RIP, Ed Rickards: Duke watchdog who covered Anil Potti case dies at 72

dukeIt’s unusual for us to post obituaries on Retraction Watch — we’ve published just one so far in three-and-a-half years — but we wanted to pause for a moment to note the passing of a tireless crusader for transparency and accountability whose electronic path crossed with ours a number of times since 2012 because of our shared interest in the case of Anil Potti.

We learned of the death of Ed Rickards this weekend while Ivan was attending ScienceOnline 2014. The Duke Chronicle, the university’s student newspaper, reported on February 5: Continue reading RIP, Ed Rickards: Duke watchdog who covered Anil Potti case dies at 72

Weekend reads: How much can one scientist publish? And more stem cell misconduct

booksAnother busy week at Retraction Watch, including a ScienceOnline 2014 session Ivan facilitated on post-publication peer review. Here’s a selection of what was happening elsewhere on the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: How much can one scientist publish? And more stem cell misconduct

Hip disjoint: Dysplasia paper lacks proper attribution, earns retraction

ajhbcoverA suggestion: When you title your paper “Joined at the hip?”, better make sure it’s not too close for comfort to someone else’s work.

Alas, an Idaho anthropologist failed to heed that lesson when she published “Joined at the hip? A paleoepidemiological study of developmental dysplasia of the hip and its relation to swaddling practices among indigenous peoples of North America,” in the American Journal of Human Biology last October.

The article, by Samantha Blatt, of Boise State University, found that: Continue reading Hip disjoint: Dysplasia paper lacks proper attribution, earns retraction

“Unfortunately, scientific publishing is not immune to fraud and mistakes”: Springer responds to fake papers story

springerWe have an update on the story of 120 bogus papers being removed by IEEE and Springer. The latter posted a statement earlier today, which we include in its entirety below: Continue reading “Unfortunately, scientific publishing is not immune to fraud and mistakes”: Springer responds to fake papers story

Clone call for bird gene bar-coding paper

molecules and cellsA group of bird researchers in Korea has lost their 2006 paper on DNA barcoding of that country’s avian species because they feathered the article with material from others.

The paper, “DNA barcoding Korean birds,” appeared in Molecules and Cells, published by Springer for the Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology and has been cited 88 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the abstract: Continue reading Clone call for bird gene bar-coding paper

Nature paper retracted following multiple failures to reproduce results

nature 2-27-14An international team of researchers from the NIH, Harvard, the University of Michigan, and two Chinese universities — Fourth Military Medical University and China Medical University — has retracted their 2012 paper in Nature after they — and a number of other groups — were unable to reproduce the key results.

The original abstract for “The NAD-dependent deacetylase SIRT2 is required for programmed necrosis” said that the findings

implicate SIRT2 as an important regulator of programmed necrosis and indicate that inhibitors of this deacetylase may constitute a novel approach to protect against necrotic injuries, including ischaemic stroke and myocardial infarction.

But here’s the notice, by corresponding author Toren Finkel and colleagues: Continue reading Nature paper retracted following multiple failures to reproduce results

“Knowledgeable informant” topples ovarian cancer paper

ijcepA group of cancer researchers in China has lost their 2013 paper in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Pathology after someone tipped off the journal that the data were copied.

The article, “Importance of spondin 1 and cellular retinoic acid binding protein 1 in the clinical diagnosis of ovarian cancer,” came from Ting-Ting Jiao, Ye-Min Zhang, Lin Yao, Yuan Gao, Jian Sun, Dong-Fang Zou, Guo-Ping Wu, Dan Wang, Jun Ou, Ning Hui, who work at various Shanghai hospitals.

Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading “Knowledgeable informant” topples ovarian cancer paper

Should readers get a refund when they pay to access seriously flawed papers?

Photo by Bilal Kamoon via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/bilal-kamoon/
Photo by Bilal Kamoon via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/bilal-kamoon/

Time for another installment of Ask Retraction Watch:

Let’s say I’m collecting relevant papers to write a review, or preparing a project, and I have rather limited time. I find a few interesting papers, bump into some paywalls, ask the authors for the .pdf without any response, and finally I decide to pay, say, $20 USD each for 8 papers. However, upon reading these papers I notice that two or three of them present serious irregularities — say, they’re 90% similar to some other published papers. Well, I’ve just spent $160 USD on these papers, trusting the publisher in the mumbo jumbo that all papers “meet high quality international standards,” are “peer-reviewed by experts,” “handled by selected editors,” etc., and yet they are clearly deeply flawed. Moreover, I investigate further online and I find that these and other issues in the papers had been already pointed out by readers online, e.g., in PubPeer or Retraction Watch comments, more than a year before.

Should I be entitled to a refund?

Take our poll, and leave a comment: Continue reading Should readers get a refund when they pay to access seriously flawed papers?

Utrecht University finds “violation of academic integrity” by former researcher

dhonukshe
Pankaj Dhonukshe

We have an update on the case of Pankaj Dhonukshe, a scientist about whom we reported in November. Utrecht University has found that Dhonukshe, a former researcher at the Dutch university, committed “a violation of academic integrity” in work that led to a number of papers, including one published in Nature and once since retracted from Cell.

Here’s the university’s statement: Continue reading Utrecht University finds “violation of academic integrity” by former researcher

“Inconsistent errors” and unknowing authors force retraction of microbiology paper

leeuwenhoekA 2013 article in Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Journal of Microbiology has been retracted for a few reasons.

Here’s the notice for “The effects of each beta-glucosidase gene deletion on cellulase gene regulation in Neurospora crassa:” Continue reading “Inconsistent errors” and unknowing authors force retraction of microbiology paper