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

Novartis Diovan scandal claims two more papers

diabetes careA complicated story involving Novartis’s valsartan (Diovan) has led to the retraction of two more papers, one cascading from the other.

Last September, The Lancet retracted the Jikei Heart Study after a slew of retractions of related work prompted an investigation of valsartan research. That investigation found evidence of data manipulation and the failure of one researcher to note his Novartis affiliation. The company has apologized.

Here’s one retraction, from Diabetes Care, for “The Shiga Microalbuminuria Reduction Trial (SMART) Group. Reduction of Microalbuminuria in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes: The Shiga Microalbuminuria Reduction Trial (SMART):”

Continue reading Novartis Diovan scandal claims two more papers

Scientists, do you feel bullied by critics? These chemists do

eaton
Bruce Eaton, via UC-Boulder
feldheim
Daniel Feldheim, via UC-Boulder

A new site, Stand Up 2 Science Bullies, launched last week:

www.standup2sciencebullies.com is a forum for scientists to share their experience and provide advice pertaining to scientific bullying.  We welcome questions and comments from all scientists including students, faculty, and members of industry.  We sincerely hope that this forum will serve as an informative resource for scientists who feel that they are being treated unfairly by other scientists.

Continue reading Scientists, do you feel bullied by critics? These chemists do

RIKEN finds two “instances of research misconduct” in STAP stem cell work

rikenJapan’s RIKEN research center has found misconduct in work that led to two controversial Nature papers, purporting to show an easy way to create stem cells, that have been dogged by criticism for months.

Here’s an excerpt from today’s statement about “six items [RIKEN] has been investigating:”

Continue reading RIKEN finds two “instances of research misconduct” in STAP stem cell work

Duplication in physics journal questions key tenet of quantum mechanics

cmpHere’s a physics question: How is it possible to be in two places at the same time?

Answer: Submit the same manuscript twice and hope the editors forget to feed Schrödinger’s cat.

The journal Condensed Matter Physics is retracting a 2013 paper by a Ukrainian scientist who’d published essentially the same paper seven years earlier.The article was titled “On the origin of power-law distributions in systems with constrained phase space,” and was written by an E.V. Vakarin, of the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics, in Lviv UMR 7575 LECA ENSCP-UPMC-CNRS.

According to the abstract: Continue reading Duplication in physics journal questions key tenet of quantum mechanics