A Springer Nature journal has retracted a 2021 article with dire news for mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park about the prospects of extinction on the spikes of SARS-CoV-2 after finding a fatal error in their model of the outbreak. The article, “Exploring the potential effect of COVID-19 on an endangered great ape,” appeared … Continue reading Paper overestimated risk of COVID-19 to endangered apes
Two years after a psychology researcher in The Netherlands was found guilty of misconduct, including manipulating data and cutting co-workers out of publications, a new report says she deserves more retractions. In November 2019, as we reported, Lorenza Colzato was found guilty by an investigation at Leiden University of having failed to obtain ethics ethics … Continue reading University recommends seven more retractions for psychology researcher
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Paper on “suspicious activities” on India-China border retracted ‘[T]he authors plagiarised a large amount of text, but…retractions should not be used as a tool to punish authors’ Court injunction forces gastro journal to slap … Continue reading Weekend reads: Academia with and without peer review; bogus journals; rector found guilty of misconduct
A journal has retracted a 2020 paper about looking for “suspicious activities” on the India-China border — including an incursion in which 20 Indian soldiers were reportedly killed – citing “legal reasons.” The abstract in Springer Nature’s Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, which alleges that the soldiers were “brutally killed,” is rife … Continue reading Paper on “suspicious activities” on India-China border retracted
In September 2018, I wrote to the managing editor of FEBS Letters with my concerns about the extensive textual overlap between a 2011 article by Sonia A. Melo and Manel Esteller and other articles, including some that were not cited, such as a 2009 article in the Annual Review of Pathology by Yong Sun Lee … Continue reading ‘[T]he authors plagiarised a large amount of text, but…retractions should not be used as a tool to punish authors’
A group of heart researchers in China now have four expressions of concern, along with a retraction, for questions about the reliability of their data. The latest expressions of concern for the team, led by Bu Lang Gao, of Shijiazhuang First Hospital of Hebei Medical University, involves a 2019 paper in Springer Nature’s Scientific Reports … Continue reading Expressions of concern mount for heart researchers over data provenance
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Authors admit to stealing parts of a paper from a thesis on an unrelated subject Should residents and fellows be encouraged to publish systematic reviews and meta-analyses? How an ivermectin study that didn’t mention … Continue reading Weekend reads: Academic fraud factories; zombie science; ‘Silicon Valley’s new obsession’
Last year, our group noticed an improper analysis of a purported cluster randomized trial (cRCT) in eClinicalMedicine, a Lancet journal, and requested deidentified raw data from the authors to conduct a proper analysis for the study design. Things were off to a good start. The authors shared their data immediately – which is commendable and, … Continue reading Courage and correction: how editors handle – and mishandle – errors in their journals
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Exclusive: How a researcher faked data and gaslit a labmate for years COVID-19 spike protein paper earns an expression of concern Frontiers retracts a dozen papers, many more expected Authors to correct PNAS ‘nudge’ … Continue reading Weekend reads: A White House official’s retraction; ‘bosom peril;’ nonsense with a forged authorship
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: ‘This is really ridiculous’: An author admitted plagiarism. His supervisor asked for a retraction. The publisher said, “nah.” University of Rochester cancer researchers included ‘incorrect images’ in 13 papers, committee finds Cancer journal with … Continue reading Weekend reads: A museum of scientific misconduct?; authorship misconduct; uproar over renamed phyla