RW cited in scientist’s $8 million suit against university

Rakesh Kumar, via George Washington University
Rakesh Kumar, via George Washington University

Maybe the polar vortex is to blame (chilling effect, and all), but it must be lawsuit season!

First it was Mario Saad, who sued the American Diabetes Association to prevent them from retracting his papers in flagship journal Diabetes. Now Rakesh Kumar is getting in on the action. According to George Washington University student paper the GW Hatchet, Kumar was put on administrative leave from his position as chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular medicine in May 2014, though he was still allowed to run his lab until July 25. In response, he’s suing the university for breach of contract and emotional distress. You can read the whole thing here.

Kumar is asking for $8 million, claiming that GW failed to go through the firing procedure outlined in his tenure contract and owes him because he can’t get a new job.

The exact nature of the accusations against Kumar, who has had five papers corrected and two retracted for problematic images, is unclear. According to the suit, a copy of which RW has obtained: Continue reading RW cited in scientist’s $8 million suit against university

Math paper subtracted for plagiarism

Screen Shot 2015-02-10 at 1.02.16 PMISPACS’ Journal of Nonlinear Analysis and Application, whose website promises “very fast publication,” has pulled a paper for ripping off an article posted on arXiv.org.

Their plagiarism wasn’t exactly subtle. Here’s the abstract from the paper on arXiv.org:

We introduce and study the class of weak almost limited operators. We establish a characterization of pairs of Banach lattices E, F for which every positive weak almost limited operator T:E→F is almost limited (resp. almost Dunford-Pettis). As consequences, we will give some interesting results.

And here’s the abstract from the retracted paper:

Continue reading Math paper subtracted for plagiarism

IP lawyer/plagiarist’s PhD thesis under review

Dr Angela Adrian
Dr Angela Adrian

The Queen Mary University of London has withdrawn the PhD thesis of an intellectual property lawyer who was previously accused of plagiarism.

We first covered Angela Adrian last year, when she lost three papers on how to apply intellectual property laws and ideas in the age of the internet. (The irony did not escape Adam, who linked to Alanis Morissette’s ballad “Ironic.”) She is now the chief knowledge officer for reputation management firm Icondia, which helps the rich and famous “protect their unique and priceless individuality in the 21st century.”

It’s not clear what the investigation entails; a spokesperson for the school declined to give details “at this stage.” The thesis — about strengthening personality and property rights in the world of online gaming — is unavailable on the university website. Instead, this message is displayed when you try to access it at Queen Mary Research Online (QMRO):   Continue reading IP lawyer/plagiarist’s PhD thesis under review

Chem paper retracted because “a significant amount of data” was wrong

Jced_coverThe editors of ACS’s Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data have sunk a paper on halogenated alkanes after realizing that “a significant amount” of the data was “inaccurate,” thereby “invalidating” the paper.

Here’s the notice for “Influence of Solvent Nature on the Solubility of Halogenated Alkanes” (which has only been cited twice, according to Google Scholar): Continue reading Chem paper retracted because “a significant amount of data” was wrong

Refreshing honesty? Journal asks authors to help game its impact factor

homepageImage_en_USWe and others have documented plenty of cases where papers get retracted because authors manipulate citations to boost their impact factor.

Sometimes, journal publishers pressure authors to cite papers within the journal to artificially inflate its impact factor. Since this is highly discouraged – COPE has extensive commentary on the problem – it usually happens behind closed doors.

Since we’re all about transparency, we were delighted to discover that the Thammasat International Journal of Science and Technology, a publication out of Thammasat University in Thailand, lists the policy up front: Continue reading Refreshing honesty? Journal asks authors to help game its impact factor

“FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud,” says author of new study

jama int medFor decades, the U.S. FDA has uncovered misconduct in clinical trials but hidden it from the public, according to a new paper in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The study, by New York University journalism professor Charles Seife, looked at 78 publications resulting from trials where the FDA found serious misconduct, including “failure to protect the safety of patients” and data fakery. Only three of those publications mentioned the problems uncovered by the FDA. No retractions or errata were ever issued for any of them.

For example, in one of the three cases: Continue reading “FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud,” says author of new study

Figure dupe sinks cell bio paper

cellular biohemTulane researchers Tong Wu and Chang Han, who have been anonymously accused of figure duplication in the past, have now finally lost a paper for that reason.

The frequent plagiarism tipster Juuichi Jigen (a pseudonym) set up a blog in 2012 alleging that the pair inappropriately reused images in six other papers, though none of those have been retracted. The recent notice, issued at the end of January by the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, states that the figure duplication was confirmed by the University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Research Integrity. Han, the first author, was at UPitt when the paper was published in 2008, though she moved to join Wu at Tulane in 2009.

Here’s the notice for “Regulation of Wnt/ß-Catenin Pathway by cPLA2α and PPARδ“: Continue reading Figure dupe sinks cell bio paper

Diabetes researcher sues journal to prevent retractions of papers cited more than 600 times

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

Mario A. Saad, who last year retracted a paper for plagiarism, is now suing the American Diabetes Association over four expressions of concern in its flagship journal, Diabetes.

As reported in the Boston Business Journal, Saad’s lawsuit claims that his institution, the State University of Campinas, investigated two articles at the journal’s behest. The American Diabetes Association was unhappy with the results, and asked the school to reopen the investigation, including two additional papers.

Saad is suing to prevent the journal from retracting the papers, in addition to monetary compensation.

Continue reading Diabetes researcher sues journal to prevent retractions of papers cited more than 600 times

Weekend reads: Where to submit your next paper, NIH proposes “emeritus” award, research dollars wasted

booksThis week at Retraction Watch featured the debut of our new editor, and a unicorn. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Where to submit your next paper, NIH proposes “emeritus” award, research dollars wasted

Heart study bleeds into three papers, one retracted and one withdrawn

janWith the increasingly hectic pace of modern life, everybody is always on the look out for time-saving tricks and tips.

Scientists at the National University of Singapore and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University certainly found one, but we really can’t recommend it: doing one randomized controlled trial (RCT) with several outcomes, and publishing them as three separate 2014 papers with “considerable overlap.”

So far, one paper has been retracted, and another withdrawn.

Continue reading Heart study bleeds into three papers, one retracted and one withdrawn