The European Journal of Pharmacology has — against its will, it would seem — retracted a 2012 paper by a group of Chinese heart researchers embroiled in a what appears to be a rather messy authorship dispute. The article, “The effect of alendronate on the expression of osteopontin and osteoprotegerin in calcified aortic tissue of … Continue reading Author break prompts retraction of bone protein paper
Regulatory Peptides is retracting a 2010 paper by a group of five authors in China and one in Texas — and the presence of that last one was the problem. The article, “Erythropoietin as a possible mechanism for the effects of intermittent hypoxia on bodyweight, serum glucose and leptin in mice,” had as its last … Continue reading One-too-many authors scuttles paper on mouse metabolism
Talanta, a journal serving the analytical chemistry community — we’d love to know how the name came to be — has retracted a 2013 article by a group of Indian researchers over an authorship dispute. The paper, “Non-enzymatic electrochemical glucose sensor based on silver/silver oxide nano-rods reinforced with multiwall carbon nanotubes,” appeared in January, with … Continue reading “Conflicts among the authors” force retraction of Talanta paper
Although authorship issues are not the most common reason we see for retractions, they’re one of the most vexing. We’ve seen multiple cases in which papers are retracted because colleagues say authors didn’t have a right to publish data, for example. In other cases, authors who didn’t know about a paper are surprised when it … Continue reading Who deserves to be an author on a scientific paper?
The journal Inorganica Chimica Acta has retracted a paper it published earlier this year over an authorship dispute involving the lead researcher and his colleagues in France. The title of the paper — whose bulk alone gave us a headache — was “Reaction of a bidentate ligands (4,4′-dimethyl 2,2′-bipyridine) with planar-chiral chloro-bridged ruthenium: Synthesis of … Continue reading Paper — with longest title ever? — retracted for lack of author approval
As a first-year medical student at the University of California, San Diego, Jessica Tang already has an impressive CV. Her name has appeared on ten papers in the medical literature, including three in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine. On one of these she was the sole author. Except that one doesn’t exist anymore. But the … Continue reading Med student loses paper when former boss claims right to data
An anti-terrorism researcher at the University of Southern Denmark has had a number of papers in conference proceedings retracted for plagiarism. Debora Weber-Wulff, who has researched plagiarism for a decade, reports on her blog Copy, Shake, and Paste that eight papers by Nasrullah Memon have been retracted after the Vroniplag website revealed similarities between his … Continue reading Eight papers by anti-terrorism professor retracted for plagiarism
One of the owners of the whistleblower site Science Fraud, which went dark yesterday in response to legal threats, has identified himself, and explained what happened. In a post on his personal blog (since removed)* — give the whole post a read if it reappears — Paul Brookes, a scientist at the University of Rochester, … Continue reading Owner of Science Fraud site, suspended for legal threats, identifies himself, talks about next steps
A committee at the University of La Laguna (ULL), in Spain’s Canary Islands, has found evidence of misconduct by two chemists in at least two papers. One of those authors had already been forced to retract a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). The story is complicated. Here’s a try at … Continue reading University of La Laguna ethics committee finds evidence of misconduct in chemists’ papers
As Retraction Watch readers know, we cover Elsevier’s journals frequently, including a story just last week about their peer review system being hacked. And they’ve written about us, too. So we’re pleased to present a guest post by Elsevier’s Linda Lavelle, General Counsel-North America, about the publisher’s take on plagiarism and other unethical behavior — … Continue reading How is Elsevier promoting ethical publishing? A guest post