Researcher in Brazil earns 12th retraction for recycling text and figures

A scientist in Brazil has gained his twelfth retraction for reusing text and figures from previously published papers. In 2011, Elsevier announced that it would retract 11 papers by Claudio Airoldi, a researcher at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil. Subsequently, he was suspended for 45 days, and his co-author on the 11 … Continue reading Researcher in Brazil earns 12th retraction for recycling text and figures

Beleaguered plant scientist with 22 corrections avoids 3 more

Cell will not be issuing corrections for three papers co-authored by prominent plant biologist Olivier Voinnet, after readers on PubPeer raised questions about some of the images.  The news may be a welcome relief for Voinnet, based at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who has recently issued 22 corrections and seven retractions. Ongoing questions about his work have also earned … Continue reading Beleaguered plant scientist with 22 corrections avoids 3 more

Cell Press dismisses fraud allegations in high-profile genetics papers

Cell Press has dismissed accusations of image manipulation in two well-cited papers.  In June 2015, we reported that the publisher was investigating anonymous allegations of more than a dozen instances of manipulation of images in the papers published in Cell and Molecular Cell in 1999 and 2001, respectively.  After assessing the original high-resolution versions of images from the laboratory notebook of … Continue reading Cell Press dismisses fraud allegations in high-profile genetics papers

Weekend reads: What lurks in clinical trial databases; plagiarism by Russian ministers; why journals shy away from fraud allegations

The week at Retraction Watch featured a PhD student expelled for submitting a paper without her co-authors’ permission, and a look at the six types of peer reviewers. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

You’ve been dupe’d: Nice data — let’s see them again

As we’ve said before, with hundreds of retractions per year, there are simply too many for us to cover individually. So from time to time we’ll compile a list of retractions that appeared relatively straightforward, just for record-keeping purposes. Often, these seemingly straightforward retractions involve duplications, in which authors — accidentally or on purpose — … Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Nice data — let’s see them again

Four more retractions for biomaterials researcher brings total to 7

A biomaterials researcher has lost four more papers for figure-related issues such as duplications, bringing his total to seven retractions. We previously reported on three retractions — two by the Journal of Controlled Release (JCR) — of papers co-authored by Hossein Hosseinkhani, who is currently based at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology … Continue reading Four more retractions for biomaterials researcher brings total to 7

“Great shock and sadness:” Publishing gadfly to retract paper for duplication

A vociferous advocate for correcting the literature — who has been banned by two publishers for his persistent communications — has asked journals to retract one paper and correct three others for duplications. After a reader flagged his 2004 paper on PubPeer last month, author Jaime Teixeira da Silva “immediately” contacted the journal to alert it that … Continue reading “Great shock and sadness:” Publishing gadfly to retract paper for duplication

Researcher who sued to stop retractions earns his 7th

A diabetes researcher who sued to stop a publisher from retracting his papers has just received his seventh retraction. The latest retraction for Mario Saad, who is based at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) in São Paulo, Brazil, is for a PLOS ONE paper (which was altered last year by a mega-correction). Although an institutional … Continue reading Researcher who sued to stop retractions earns his 7th

You’ve been dupe’d (again): Do these data look familiar? They are

We can’t keep up with the growing number of retraction notices, so we’ve compiled a list of recent duplications to update our records. 1. Authors don’t always intentionally duplicate their own work, of course. The first paper on our list was retracted after the authors included a figure from a previous paper by accident, according … Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d (again): Do these data look familiar? They are