Pain study retracted for bogus data is second withdrawal for University of Calgary group

molpainBack in January 2013, we wrote about the retraction of a paper in Diabetes that the authors had “submitted without knowledge of inherent errors or abnormalities that they recognized in retrospect after submission.”

Now, Molecular Pain has retracted a paper by the same authors, this time for data manipulation. The article, “Comparison of central versus peripheral delivery of pregabalin in neuropathic pain states,” was written by Cory Toth, a clinical neuroscientist at the University of Calgary, in Canada, and colleagues. It has been cited eight times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Toth said of the Diabetes article at the time:
Continue reading Pain study retracted for bogus data is second withdrawal for University of Calgary group

Erratum appears for Ulrich Lichtenthaler, who has 13 retractions

jpimUlrich Lichtenthaler, the management professor who has had 13 papers retracted, has a correction in the Journal of Product Innovation Management.

Here’s the text of the correction for “The Role of Champions in the External Commercialization of Knowledge, ” which is followed by the corrected tables: Continue reading Erratum appears for Ulrich Lichtenthaler, who has 13 retractions

Co-author of retracted conspiracy ideation-climate skepticism paper addresses apparent contradictions

Lewandowsky
Lewandowsky

We — and others — have been scratching our heads about the real reasons for the formal retraction on March 21 of a Frontiers in Psychology paper since the journal issued a statement on the subject on Friday that seemed to contradict the retraction notice and that certainly differed from accounts on some blogs. Today, we learned a few more details about what happened in the year between when the paper was provisionally removed and then formally retracted from a post by Stephan Lewandowsky, one of the co-authors of the paper.

The March 21 statement, writes Lewandowsky, Continue reading Co-author of retracted conspiracy ideation-climate skepticism paper addresses apparent contradictions

Weekend reads: Former ORI director speaks out; Is peer review broken?

booksAnother busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web in scientific publishing and related issues: Continue reading Weekend reads: Former ORI director speaks out; Is peer review broken?

Journal that retracted conspiracy ideation-climate skepticism paper says it did not “cave into threats”

frontiersFrontiers in Psychology, which last month formally retracted a controversial paper linking climate skepticism to conspiracy ideation, says it did not cave in to threats from skeptics, contrary to what a lot of news reports and commentary implied or claimed.

For example, summarizing a number of those reports this morning, before Frontiers had issued its statement, co-author Stephan Lewandowsky wrote on his blog:

By and large, the mainstream media coverage seems to have picked up on what’s really at issue here, namely academic freedom and editorial intimidation by a small band of vociferous individuals.

Here’s the statement, in which Frontiers stresses the rights of the people Lewandowsky and his colleagues wrote about:

Continue reading Journal that retracted conspiracy ideation-climate skepticism paper says it did not “cave into threats”

Do you see what I see? Heart imaging journal yanks cardiac study for plagiarism

intjcardimagThe International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging has retracted a 2013 paper by a group of researchers from Italy. The reason: plagiarism.

The paper was titled “Diagnostic accuracy of 320-row computed tomography as compared with invasive coronary angiography in unselected, consecutive patients with suspected coronary artery disease,” and it came from scientists in Rome led by Francesco Pelliccia of the Department of Heart and Great Vessels at Sapienza University.

Continue reading Do you see what I see? Heart imaging journal yanks cardiac study for plagiarism

MS paper second to fall following University of Queensland investigation

aphasiologyTwo former University of Queensland researchers have lost another paper following an investigation into their work.

In September, the university announced that a paper in the European Journal of Neurology by Bruce Murdoch and Caroline Barwood would be retracted because

no primary data can be located, and no evidence has been found that the study described in the article was conducted.

The university continued its investigation, and announced today that: Continue reading MS paper second to fall following University of Queensland investigation

Does publicly questioning papers lead to more corrections and retractions?

Paul Brookes, via URMC
Paul Brookes, via URMC

As Retraction Watch readers will likely recall, Paul Brookes ran Science-Fraud.org anonymously until early 2013, when he was outed and faced legal threats that forced him to shut down the site. There are a lot of lessons to be drawn from the experience, some of which Brookes discussed with Science last month.

Today, PeerJ published Brookes’ analysis of the response to critiques on Science-Fraud.org. It’s a compelling examination that suggests public scrutiny of the kind found on the site — often harsh, but always based solidly on evidence — is linked to more corrections and retractions in the literature.

Brookes looked at

497 papers for which data integrity had been questioned either in public or in private. As such, the papers were divided into two sub-sets: a public set of 274 papers discussed online, and the remainder a private set of 223 papers not publicized.

His results?

Continue reading Does publicly questioning papers lead to more corrections and retractions?

Late resveratrol researcher Dipak Das manages to revise and publish paper from the grave

Das, via UConn
Das, via UConn

Follow this timeline, if you would:

  • August 14, 2013: Former UConn researcher Dipak Das, who was found to have committed misconduct, submits a paper to Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity.
  • September 19, 2013: Das dies.
  • October 17, 2013: Das submits revisions to his paper in Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity.
  • October 18, 2013: Paper accepted.
  • January 12, 2014: Paper published.

That would appear to be what the timeline on the paper — which lists Das as corresponding author, along with a Gmail address — says:

Continue reading Late resveratrol researcher Dipak Das manages to revise and publish paper from the grave

First retraction appears for Dutch anthropologist Mart Bax

ethnicracstudLast September we wrote about the case of Mart Bax, an anthropologist once of the Free University in Amsterdam who allegedly fabricated elements in some of his papers, and claimed to have written more than 60 that do not exist:

Bax, who studied an Irish town he called Patricksville, a Dutch pilgrimage site he called Neerdonk, and Medjugorje, a Bosnian pilgrimage site, retired from the Free University in 2002. The university began investigating Bax’s work last year after science journalist Frank van Kolfschooten published Ontspoorde Wetenschap (“Derailed science”). In that book, van Kolfschooten raised questions about Bax’s work into an alleged massacre at Medjugorje during the Bosnian War. Bax responded to those questions in April of this year.

Here’s the university’s 67-page report, in Dutch. The university will not take legal action against Bax. It is unclear from the translations we’ve seen whether any of the papers will be retracted, but we’ll update with anything we learn.

Well, at least part of that ambiguity has cleared, with the retraction of a 2000 paper by Bax in Ethnic and Racial Studies. The article was titled “Warlords, priests and the politics of ethnic cleansing: a case-study from rural Bosnia Hercegovina” and has been cited 20 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s its abstract: Continue reading First retraction appears for Dutch anthropologist Mart Bax