction Watch has learned.

The paper, “Ornithine-A urea cycle metabolite enhances autophagy and controls Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection,” was published in Nature Communications in July 2020. It has been cited 21 times, according to the journal’s statistics.

Researcher loses PhD after admitting to fudging images

A university in Japan has revoked the doctoral degree of a former student found to have manipulated images and graphs in a dissertation and two published papers.

“Although our university has been working to raise awareness of research ethics in order to prevent research misconduct, it is extremely regrettable that such a situation has occurred,” Tohoku University President Hideo Ohno said in an announcement made on March 30 (translated from the Japanese using Google Translate).

The school did not name the former student, who was first author on both papers. But details mentioned in its investigation report (in Japanese) point to a researcher called Nan Li. Li was also named on a blog in Japan that covered the case (in Japanese).

Guest post: When whistleblowers need lawyers

In my prior career as an investigative science journalist and now as a whistleblower lawyer, I’ve seen institutions react to allegations of scientific fraud in two ways.

The first could be called “Investigate and Disclose.” This strategy was exemplified by Bell Laboratories’ 2002 investigation of allegations that Jan Hendrik Schön, a member of the technical staff, mishandled data. The allegations were published in The New York Times in May. In September, Bell Labs released a thorough report on its inquiry revealing fabrications in multiple Nature and Science papers, which were promptly retracted. The report made possible a 2009 book I wrote about the scandal, because once a proper investigation began (and it took a while to get going), the company clarified within months that Schön had faked his data.

The second, more common response is “Delay and Deny” or “Delay and Downplay,” which is a more common – but insidious – strategy. A Delay and Deny response is not helpful to anyone outside a tiny inner circle of administrators, irrespective of the merit of the allegations.

‘Compromised’ survey data leads to article retraction and university investigation

An article based on results from an online survey has been retracted for data issues, and an Australian university is investigating what happened.

The article, “International nursing students’ perceptions and experiences of transition to the nursing workforce – A cross-sectional survey,” became available online on Jan. 29, 2022.

Published in the journal Nurse Education in Practice, the study reported 110 responses to an online survey of nursing students who came to Australia from other countries and planned to remain there to work.

The retraction notice, posted this month, stated:

Weekend reads: Paying cash to boost rankings; billions lost from reformatting manuscripts; ‘the truth police’

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to more than 300. There are now 40,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains 200 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Paper with authorship posted for sale retracted nearly two years after Retraction Watch report

An engineering journal has retracted an article that was posted on a website claiming to sell author positions. The retraction comes nearly two years after we reported on the website and a whistleblower informed the journal.

The study, “On the dynamics of an ultra-fast-rotating-induced piezoelectric cantilevered nanodisk surrounded by viscoelastic foundation,” appeared in Mechanics Based Design of Structures and Machines in December 2020. It listed researchers at Sichuan University of Science and Engineering in China as authors. The article has been cited five times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The study was retracted on March 16, 2023. The retraction notice stated:

Spider researcher Jonathan Pruitt faked data in multiple papers, university finds

An investigation at McMaster University found that Jonathan Pruitt, a behavioral ecologist by training who has had 15 papers retracted in the last three years, “engaged in fabrication and falsification” including duplicating data, according to summarized findings sent to coauthors.

Kate Laskowski, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, shared on Twitter the summary McMaster had sent her about three papers she had coauthored with Pruitt.

Retractions should not take longer than two months, says UK Parliament committee

Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee chair Greg Clark

A new report from a UK Parliament committee calls for scientific publishers to correct and retract papers much quicker than they currently do, for the sake of research integrity and reproducibility.

The Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee of the House of Commons issued its report today, following an inquiry to which Retraction Watch and one of our cofounders, Ivan Oransky, provided evidence. Many others also gave evidence, including sleuth Dorothy Bishop.

The report is an extensive look at current issues of reproducibility and research integrity, and includes many recommendations. About the role of scientific publishers, the report says:

Prominent nanoscientist retracts paper after PhD students flagged error

The authors of a 2018 nanoscience paper have retracted the article after three doctoral students highlighted a problem with its methods.

The 2018 study attracted media attention for suggesting that nanospears, microscopic structures similar to splinters, may be useful in delivering gene therapies.

Paul Weiss, a nanoscientist and a corresponding author of the paper, announced the retraction on Twitter April 5, the same day the retraction notice appeared. Weiss holds several academic positions, including Presidential Chair of Chemistry and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Article that assessed MDPI journals as “predatory” retracted and replaced

A 2021 article that found journals from the open-access publisher MDPI had characteristics of predatory journals has been retracted and replaced with a version that softens its conclusions about the company. MDPI is still not satisfied, however.

The article, “Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI),” was published in Research Evaluation. It has been cited 20 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

María de los Ángeles Oviedo García, a professor of business administration and marketing at the University of Seville in Spain, and the paper’s sole author, analyzed 53 MDPI journals that were included in Clarivate’s 2018 Journal Citation Reports.

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