If you’ve come across a case of plagiarism and want to report it to the proper authorities, a new article in the journal Ethics & Behavior would be a good place to start.
Mark Fox, a professor of management and entrepreneurship at Indiana University, and Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, Denver, known for Beall’s List of questionable publishers, teamed up for the article. As they write in their abstract: Continue reading Want to report a case of plagiarism? Here’s how
The Journal of Clinical Anesthesia has a retraction of a 2006 paper by a group from Columbia University that, to our minds, is the poster child for how not to handle such things.
The article, “Dexmedetomidine infusion is associated with enhanced renal function after thoracic surgery,” was written by Robert J. Frumento, Helene G. Logginidou, Staffan Wahlander, Gebhard Wagener, Hugh R. Playford and Robert N. Sladen, who now is chief of critical care at the institution. The paper has been cited 30 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Why do we bother to name all the authors? Here’s why: According to the retraction notice, one of them — but don’t ask which — is guilty of research misconduct: Continue reading Columbia University misconduct retraction highlights what’s wrong with the retraction process
A Harvard student publication has retracted an article arguing that Jews deserved the persecution they’ve received for 2,000 years because they “killed Jesus.”
(We’ll do a few conflict of interest disclosures, if just for the hell — oops — of it: Harvard is Ivan’s alma mater, and both of us are well, Jews. We note, however, that the Ichthus was not around in Ivan’s Harvard days, and neither of us was around when the events involving Jesus described in this post occurred.)
As Talking Points Memo reported Thursday: Continue reading Harvard student publication retracts article saying Jews deserve punishment because “they killed Jesus”
This past week, Ivan was in Sweden to speak at the Karolinska Institutet and the Nov2K conference. Here’s video of one of his talks.
Here’s the slideshow:
The journal Case Reports in Medicine has retracted a 2012 article by a group of Turkish authors who made up things in the piece.
The paper, “Brain Metastasis as an Initial Manifestation of Ovarian Carcinoma: A Case Report,” came from ob-gyns at Hacettepe University in Ankara, and purported to relate the case of
A 30-year-old gravida 2, para 2 woman admitted to our hospital with complaints of headache, nausea, vomiting, and right-sided blurred vision. She did not report any previous medical history or malignancy. Her neurologic examination revealed a right optic disc edema suggesting a posterior orbital mass. Her cranial computerized tomography (CT) scan showed multiple lesions that are a 6 mm mass on the right parietal lobe, a 16 mm mass on the left occipital, and another 7 mm mass on the left temporal lobe (Figures 1 and 2). All the lesions were hyperintense and surrounded by edema which suggests a metastatic cancer. Her cranial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) also confirmed similar findings suggestive of a metastatic cancer to the brain. Continue reading Case report journal pulls paper on metastatic ovarian cancer with falsified data
The authors of a 2012 paper in Cell have retracted it after discovering “serious issues with several figures.”
Here’s the notice for “A PLETHORA-Auxin Transcription Module Controls Cell Division Plane Rotation through MAP65 and CLASP:” Continue reading Authors retract Cell paper amid ongoing investigation
Retraction Watch readers may recall that earlier this year, ten of our posts disappeared for two weeks after someone at an alleged news service in India falsely claimed that we had violated their copyright. The situation was the opposite of those claims; in fact our copyright had been violated, and the posts, all about Anil Potti, were restored.
Ars Technica, which covered the case at the time, explained how this sort of thing happens in an earlier story: Continue reading Retraction Watch, WordPress parent company file suit to fight false copyright claims, censorship
A group of researchers from Egypt and the United States has lost their 2010 paper in the journal Toxicology in Vitro for recycling many of their own words from a previously published manuscript.
The article, “Bacterial lipopolysaccharide-induced oxidative stress in adult rat Sertoli cells in vitro,” was written by Hamdy A.A. Aly, Hany A. El-Shemy and David A. Lightfoot, a professor of biotechnology and genomics at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. El-Shemy, now of Cairo University, was a visiting scholar at SICU a few years ago, and he and Lightfoot have published together several times. Continue reading Duplication leads to recall of toxicology paper
The Office of Research Integrity has concluded that Hao Wang, a Canadian pathologist, falsified data in a 2011 poster presentation supported by money from the National Institutes of Health.
For his part Wang, a former faculty member at Western University in Ontario (his website is still active but his email bounces back), has said there were undisclosed “extenuating circumstances” in the matter but that he could not afford to fight the case. Wang also seems to be making the “no harm, no foul” defense, as you’ll see from the notice: Continue reading ORI sanctions pathologist in Canada for bogus monkey data
An honest error has prompted the first retraction of a paper published in F1000Research, a relatively new open science journal that publishes all articles before peer review and then solicits such review.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Open science journal F1000Research posts its first retraction