Check List, the “journal of species lists and distribution,” retracted a paper in February after the authors realized they hadn’t spotted a yellow-red rat snake in a strange range, but rather a green rat snake in its known home.
Here’s the notice for “New distribution and elevation records for the snake Pseudelaphe flavirufa Cope, 1867 (Squamata: Colubridae) in Oaxaca, Mexico,” as written by the authors: Continue reading Rats! Snake mistake sinks paper
Radical geography journal Antipode has retracted a paper on sexuality and geography after discovering that author Martin Zebracki published an almost identical article in a Dutch magazine on which he served as a member of the editorial board.
Here’s the retraction notice for “Right to Space: Moving Towards Sexual Citizenship Beyond the Nation State”: Continue reading Radical geographer doubles up on sexuality paper, earns retraction
The Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology — now BioMed Research International — has retracted a 2012 paper by a group from China who seem really to have admired a related 2007 article by a team from the Scripps Research Institute — and evidently other work, as well.
Here’s the abstract of the now-retracted paper, titled “Stable Plastid Transformation for High-Level Recombinant Protein Expression: Promises and Challenges” (emphasis ours): Continue reading Recombinant protein paper retracted for recombining others’ work
BioMed Research International has retracted a 2013 paper after it became clear that it was lifted from another 2013 paper about the same subject by some of the same authors.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Duplication forces retraction of liver cancer paper
The journal Blood has retracted a 2010 paper over the objections of most of its authors, two of whom were found by their university to have used “fraudulent methods” to obtain the data.
We first reported on the case of Gerold Feuer last fall. The State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse fired Feuer in 2010 after determining that he had misused state funds to enrich a company he had founded, HuMurine. A court agreed with many of the university’s claims, but ordered his reinstatement in 2012.
Meanwhile, as we noted last fall: Continue reading Journal retracts stem cell study despite objections of most authors
Karel Bezouška, the scientist who tried to derail an investigation into his work by breaking into a lab refrigerator has had an eighth paper retracted.
Here’s the notice for “Synthetic N-Acetyl-d-glucosamine Based Fully Branched Tetrasaccharide, a Mimetic of the Endogenous Ligand for CD69, Activates CD69+ Killer Lymphocytes upon Dimerization via a Hydrophilic Flexible Linker:” Continue reading Researcher who tampered with investigation up to 8 retractions
A group of physicists has retracted their preliminary report in the GCN Circular of a massive star-sized explosion after deciding that what they’d really observed was another phenomenon.
Although we could try to explain this, we’d rather leave it up to Giacomo Vianello, an experimental physicist at Stanford University, who was a member of the research team.
Vianello told us: Continue reading Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder where you went: Astronomy report retracted
Earlier this month, we brought you the story of a retraction from the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology involving rivalry and alleged sock puppetry. The author of the now-retracted letter, physicist Lorenzo Iorio, claimed that another researcher was using fake names to criticize his work on arXiv.At the time, the editor of the journal had told everyone concerned that the letter would be retracted, but the retraction notice hadn’t yet appeared. Now it has.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Retraction of letter alleging sock puppetry now cites “legal reasons”
One of the complaints we often hear about the self-correcting nature of science is that authors and editors seem very reluctant to retract papers with obvious fatal flaws. Indeed, it seems fairly clear that the number of papers retracted is smaller than the number of those that should be.
To try to get a sense of how errors are corrected in the literature, Arturo Casadevall, Grant Steen, and Ferric Fang, whose work on retractions will be familiar to our readers, in a new paper in the FASEB Journal, look at the sources of error in papers retracted for reasons other than misconduct.
Here’s the abstract (emphasis ours): Continue reading “Barriers to retraction may impede correction of the literature:” New study
The pixels were barely dry on our post reporting the 14th and 15th retractions for management professor Ulrich Lichtenthaler Friday by the time his 16th retraction appeared.
Here’s the notice for “The role of deliberate and experiential learning in developing capabilities: Insights from technology licensing,” a paper originally published in 2012 in the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management: Continue reading Ulrich Lichtenthaler retraction count rises to 16