Call it uncreative non-destruction. A team from China and, it appears, Mississippi, has lost a paper in Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation for duplicate publication. Here’s the notice (a PDF):
As regular Retraction Watch readers may have noticed, a number of sites have sprung up recently to examine — quite critically — papers that other scientists say are dodgy. There’s Abnormal Science, for example, which has not been updated since last February, and a Japanese whistleblower took to YouTube to demonstrate what was wrong with … Continue reading Facing legal threats, Science Fraud temporarily suspends posting
Researchers often like to complain that science journalists puff up their results to sell newspapers. And there’s no question that reporters make missteps. But a commentary published today in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine brings to mind the old saying about those who live in glass houses not casting the first stones. In … Continue reading Researchers: Stop the spin and boasting in articles, say other researchers
A dozen years might seem like a publishing eternity, but the European Journal of Cancer has decided to purge a duplicate paper from 2000. The article, on the utility of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test for detecting prostate cancer, comes from a group whose work in this area has been widely cited as evidence for … Continue reading Duplication forces retraction of paper by group whose work is used to justify prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing
We’re following the case of a group that recently retracted a Nature Immunology paper for figure irregularities, soon after being forced to correct images in a Science paper for similar reasons. The Nature Immunology paper, “The helminth product ES-62 protects against septic shock via Toll-like receptor 4–dependent autophagosomal degradation of the adaptor MyD88,” has been … Continue reading Group retracts Nature Immunology paper for figure irregularities after posting a correction to Science
A few days after Clinical Infectious Diseases published a set of guidelines for using antibiotics in patients with cancer and dangerously compromised immune systems, we noticed that they had retracted the paper. The Medline notice read:
About two months ago, we posted an item on a curious retraction as the first installment in our Best of Retractions series. In the notice of the retraction in Agricultural Water Management, the editor wrote: Reason: During the second revision of the manuscript, the authors modified Figure 1 (changing the label from “Israel” to “Historical … Continue reading Update on a Best Of retraction: Elsevier edits notice suggesting renaming Israel “historical Palestine” was political
One of the winners of the 2024 Kavli Prize in nanoscience has threatened to sue a longtime critic, Retraction Watch has learned. In a cease and desist letter, a lawyer representing Chad Mirkin, a chemist and director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University in Chicago, accused Raphaël Lévy, a professor of physics … Continue reading Exclusive: Kavli prize winner threatens to sue critic for defamation
A paper finding kids did worse in school following the Flint water crisis is “severely flawed and unreliable,” according to critics who were deeply involved in exposing the crisis. The paper has now earned an addendum from the authors, but the critics say it should be retracted. The authors of the article investigated whether the … Continue reading Did Flint water crisis set kids back in school? Paper saying so is ‘severely flawed,’ say critics
A panel of scholars in Finland has downgraded 60 journals in their quality rating system, following months of review and feedback from researchers. The Finnish Publication Forum (JUFO) classifies and rates journals and other scholarly publications to “support the quality assessment of academic research,” according to its website. JUFO considers the level of transparency, the … Continue reading Finland group downgrades 60 journals