Nature, as we and others have noticed, has had what Paul Knoepfler referred to as a “torrent” of retractions in the past two years. That torrent — 13 research papers — has prompted a welcome and soul-searching editorial, as it did in 2010 when the journal had what it called an “unusually large number” of 4.
The authors of a 1997 paper on macular degeneration have lost the article after readers noticed uncanny similarities with a 1996 publication from several of the same authors.
The retracted article, “Radiation therapy for macular degeneration: Technical considerations and preliminary results,” appeared in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics — otherwise known as the “Red Journal.” The first author, Luther W. Brady, is a leading U.S. oncologist.
An architecture professor at the University of Arizona has been sanctioned — lightly — for plagiarizing from the thesis of one of her masters’ students.
A pair of researchers who have been calling for the retraction of two papers by cardiology researcher Don Poldermans say the New England Journal of Medicine is “not justified” “disappointing” in its refusal to pull the articles.
A little background: Poldermans resigned from Erasmus University in 2011 after having been accused of misconduct. Last week, we reported that the European Heart Journal had issued an expression of concern for a 2001 article on which he was first author.
Here’s a retraction notice in BMC Systems Biology for “Predicting new molecular targets for rhein using network pharmacology,” by Aihua Zhang, Hui Sun, Bo Yang and Xijun Wang:
Molecular Vision has issued “full retractions” for a trio of articles by a group of eye researchers. All of the articles were led by Azza El-Remessy, director of the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy’s clinical and therapeutic graduate program.
As much as that is, there might be more still with this case.