Ask Retraction Watch: What’s a reviewer to do?

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Photo by Bilal Kamoon via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/bilal-kamoon/

Another installment of Ask Retraction Watch:

I reviewed an article for two different journals that presented data from a large non-public data set.  A previous publication from the same group had presented findings on the same topic from the dataset, but the new paper didn’t mention these previous analyses. The new paper had more detailed analyses. As a reviewer, both times I said that they really needed to mention that there were previous analyses of the same topic from the same dataset and say what their new analysis was contributing (not much!).  Both times they basically refused and it got rejected. Then it got published in another journal (I didn’t review it this time) still without citing the previous analyses from the same data set.

Take our poll, and comment below. Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: What’s a reviewer to do?

Danish neuroscientist Penkowa, found guilty of misconduct, reappears as Scientology group headliner

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Penkowa, via press release

Milena Penkowa, the Danish neuroscientist who has had four papers retracted and was found to have committed misconduct, is in the news again, this time for speaking at a museum exhibition by a Scientology-founded group.

Titled ““Psykiatri – Dödens industri“ — “Psychiatry, Industry of Death” — the exhibition is at the museum of the Commission on Human Rights, which, according to a press release,

was established in 1969 in the United States of the Church of Scientology and psychiatry professor Thomas Szasz, the world’s most famous psychiatry critics, and in 1972 in Sweden, to investigate and expose abuses of human rights in mental health care and to clean up the field of mental healing.

As the Swedish Dagens Medicin newspaper reported (via Google Translate): Continue reading Danish neuroscientist Penkowa, found guilty of misconduct, reappears as Scientology group headliner

Is impact factor the “least-bad” way to judge the quality of a scientific paper?

plos biologyWe’ve sometimes said, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, that pre-publication peer review is the worst way to vet science, except for all the other ways that have been tried from time to time.

The authors of a new paper in PLOS Biology, Adam Eyre-Walker and Nina Stoletzki, compared three of those other ways to judge more than 6,500 papers published in 2005:

subjective post-publication peer review, the number of citations gained by a paper, and the impact factor of the journal in which the article was published

Their findings? Continue reading Is impact factor the “least-bad” way to judge the quality of a scientific paper?

Scientific American faces firestorm after removing blog post about scientist being called a whore

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Danielle Lee, via Twitter

We tend to stick to retractions in the peer-reviewed literature here at Retraction Watch, although we’ve made exceptions. Today’s post seemed like a good reason to make another exception, because while Nature Publishing Group-owned Scientific American is not a peer-reviewed journal, the science blogosphere and Twitter are lighting up this weekend with strong reactions to the magazine’s removal of a blog post by biologist Danielle Lee.

The incident was first noted by Dr. Rubidium, who wrote yesterday:

Scientist and science communicator @DNLee5 declined an offer to blog for free from biology-online.org and got called a ‘whore’.  @DNLee5 posted a thoughtful response on her Scientific American‘s blog ’The Urban Scientist‘.  A short time later, her response vanished…

(You can read Lee’s original post on Dr. Isis’s blog.)

Yesterday morning, Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina responded on Twitter: Continue reading Scientific American faces firestorm after removing blog post about scientist being called a whore

Stem cell scientist says data in retracted paper “is not falsified or fabricated”

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Gerold Feuer, via Upstate

On Wednesday, we brought you the story of a retraction by Gerold Feuer, a State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical Center stem cell scientist whom the university had found to have misused grants. He was suspended, but successfully fought that action. We had asked Feuer for comment at that time, and he has now responded:

SUNY Upstate Medical University’s decision to widely publicize the recent decision by the journal Stem Cells to retract an article from my laboratory is a vindictive and retaliatory campaign to defame my scientific credentials in the press and to my scientific colleagues.

I unequivocally state that the data in all published manuscripts is valid and sound and is not falsified or fabricated. SUNY UMU unilaterally requested a retraction from Stem Cells, despite the fact that the federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has not yet ruled on these allegations. It is not surprising that UMU has decided to publicize this retraction in a public forum as a second attempt to force me from my tenured faculty position and circumvent decision of the employment arbitrator and the New York Supreme Court.

To date SUNY UMU has refused to abide by the arbitrator’s “binding” decision to reinstate my faculty position and has failed to pay proper back-wages. The arbitrator evaluated operations of my spin-off company, Humurine Technologies, and stated: Continue reading Stem cell scientist says data in retracted paper “is not falsified or fabricated”

Say “Argh!” Dental journal extracts paper for plagiarism

hindawiA group of authors from Saudi Arabia and Egypt has lost their 2012 paper in the International Journal of Dentistry for what appears to be a case of large-scale lifting of text from a previously published paper.

The now-retracted article was titled “A Prospective Study of Early Loaded Single Implant-Retained Mandibular Overdentures: Preliminary One-Year Results,” and has yet to be cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

From the abstract: Continue reading Say “Argh!” Dental journal extracts paper for plagiarism

Pamela Ronald does the right thing again, retracting a Science paper

Pamela Ronald, via UC Davis
Pamela Ronald, via UC Davis

About a month ago, we reported on a retraction by Pamela Ronald, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues. We noted then that this was a case of scientists doing the right thing. Ronald contacted us after that post ran, and let us know that there would be another retraction shortly. That retraction notice has now appeared, in Science: Continue reading Pamela Ronald does the right thing again, retracting a Science paper

Embryonic stem cell paper retracted for fabrication

scadcoverStem Cells and Development has retracted a paper it published earlier this year after the leader of the study reported that the data were unreliable.

The paper, “Derivation and Genetic Modification of Embryonic Stem Cells from Disease-Model Inbred Rat Strains,” came from the lab of Aron Geurts, of the Medical College of Wisconsin.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Embryonic stem cell paper retracted for fabrication

Retraction appears for stem cell researcher found to have used funds for his company’s gain

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Gerold Feuer in 2008, via Upstate

A stem cell journal is retracting a paper by Gerold Feuer, a researcher at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse who was also found to have misused grants.

The Feuer story is complicated. Heralded in 2008 for landing $6.2 million in grants from the New York Stem Cell Board, Feuer was suspended in October 2010 while the university investigated allegations he had misused funds, specifically to funnel state dollars to HuMurine, a company he founded in 2008. In December 2010, Upstate said they had found evidence he had committed 53 acts of financial misconduct, and dismissed him.

From an August 2012 court ruling on a case Feuer brought to fight that dismissal: Continue reading Retraction appears for stem cell researcher found to have used funds for his company’s gain

Do authors who retract papers end up cited less often? Depends how eminent you are

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St. Matthew, by Frans Hals, via Wikimedia

A picture of the downstream effects of retractions is starting to emerge.

In a new working paper, economists at the University of Maryland, the University of Rochester, and Northwestern University focused on work by teams of scientists. Their main findings: Continue reading Do authors who retract papers end up cited less often? Depends how eminent you are