Judge denies motion by researcher to quash Diabetes expressions of concern

Mario Saad, via unicamp.br
Mario Saad, via unicamp.br

American Diabetes Association 1, Mario Saad 0.

As reported by the National Law Journal, a federal judge in Boston has denied Saad’s requests to stop the ADA’s flagship journal, Diabetes, from publishing expressions of concern about four of Saad’s papers, and to prevent the journal from retracting the studies.

Saad filed suit against the ADA on February 5. Judge Timothy Hillman wrote in his order yesterday that approving the researcher’s motion would have violated the right to free speech: Continue reading Judge denies motion by researcher to quash Diabetes expressions of concern

Frontiers lets HIV denial article stand, reclassifies it as “opinion”

frontiers phFollowing an investigation sparked by criticism for its decision to publish a paper questioning the link between HIV and AIDS, a Frontiers journal has decided to not retract the article but rebrand it as an “opinion.”

In September, 2014, Patricia Goodson, a professor of health education at Texas A&M University, published an article called “Questioning the HIV-AIDS hypothesis: 30 years of dissent.”

The paper was quickly called into question, and the journal, Frontiers in Public Health, issued a statement of concern and promised to look into the problem. Now, they’ve announced their solution: call the paper an “opinion” and publish an argument against it.

Continue reading Frontiers lets HIV denial article stand, reclassifies it as “opinion”

Stats mistake crashes bike accident paper

Image via Thomas Hawk
Image via Thomas Hawk

Two researchers at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada have retracted a paper that came to fairly common-sense conclusions about bike safety.

In the September 2014 issue of the Journal of Transport and Health, the authors concluded that slippery road surfaces, night-time biking, and higher speed limits were all associated with higher probabilities of a bicycle accident.

Despite these logical conclusions, the authors discovered a statistical error that “would significantly change the discussion,” according to the retraction notice.

Continue reading Stats mistake crashes bike accident paper

A rare event: Toronto Star retracts fear-mongering vaccine story

TorontoStarOriginalGardasilHeadlineFifteen days after publishing a widely-criticized article linking anecdotal health problems to the HPV vaccine Gardasil, the Toronto Star has issued a retraction.

The Page 1 story, “A wonder drug’s dark side,” was full of health horror stories from women who became sick “sometime after” the vaccine, as the retraction notes – twitching limbs, feeding tubes, even death. Each of these stories came from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a public database of anecdotes maintained by the U.S. government to help monitor rare side effects that might emerge when the vaccine is given to millions of people.

In mining this database of self-reported illness, the Star failed to give equal weight to the large body of scientific evidence that says Gardasil has very low rates of adverse effects and a huge public health benefit. The publisher’s note both acknowledges the criticism and explains where the story went wrong:

Continue reading A rare event: Toronto Star retracts fear-mongering vaccine story

Journal stops asking authors to stack citations following Retraction Watch post

After we flagged a journal that was asking authors to cite the journal in order to boost its impact factor, the journal’s website has now removed the request from its author information page.

We noted on February 9 that the Thammasat International Journal of Science and Technology‘s author information page had a helpful suggestion: Continue reading Journal stops asking authors to stack citations following Retraction Watch post

More black marks against unapproved protein touted as miracle cure

clinical immunologyA protein which is sold online as a cure for everything from autism to cancer and the focus of multiple retracted papers has earned more black marks: The UK government’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has issued a warning about its use after discovering problems in the factory, and a journal has removed the last author from a paper touting its benefits in HIV.

The protein, vitamin D-binding protein-derived macrophage activating factor (GcMAF), is supposedly a natural activator of macrophages. The website GcMAF.eu continues to hawk the results of treatment, while the Anticancer Fund has been pushing journals to correct the record on GcMAF. Continue reading More black marks against unapproved protein touted as miracle cure

Weekend reads: Why some scientists lie, the state of academic integrity in Iran, Nature goes double-blind

booksThe week at Retraction Watch featured Matlab miscoding and a look at how often a retracted paper was cited. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Why some scientists lie, the state of academic integrity in Iran, Nature goes double-blind

Harvard-Smithsonian space center retracts ruling on asteroid

Image of near Earth astroid Ida, via NASA
Image of main-belt asteroid Ida, via NASA

Between Mars and Jupiter floats a little rock with big dreams.

For three whole weeks in January and February, it was designated as 2015 BS515, a near Earth object, one of the many space rocks that astrophysicists keep an eye on for their potential to strike our planet. But then on February 12 came the announcement: the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics had downgraded the rock to a “routine main-belt object.” That means the asteroid is far enough away that we don’t have to worry about it hitting Earth any time soon.

The MPC gets sent two million observations of asteroids and comets every month. The five staff members then catalog these findings and figure out what’s new and what’s been seen before. The goal is to keep track of all near Earth objects, which make up about 1% of the observations the Center receives. It’s remarkable that there are so few corrections, given the 120 million observations on the MPC’s books.

Here’s a portion of the note that appeared in the most recent Minor Planet Electronic Circular (MPEC), which provides updates about comets, “observable unusual objects,” and other asteroid news: Continue reading Harvard-Smithsonian space center retracts ruling on asteroid

Science chemistry paper earns retraction after expression of concern, marking second for UT group

scienceThe authors of a 2011 Science paper that proposed a new way to direct chemical bonds have withdrawn the paper after concerns about the data prompted an investigation and Editorial Expression of Concern last year from the journal. The retraction is the second for the group, which has also had seven other expressions of concern.

After a reader emailed the editors to raise suspicions about the data, corresponding author Christopher W. Bielawski, then based at the University of Texas at Austin, led an investigation of all the figures. It found substantial problems: “In over 50% of the figure parts, the authors deemed the data unreliable due to uncertainty regarding the origin of data or the manner in which the data were processed,” according to the retraction notice.

UT Austin concluded that there had been misconduct, but did not elaborate.

Continue reading Science chemistry paper earns retraction after expression of concern, marking second for UT group

Several chem journals neutralize papers from Brazil group over figure fraud

quimica novaSeveral journals have retracted or corrected papers from a group at State University of Maringá in Brazil over what one chemistry journal calls “fraudulent use” of figures previously published by the authors.

Química Nova, which is retracting a 2013 paper, issued a notice that taps an additional eight articles with Angelica Lazarin as the corresponding author that reused figures. Specifically, the papers included images “where same trace on the figure was assigned to different conditions and/or compounds.”

A number of the papers mentioned in the Química Nova notice were co-authored by Claudio Airoldi, whose group retracted 11 papers in 2011 following concerns over fraudulent nuclear magnetic resonance images.

Continue reading Several chem journals neutralize papers from Brazil group over figure fraud