Publisher updates with more info on staph retraction

cidWe brought you this story last week, about a paper on drug resistant staph being retracted for a lab error. Now, we’ve got an update from Rachel Safer, senior editor for medical journals at Oxford University Press, where the paper was published.

Apparently, the researchers “inadvertently relied upon the use of a test system that was not approved for the microorganism studied in their paper,” leading to the retraction, and the corresponding author of the study wasn’t initially all that responsive:

Continue reading Publisher updates with more info on staph retraction

A PNAS expression of concern appears — and so does its revealing backstory

pnas 1113When retraction notices and expressions of concern appear, particularly those that are opaque, we try our best to find out what’s behind them, whether it’s better explanations or the steps that led to moves. Today, we have one story in which we’ve been able to learn a lot more than usual.

In April, Bas van Steensel, Wendy Bickmore, Thomas Cremer, and Kerstin Bystricky sent a letter to about 80 leading labs in nuclear organization and steroid receptor biology. It began (we’ve added some relevant links): Continue reading A PNAS expression of concern appears — and so does its revealing backstory

Another retraction for Diederik Stapel, this one from Dutch drama festival on “truth and reality”

stapel_npcHere’s a case of art imitating science.

The organizers of a Dutch drama festival have put a halt to a play about the disgraced social psychologist Diederik Stapel, prompting protests from the authors of the skit — one of whom is Stapel himself.

According to an article in NRC Handelsblad: Continue reading Another retraction for Diederik Stapel, this one from Dutch drama festival on “truth and reality”

PubPeer Selections: “Meta-rant” about Science paper; posting raw data satisfies critics; was gel splicing ever OK?

pubpeerHere’s another installment of PubPeer Selections:

Continue reading PubPeer Selections: “Meta-rant” about Science paper; posting raw data satisfies critics; was gel splicing ever OK?

What should an ideal retraction notice look like? We (and COPE) want your input

copeLast week, we announced a new partnership with PRE (Peer Review Evaluation) “to improve access to information about retraction policies.” The first step, we and PRE said, was that Retraction Watch would create guidelines for retraction notices, to which PRE’s flagship product, PRE-val, would link.

Well, it turns out that great minds think alike, or along similar lines, anyway. Today we learned that next week, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) will be discussing a standard retraction form proposed by friend of Retraction Watch Hervé Maisonneuve, who has published several papers on retractions.  According to a writeup: Continue reading What should an ideal retraction notice look like? We (and COPE) want your input

Hayabusa Science retraction made official, but behind a paywall

science 62714Science has published the retraction of a 2006 paper about an asteroid, following a report in its news pages that the study’s authors had requested the move.

Here’s the paywalled — tsk, tsk — notice: Continue reading Hayabusa Science retraction made official, but behind a paywall

Scientist in Ireland notches two mysterious retractions and a correction

Sinead Miggin, via NUIM
Sinead Miggin, via NUIM

Sinead Miggin, a biologist at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, has withdrawn two papers from the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) and has corrected another paper, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Here’s the opaque JBC notice for “14-3-3ϵ and 14-3-3σ inhibit Toll-like receptor (TLR)-mediated proinflammatory cytokine induction,” a paper first published in November 2012: Continue reading Scientist in Ireland notches two mysterious retractions and a correction

Montenegro’s science minister accused of plagiarism

vlahovic
Sanja Vlahovic

Sanja Vlahovic, science minister of Montenegro, copied two-thirds of a 2010 paper on tourism from previously published work by other academics, according to the national daily newspaper Vijesti.

The newspaper compared her paper, “Destinations’ Competitiveness in Modern Tourism,” presented at the Tourism & Hospitality Management 2010 conference in Opatija, Croatia, to three previously published papers and found much of the content to be identical, without the minister acknowledging two of those papers in the bibliography. Continue reading Montenegro’s science minister accused of plagiarism

Weekend reads: A scientific impostor, Retraction Watch comments lead to retractions

booksHere at Retraction Watch, the week featured the revelations of the peer reviews of an early version of the STAP stem cell paper, and an announcement about a new partnership. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: A scientific impostor, Retraction Watch comments lead to retractions

Wrong in the tooth: Faked data, authorship issues force retraction of dental paper

cridCase Reports in Dentistry has pulled a 2014 article about an oral parasitic infection (caution: not pretty) after learning that the authors were not exactly honest about their work.

Here’s the abstract of the paper, “Rhinosporidiosis of the Parotid Duct”: Continue reading Wrong in the tooth: Faked data, authorship issues force retraction of dental paper