The week at Retraction Watch featured a call to make peer reviews public, lots of news about Cornell food researcher Brian Wansink, and a request by the U.S. NIH that the researchers it funds don’t publish in bad journals. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A researcher specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder is facing jail time for allegedly embezzling tens of thousands of dollars of federal grant money. Yesterday, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) announced criminal charges against Alexander Neumeister, … Continue reading New York psychiatry researcher charged with embezzlement, faces jail time
A US government agency has won an initial court ruling against OMICS, which the government says will help stop the academic publisher’s deceptive business practices. Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it won a preliminary injunction in September in its lawsuit against Srinubabu Gedela, CEO of OMICS Group and other companies. The lawsuit, … Continue reading US court issues injunction against OMICS to stop “deceptive practices”
In one of the largest such requests we’ve ever heard of, the World Health Organization has asked 46 journals to correct articles that refer to a bone fracture risk diagnostic tool as developed or endorsed by the WHO. By WHO’s count, the tool — known as Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX), which has come under … Continue reading WHO asks dozens of journals to correct papers on diagnostic tool developed by former collaborators
A university in Japan dismissed a researcher earlier this month after a probe uncovered evidence of image falsification in several of his papers. The immunology researcher, Masashi Emoto, denied any wrongdoing. He has said that the experiments in question were performed by another researcher and “he was not responsible” for the falsification. In 2013, Emoto … Continue reading Researcher dismissed from university for suspected misconduct denies responsibility
The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper that had been called “anti-vaccine pseudoscience,” a retraction following threats of violence against an editor, and an editorial board member’s resignation over how a journal handled a case of plagiarism. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A social psychology journal has added an expression of concern to a paper by prominent social psychologist Jens Förster, whose work has been subject to much scrutiny. This is the latest in a long-running saga involving Förster. The 2012 paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology had been flagged by a 2015 report describing … Continue reading Journal adds concern notice to paper by psychologist Jens Förster
A biotechnology journal has corrected a 2006 paper after discovering duplication and plagiarism. This offense is the second we know of for the corresponding author, Uttam Chand Banerjee, in the same journal, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology. Last year, Banerjee—who works at National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) in Mohali, Punjab, India—had a 14-year-old review … Continue reading Author who previously claimed plagiarism was a mistake earns new erratum
Earlier this year, the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center teamed up to write a letter. Addressed to the editorial office at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), the letter, parts of which have been published in a retraction notice, contained information concerning two papers on genetic … Continue reading UCSF, VA investigations find “clear evidence” of misconduct in cancer papers
A publisher has issued an expression of concern (EoC) about a study that claimed children with same-sex parents were at greater risk of depression and abuse, after posters using statistics from the paper to support a homophobic message appeared in Australia and the US. On Aug. 21, several news websites reported that these posters were … Continue reading Publisher flags paper on same-sex parenting after neo-Nazi group cites it