The Journal of Virology has retracted a 2010 article on avian viruses marred by signs of bogus data.
The paper, “Avian Reovirus Nonstructural Protein p17-Induced G2/M Cell Cycle Arrest and Host Cellular Protein Translation Shutoff Involve Activation of p53-Dependent Pathways,” came from a group at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, in Pingtung, China. It purported to find that: Continue reading Data manipulation knocks bird virus paper off perch
Another installment of Ask Retraction Watch:
I am a postdoc and looking to supplement my income with medical writing (our lab recently didn’t get it’s funding renewed, so now on part-time to minimise costs). The most recent jobs I have been offered are two brief reports and one full article. A quick internet search of the person who contacted me shows they are in science and are genuinely wanting papers written (a number are already in print from a variety of peer reviewed journals). But my question is this. Is it ethical to ghost-write a paper? Continue reading Is it ethical to ghost-write a paper?
Jeffrey Beall, a scholarly librarian perhaps known best for his list of possible predatory journals, has convinced one of those journals to retract a paper for plagiarism.
Here’s the notice: from the Journal of Advances in Internal Medicine, the official journal of the Society of Internal Medicine of Nepal. Continue reading Jeffrey Beall scores a retraction
Just 48 hours after publishing an article by Graham Cole and Darrel Francis last week alleging that Don Poldermans‘ scientific misconduct led to the deaths of some 800,000 Europeans over the past five years by tainting clinical guidelines, the European Heart Journal unceremoniously pulled the paper from its website Friday.
Larry Husten at CardioBrief has been on top of the story. According to Husten: Continue reading Quickest withdrawal ever? Journal yanks paper alleging 800K deaths from Poldermans affair
A 2011 book by Lewis Wolpert, one of the world’s leading developmental biologists, has been pulled from shelves for plagiarism.
The Guardian reports that the book, You’re Looking Very Well,
…has been found…to contain more than 20 passages that have been taken directly from academic papers, websites and Wikipedia with no indication that they were penned by any author other than Wolpert himself. The book has now been withdrawn from sale.
The newspaper notes that this was not Wolpert’s first plagiarism offense: Continue reading Book by leading biologist Lewis Wolpert withdrawn from sale for plagiarism
In yesterday’s Weekend Reads, we highlighted a piece by Hope Jahren explaining why she wouldn’t agree to a Q&A with Nature. We found out after Weekend Reads had posted that the story had moved on, so here’s an update.
Jahren was objecting — as did a number of people — to a letter published in Nature earlier in the week by Lukas Koube of Sherman, Texas, which began: Continue reading Nature apologizes for publishing letter dismissing need for gender balance
Here’s some of what crossed our desks this week:
Benjamin Jacob Hayempour, the researcher who threatened to sue us for asking questions about a retraction for plagiarism, has had another paper withdrawn.
The paper, published online in the journal Cureus, was titled “Novel Determinants of Tumour Radiosensitivity Post-Large-Scale Compound Library Screening” and had been available at http://www.cureus.com/articles/2394-novel-determinants-of-tumour-radiosensitivity-post-large-scale-compound-library-screening since January 13, but that URL now redirects to Cureus’s homepage.
We asked Cureus editor-in-chief John Adler for details, and he responded: Continue reading Author who threatened to sue Retraction Watch has another paper withdrawn
The publisher of a journal apparently favored by climate change skeptics has shuttered it, saying that the editors changed the aim of the title and committed malpractice by using a peer reviewer selection process based on nepotism.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading “Climate skeptic” journal shuttered following “malpractice” in “nepotistic” reviewer selections
Scientists: Have you ever found it difficult to keep track of all those papers you publish? Who can blame you? So many journals, so much pressure to publish or perish.
That must have been what happened to a quintet of authors from Shanghai who’ve just had to retract an article from the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. Here’s the notice (sadly, behind a paywall) [see note at end of post] for “Role of clofazimine in the treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis: a retrospective observational cohort assessment:” Continue reading We did what? Authors retract paper after forgetting they’d published the same study elsewhere