Chemists Bielawski and Wiggins up to eight expressions of concern, one retraction

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Christopher Bielawski

Two researchers who already had three expressions of concern under their belts have five more, plus a retraction.

Kelly Wiggins and Christopher Bielawski share authorship on all the papers in question. After the first set of EoCs, Bielawski, at the time a PI at UT Austin, told Chemistry and Engineering News that a “former lab member” had admitted to faking the data. The recent retraction indicates that University of Texas at Austin’s Office of Research Integrity formally investigated the lab, and determined that Bielawski was telling the truth about a former lab member being to blame.

Bielawski has since taken a post at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. He told us that move was unrelated to anything that happened at UT Austin, but declined to answer other questions. Wiggins got a postdoc at the University of Illinois, which an Illinois spokesperson confirmed lasted from July 1 2013 to January 22 2014; we’re waiting to hear back on our question about whether her departure had anything to do with misconduct.

Here’s the retraction notice for “A Mechanochemical Approach to Deracemization,” in Wiley journal Angewandte Chemie: Continue reading Chemists Bielawski and Wiggins up to eight expressions of concern, one retraction

Leading diabetes researcher corrects paper as more than a dozen studies are questioned on PubPeer

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Kathrin Maedler

Prominent German diabetes researcher Kathrin Maedler has issued corrections on two papers, and told Retraction Watch she is in the process of defending the data on others.

14 of her papers have been critiqued by PubPeer commenters. The commentary, which spans from her graduate work in 2002 to a 2014 publication in Nature Medicine, includes questions about image manipulation and self-plagiarism.

Laborjournal’s blog (we have a column in their English-language publication) first flagged these suspicions in July 2014, after being approached by pseudonymous Clare Francis.

Here’s a comparison between figures in Maedler’s 2009 PLoS One paper, “Deletion of the Mitochondrial Flavoprotein Apoptosis Inducing Factor (AIF) Induces β-Cell Apoptosis and Impairs β-Cell Mass,” and one she co-authored in 2006 in Diabetes, “Low concentration of interleukin-1beta induces FLICE-inhibitory protein-mediated beta-cell proliferation in human pancreatic islets,” via PubPeer:  Continue reading Leading diabetes researcher corrects paper as more than a dozen studies are questioned on PubPeer

Researchers retract Science paper claiming to have detected a single proton

science jan 2015Less than three months after publishing a paper in Science which they claim to have been able to detect the spin of a single proton, the authors have retracted it for “a potentially serious issue with the main conclusion.”

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Researchers retract Science paper claiming to have detected a single proton

Weekend reads: Silenced Anil Potti whistleblower revealed; how to identify scientific crackpots

booksThe first full week of 2015 featured a few drug company-related retractions. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Silenced Anil Potti whistleblower revealed; how to identify scientific crackpots

Award-winning plant researcher correcting several papers critiqued on PubPeer

Olivier Voinnet
Olivier Voinnet

Olivier Voinnet, a researcher at ETH in Zurich and the winner of the 2013 Rössler Prize, is correcting a number of papers following critiques of more than a dozen of his studies on PubPeer.

The work appears in journals including Cell and PNAS. Voinnet’s co-author on several of the papers, David Baulcombe, who is also highly decorated, left this comment on relevant PubPeer entries: Continue reading Award-winning plant researcher correcting several papers critiqued on PubPeer

PLOS Genetics investigating paper by Ariel Fernandez

Ariel Fernandez, via Wikipedia
Ariel Fernandez, via Wikipedia

Ariel Fernandez‘s list of papers with editorial asterisks next to them grew again this week.

Fernandez has had one paper retracted, two papers subject to Expressions of Concern, including one from Nature, and another put on hold over data concerns. He threatened to sue us for covering one of the Expressions of Concern.

Here’s the “Notice from PLOS Genetics” for “Protein Under-Wrapping Causes Dosage Sensitivity and Decreases Gene Duplicability:”

Please be advised that PLOS is working with the authors on an investigation regarding one or more issues that have been raised with respect to the content or authorship of this paper.

We asked Fernandez for more details. He did not provide any, saying only that the criticisms of the work “have no scientific value” because they were made anonymously: Continue reading PLOS Genetics investigating paper by Ariel Fernandez

Solar paper retracted after plagiarism and duplication come to light

rsesTwo solar cell researchers at the University of New South Wales have lost a paper in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews after the discovery of “substantial overlap” with work by a UNSW graduate student.

The notice cites three sources for the plagiarism. One is an unpublished manuscript by UNSW student Matthew Wright, which he shared with the authors of the retracted paper for “research collaboration only.”

The other two are papers that Wright wrote with UNSW professor Ashraf Uddin, who co-authored the retracted paper with UNSW researcher Xiaohan Yang. Yang’s name also appears on one of the plagiarized papers. All of that suggests that the “substantial overlap” includes duplication as well as plagiarism.

According to Wright’s Google Scholar profile, Uddin has been a co-author on every one of his papers, suggesting that Uddin is Wright’s thesis advisor or P.I., though neither Wright nor Uddin responded to our emailed questions.

Here’s the notice for “Effect of thermal annealing on P3HT:PCBM bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells: A critical review”: Continue reading Solar paper retracted after plagiarism and duplication come to light

A ewe-turn: Researchers lose sleep, and paper, over miscounted sheep

Suspicious sheep via John Haslam
Suspicious sheep via John Haslam

A group of Chinese cardiologists at Capital Medical University have done a quick ewe-turn, pulling a paper after mixing up both the author order and wrongly reporting how many sheep were killed in the making of this experiment.

We covered another retraction from the CMU cardiology department in September. The sheep paper was published in October.

Here’s the notice for “Mosaic tissue-engineered porcine pulmonary artery valved conduit: long-term follow-up after implantation in an ovine model”: Continue reading A ewe-turn: Researchers lose sleep, and paper, over miscounted sheep

“[A]nonymous accusation…is procedurally immoral and irresponsible,” says researcher fighting allegations

ssrnAn economist at Takming University of Science and Technology in Taiwan recently posted a preprint attempting to refute anonymous accusations that he repeated himself in critical reviews of textbooks.

From what we understand running the paper (originally in Chinese) through Google Translate, the reviews were published in Takming University’s in-house journal, Deming Journal. The editorial board received an anonymous letter on November 3 accusing Jen-Chang Liu of duplicating — aka self-plagiarizing — three of the reviews.

The editorial board provided Liu with the documents, and together with another Takming professor, Mark Yeats, he wrote a refutation of each of the accusations. It was published on December 20 on Social Science Research Network, a preprint repository for academic works.

Here’s the English abstract for “Academic Ethics: Plagiarism, Anonymous Accusation, and Self-Plagiarism”: Continue reading “[A]nonymous accusation…is procedurally immoral and irresponsible,” says researcher fighting allegations

Takeda group retracts paper after realizing “novel” compound had already been synthesized…by a colleague

BMC_CoverA group of scientists at Takeda Pharmaceutical, including vice president Yoshinori Ikeura, has lost a paper after realizing that their “novel” compound had been previously synthesized by another Takeda researcher.

The 2011 paper, published in Elsevier journal Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry, was the subject of a 2012 corrigendum adding two authors to the paper. The retraction appeared online in December of this year.

Seems like they didn’t add enough authors, though. Continue reading Takeda group retracts paper after realizing “novel” compound had already been synthesized…by a colleague