A high-profile plant scientist who has been racking up corrections and retractions at a steady clip has had another paper — this one from Science — retracted. The retraction, of a paper that had been previously corrected, is the eighth for Olivier Voinnet. According to the notice, the correction did not address all the figure problems … Continue reading Eighth Voinnet paper retracted — this one from Science
A cancer biologist has retracted a 2016 News & Views article in a Nature journal, alleging that the journal tried to censor his writing by asking him to remove passages that criticized another journal (Cell). Carlo Croce, the sole author of the article in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology from Ohio State University in Columbus, described the … Continue reading Cancer biologist says Nature journal “censored” his News & Views, retracts it
The University of Cologne has conducted an investigation into the research of Tina Wenz, and determined that six papers should be pulled due to scientific misconduct. In a release issued last week (as first reported by Leonid Schneider), the university lists six papers that “present scientific misconduct,” according to our Google Translate. One of the six … Continue reading German university recommends that six papers be retracted following probe
Cell Press journals will not be retracting two papers that were flagged with expressions of concern (EOCs) in April after one author claimed to have manipulated some experiments. In a strange turn of events, as we previously reported, the study’s corresponding author refuted the claims of the author who confessed to fraud, citing concerns about … Continue reading Cell Press won’t retract papers despite one author confessing to fraud
Consider this: Fragments of a PLOS ONE paper overlap with pieces of other publications. The authors used them without credit and without quotation marks. This sounds an awful lot like plagiarism — using PLOS‘s own standards, even. But the journal isn’t calling it plagiarism. They’ve labeled this an instance of “text overlap,” a spokesperson told us, based … Continue reading When does “overlap” become plagiarism? Here’s what PLOS ONE decided
Researchers whose former colleague was recently reprimanded by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) have retracted a biology paper for duplication. The retraction includes some familiar names: The last author Steven Grant, senior author of the newly retracted study, is also the last author of 11 papers flagged in a report by the ORI in December, 2015. That report … Continue reading Retraction appears for group whose former member was sanctioned by ORI
Note to self: If you’re going to duplicate your own work, don’t copy from papers that plagiarize others’ research. Just such a mistake has cost a PhD candidate three papers — although his co-author argues that a company is in part to blame. Hossein Jafarzadeh, who is studying mechanical engineering at the University of Tehran, apparently asked a … Continue reading A plagiarism loop: Authors copied from papers that had copied from others
Are there instances when similarities between papers should be fixed by a correction, rather than a retraction? We’re asking ourselves that question after seeing two journals take very different approaches to a somewhat similar situation. Last year, Frontiers in Physiology retracted a paper by Anastasios Lymperopoulos at Nova Southeastern University in Florida because of an “an … Continue reading Author lifts from one paper in two different articles. Why does one journal retract, while the other corrects?
A genetics researcher included falsified data in two published papers, according to a report by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) released today. At the time of the misconduct, Andrew Cullinane was a postdoctoral fellow in the Medical Genetics Branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). According to his LinkedIn page, he is now an assistant professor … Continue reading Former NIH postdoc doctored data
A prominent researcher in Scotland has been suspended amidst a misconduct investigation at the University of Dundee. According to The Scotsman, the allegations against Robert Ryan center around falsifying data and duplicating figures in his work about molecular bacteriology. As the outlet reports: