The authors of a 2012 paper in Cell have retracted it after discovering “serious issues with several figures.”
Here’s the notice for “A PLETHORA-Auxin Transcription Module Controls Cell Division Plane Rotation through MAP65 and CLASP:” Continue reading Authors retract Cell paper amid ongoing investigation
Retraction Watch readers may recall that earlier this year, ten of our posts disappeared for two weeks after someone at an alleged news service in India falsely claimed that we had violated their copyright. The situation was the opposite of those claims; in fact our copyright had been violated, and the posts, all about Anil Potti, were restored.
Ars Technica, which covered the case at the time, explained how this sort of thing happens in an earlier story: Continue reading Retraction Watch, WordPress parent company file suit to fight false copyright claims, censorship
A group of researchers from Egypt and the United States has lost their 2010 paper in the journal Toxicology in Vitro for recycling many of their own words from a previously published manuscript.
The article, “Bacterial lipopolysaccharide-induced oxidative stress in adult rat Sertoli cells in vitro,” was written by Hamdy A.A. Aly, Hany A. El-Shemy and David A. Lightfoot, a professor of biotechnology and genomics at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. El-Shemy, now of Cairo University, was a visiting scholar at SICU a few years ago, and he and Lightfoot have published together several times. Continue reading Duplication leads to recall of toxicology paper
The Office of Research Integrity has concluded that Hao Wang, a Canadian pathologist, falsified data in a 2011 poster presentation supported by money from the National Institutes of Health.
For his part Wang, a former faculty member at Western University in Ontario (his website is still active but his email bounces back), has said there were undisclosed “extenuating circumstances” in the matter but that he could not afford to fight the case. Wang also seems to be making the “no harm, no foul” defense, as you’ll see from the notice: Continue reading ORI sanctions pathologist in Canada for bogus monkey data
An honest error has prompted the first retraction of a paper published in F1000Research, a relatively new open science journal that publishes all articles before peer review and then solicits such review.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Open science journal F1000Research posts its first retraction
The editor of a psychology journal has had seven papers in a different psychology journal retracted, for either plagiarism or duplication, although the notices are vague.
Here are the seven articles by Paraskevi Theofilou, editor of Health Psychology Research, in Europe’s Journal of Psychology: Continue reading Psychology journal editor has seven articles retracted for duplication or plagiarism
Tabitha Powledge and Beryl Benderly, two long-time science writers, have found a post they wrote on PLOS Blogs taken down. The removal follows an online dispute with another blogger, Emily Willingham, about the post, which covered a session on sexual harassment, The XX Question, at the recent National Association of Science Writers (NASW) meeting in Florida.
Willingham had objected to a roundup of the session by Powledge and Benderly, pointing to, among other things, what she considered to be a white-washing of the problem and a rather hegemonic reflection of the issue which trivialized the plight of women in the field and glorified the role of a few righteous XYs.
Continue reading PLOS Blogs removes post criticizing writer over sexual harassment post
Another installment of Ask Retraction Watch:
Do you know of any instances of meta-plagiarism, i.e. a paper plagiarizing a second paper, which plagiarized a third paper? Or even longer chains of this? I know one instance of meta-plagiarism, but there should be a few others out there, I guess.
We’ve seen one such daisy chain. No poll this time, but Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: Ever seen a case of “meta-plagiarism?”
Last week, we reported on a retraction in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry that left us a bit puzzled. The notice referred to a problem with “the way the data was presented,” but the authors told us this was just an error picked up in proofreading, somehow after the paper had been published online.
We now have much more of the story. The Royal Society of Chemistry’s May Copsey, who edits the journal, tells Retraction Watch: Continue reading Royal Society of Chemistry apologizes for unclear retraction notice
Okay, so great speechifying isn’t always recognized the first time it’s heard. We’re sure “I Have a Dream” had its detractors at the time. And Homer probably put more than his share of listeners to sleep while reciting the Iliad (that sucker’s LONG, after all).
But when the Patriot & Union, of Pennsylvania, trashed Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address for being “silly,” it found itself on the wrong side of history — oratorically and otherwise — before the ink was dry.