Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s some of what was happening elsewhere on the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: Stem cell researchers falsifying data, neuroscience research forgets statistics tests
Bogus Western blots lead to retraction of cancer paper
A group of Italian researchers has retracted their 2013 paper on colorectal cancer because one of the authors, they, say, was tinkering with the data.
The article, “PBOX-15 induces apoptosis and improves the efficacy of oxaliplatin in human colorectal cancer cell lines,” appeared in the European Journal of Pharmacology in August. The first author was Giuseppina Gangemi, of the University of Salerno.
The paper purported to find that:
Continue reading Bogus Western blots lead to retraction of cancer paper
Neurosurgery journal retracts spine paper for lack of attribution
A neurosurgeon in the UK has lost his 2013 paper on spinal surgery in the British Journal of Neurosurgery for doing what appears to have been an end-run around the folks that did the work.
The article, “The management of spinal dural fistulas: a 13-year retrospective analysis,” was written by Denosshan Sri, of Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge.
Here’s the abstract:
Continue reading Neurosurgery journal retracts spine paper for lack of attribution
“Unable to dispel the doubts,” authors lose protein structure paper
A suggestion: If you’re going to use the words “overestimated accuracy” in the title of your paper, you’d better make sure you aren’t guilty of the same yourself.
A group of authors in China has lost their June 2013 paper in the European Biophysics Journal because they appear to have misinterpreted their data. The paper, “Overestimated accuracy of circular dichroism in determining protein secondary structure,” came from chemists at Fudan University in Shanghai, and purported to find that:
Continue reading “Unable to dispel the doubts,” authors lose protein structure paper
Late resveratrol researcher Dipak Das up to 20 retractions
Dipak Das, the former University of Connecticut researcher found to have committed more than 100 counts of misconduct, and who passed away last year, has had another retraction appear.
Here’s the notice, for “Dynamic Action of Carotenoids in Cardioprotection and Maintenance of Cardiac Health,” from Molecules:
Continue reading Late resveratrol researcher Dipak Das up to 20 retractions
Scholar in Sweden appears to face inquiry for plagiarism retraction
The Nordic Journal of Migration Research has retracted a 2012 paper by a Swedish researcher who lifted text from another author.
The article, “Swedish Employers and Trade Unions, Varieties of Capitalism and Labour Migration Policies,” was written by Jesper Johansson, of Linnaeus University in Växjö. It’s available as a PDF here, but not on the website of the publisher, De Gruyter — nor is it listed on Johnansson’s own site.
We chose a sentence a random from the abstract:
Continue reading Scholar in Sweden appears to face inquiry for plagiarism retraction
A matter of degree: M. Theol loses a paper
Evidently the editors of the Journal of Religion and Health were a tad distracted when they published a paper earlier this year by Australian theologian Joseph Lee and his “colleague,” M. Theol.
M. Theol, of course, is a degree, not a person — as a correction notice explains:
Pro tip: Don’t use “facts and fiction” in your title if you plan to plagiarize
Here’s a suggestion: If you’re going to plagiarize someone else’s work, don’t draw attention to it by including “fiction” in your title.
That lesson was brought home to us by a recent retraction in the Italian Journal of Pediatrics for “Infantile colic, facts and fiction:”
Continue reading Pro tip: Don’t use “facts and fiction” in your title if you plan to plagiarize
“The Chrysalis Effect: How Ugly Initial Results Metamorphosize Into Beautiful Articles”
The headline of this post is the title of a fascinating new paper in the Journal of Management suggesting that if the road to publication is paved with good intentions, it may also be paved with bad scientific practice.
Ernest Hugh O’Boyle and colleagues tracked 142 management and applied psychology PhD theses to publication, and looked for various questionable research practices — they abbreviate those “QRPs” — such as deleting or adding data after hypothesis tests, selectively adding or deleting variables, and adding or deleting hypotheses themselves.
Their findings?
March Madness? Harvard profs take shots at controversial studies, request retractions
In the wake of Harvard’s gritty performance in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament — they were eliminated Saturday — a pair of faculty members at the Ivy League institution are calling foul on two controversial journal articles that have already been corrected.
Walter Willett, an oft-quoted Harvard nutrition expert, is calling for the retraction of an eyebrow-raising article earlier this month challenging the relative health benefits of fats from fish and vegetables over those in meat and butter.
The article, which appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine, quickly came under fire and the researchers — from the University of Cambridge — ended up making several corrections. Despite the changes, the authors have stood by their work, according to a piece this week in Science.
But that hasn’t stopped Willett from urging a retraction. Per Science: