“Crack Down on Scientific Fraudsters” — our op-ed in today’s New York Times

nytlogo379x64As Retraction Watch readers know, it’s very rare for a scientist to face criminal charges for fraud, and it’s also very rare for the National Institutes of Health to recoup grants found to have involved misconduct. Both have happened in the case of Dong-Pyou Han, the former Iowa State University researcher who spiked rabbit blood samples with human antibodies to make it look as if an HIV vaccine was working.

We used that case as the basis of an op-ed that appears in today’s New York Times, arguing that it’s time to “crack down on scientific fraudsters.” Have a look.

Speaking of the Times, we’re also on page A3 of the paper version, in a story titled “Science Journal Pulls 60 Papers in Peer-Review Fraud,” which picked up the SAGE scandal we broke the other day. A number of other outlets have also followed up on that story, with many of them kind enough to cite and quote us. Here are several: Continue reading “Crack Down on Scientific Fraudsters” — our op-ed in today’s New York Times

CrossFit to be tied: Fitness company sues journal to retract “sloppy and scientifically unreliable work”

Lawsuits are usually dry and boring, so it’s always fun to read one with a little life.

Here’s one of those: CrossFit, the fitness program famous for its brief, strenuous exercises and passionate devotees, is suing the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NCSA), which it considers its staid competitor for the nation’s sweat and cash.

According to CrossFit, the NSCA published a study with a “falsified rate of injury,” “in an effort to portray CrossFit as ‘dangerous’ and therefore a fitness program that should be avoided.”

No matter that the study, published in NSCA’s official research journal, the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, concluded overall that CrossFit is a useful form of exercise. The suit says that the authors fudged a few statistics about participants’ injuries. Here’s the relevant section from the paper, titled “Crossfit-based high-intensity power training improves maximal aerobic fitness and body composition:”

Continue reading CrossFit to be tied: Fitness company sues journal to retract “sloppy and scientifically unreliable work”

Author steps in to clarify vague tuberculosis retraction

You’ve got to love when an author is willing to detail the specifics of an unhelpful retraction notice.

This May, a paper came out in Journal of Thoracic Diseases about drug-resistant tuberculosis. It was retracted in June, for “some misconduct in the manuscript.”

Here’s the notice:

The article “Application status of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry in the identification and drug resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis” (doi: 10.3978/j.issn.2072-1439.2014.02.19) that appeared on page 512-516 of the May 2014 issue of the Journal of Thoracic Disease needs to be withdrawn due to some misconduct in the manuscript. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Since that’s pretty vague and unhelpful, we reached out to corresponding author Jiayun Liu, who gave us a thorough rundown:

Continue reading Author steps in to clarify vague tuberculosis retraction

If only more retractions could be like this: Authors of cardiac stem cell paper show the way

Researchers at Qingdao University have fully retracted a paper originally published in Molecular Medicine Reports with a clear, detailed outline of what went wrong and how they discovered the error.

Here’s the notice for “Generation of induced pluripotent stem cells using skin fibroblasts from patients with myocardial infarction under feeder-free conditions:”

Continue reading If only more retractions could be like this: Authors of cardiac stem cell paper show the way

SAGE Publications busts “peer review and citation ring,” 60 papers retracted

This one deserves a “wjvcow.”

SAGE Publishers is retracting 60 articles from the Journal of Vibration and Control after an investigation revealed a “peer review and citation ring” involving a professor in Taiwan.

[Please see an update on this post.]

Here’s the beginning of a statement from SAGE: Continue reading SAGE Publications busts “peer review and citation ring,” 60 papers retracted

Mystery box sinks immunology paper

Screen Shot 2014-06-30 at 12.30.32 PMBiochemical Journal has pulled a 2006 paper for an undisclosed “background subtraction box” in an image – which, if you take a not-particularly-close look at the figure to the right, means somebody added a black rectangle over the control lane.

Here’s the notice: for “Phosphorylation of Ser158 regulates inflammatory redox-dependent hepatocyte nuclear factor-4a transcriptional activity”: Continue reading Mystery box sinks immunology paper

University where researcher faked HIV vaccine findings won’t receive last $1.4 million of grant

iowa stateThere has been another development in the case of Dong-Pyou Han, the former Iowa State University (ISU) researcher who admitted last fall to spiking rabbit blood samples to make it look as though his team’s HIV vaccine was working in the animals.

The Des Moines Register reports: Continue reading University where researcher faked HIV vaccine findings won’t receive last $1.4 million of grant

Education researchers retract paper for differences in “positionality”

Screen Shot 2014-06-27 at 4.03.27 PMHere’s an odd one from the University of Western Australia’s education journal, Education Research and Perspectives: A paper was retracted at the request of the authors, both UWA professors, because the participants “may have differed significantly from others in terms of their positionality,” whatever that means.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Education researchers retract paper for differences in “positionality”

Serbian journal lands in hot water after challenge on 24 hour peer review that cost 1785 euros

naslovna1This story began as a report of a one-off case of potential predatory practice last month, and has escalated to an official call to disband an entire international editorial board, and an accusation against the editor of mass-scale nepotism and other publishing misconduct.

The journal, Archives of Biological Sciences (ABS) is the official publication of the Serbian Biological Society, co-published by ten organisations in Serbia and Bosnia. It was accused (on June 12) on the Scholarly Open Access blog of accepting a paper in 24 hours with no peer review, and demanding 1785 euros for publishing it. Continue reading Serbian journal lands in hot water after challenge on 24 hour peer review that cost 1785 euros

Weekend reads: Fallout from STAP stem cell retractions, confessed HIV vaccine fraudster pleads not guilty

booksAnother busy week at Retraction Watch, with developments in two closely watched cases at Nature and PNAS. Here’s what was happening around the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: Fallout from STAP stem cell retractions, confessed HIV vaccine fraudster pleads not guilty