Figure misuse leads to retraction of wound healing paper

biochemengjrnA group of researchers from India and China has lost a 2012 article in the Biochemical Engineering Journal for lifting a figure from a previously published article from another team of investigators. Evidently, caught red-handed, they haven’t copped to the caper.

The article was titled “Purification and characterization of organic solvent and detergent stable protease isolated from marine Saccharopolyspora sp. A9: Application of protease for wound healing.” According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Figure misuse leads to retraction of wound healing paper

Kidney International paper retracted after lab records “were improperly filed”

kidney intA group of University of California, Davis kidney researchers have retracted a paper after being unable to verify key parts of it.

Here’s the detailed retraction notice for “Proteinuria decreases tissue lipoprotein receptor levels resulting in altered lipoprotein structure and increasing lipid levels,” published by Limin Wang, George Kaysen, and colleagues in Kidney International last July: Continue reading Kidney International paper retracted after lab records “were improperly filed”

Like pulling teeth? Dental implant papers retracted for duplication

jomscoverA group of Brazilian dental researchers has lost two 2012 papers for duplication — twice the typical body count for such situations.

The two articles appeared in the Journal of Orthodontics and the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery about four months apart.

The first, from the JOMS, “Selective Use of Hand and Forearm Muscles During Bone Screw Insertion: A Natural Torque Meter,” was published online Aug. 30 — just about the time the Journal of Orthodontics was accepting the duplicate submission.

As the JOMS retraction notice states: Continue reading Like pulling teeth? Dental implant papers retracted for duplication

Bitter legal fight leads to a retracted retraction

faseb june 2013Two years ago, the FASEB Journal retracted a paper that it had initially agreed to correct, after a dean at one of the author’s institutions said that a “well-recognized and top-class fact finding commission concluded that the publication contains gross flaws.” The retraction of the 2003 paper, as we noted at the time, punctuated a complicated case involving several investigations as well as legal maneuvering.

Now, the journal has retracted the retraction. Here’s the beginning of the notice: Continue reading Bitter legal fight leads to a retracted retraction

“Missing link” fungus-like organisms still missing as paper is retracted

proteincellThe journal Protein & Cell has retracted a 2012 paper on fungi-like organisms that took a step in the direction of proper citation — but didn’t quite get there.

The article, “Cryptomycota: the missing link,” came from Krishna Bolla and Elizabeth Jane Ashforth, who are affiliated with Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Bejing.

But as the retraction notice explains, Bolla wasn’t careful enough about good publishing hygiene: Continue reading “Missing link” fungus-like organisms still missing as paper is retracted

Journal retracts paper for plagiarism, but mathematician author doesn’t agree

jmathphysThe Journal of Mathematical Physics has retracted a paper by a prolific mathematician in Turkey who doesn’t agree that he plagiarized.

Here’s the notice, for “Homotopy perturbation method to obtain exact special solutions with solitary patterns for Boussinesq-like B(m,n) equations with fully nonlinear dispersion:” Continue reading Journal retracts paper for plagiarism, but mathematician author doesn’t agree

Infant formula paper smells like salami, retracted

semperinatolcoverSeminars in Perinatology has retracted a 2002 paper by a group of authors in France and Belgium who’d used a previously published article (their own) as a template for the benighted work.

The article, “Nitrogen utilization and bone mineralization in very low birth weight infants fed partially hydrolyzed preterm formula,” by Jean-Charles Picaud and colleagues, appeared in December 2002. But it was based largely on this May 2001 paper in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, titled “Nutritional Efficacy of Preterm Formula With a Partially Hydrolyzed Protein Source: A Randomized Pilot Study.”

According to the retraction notice:

Continue reading Infant formula paper smells like salami, retracted

Nature corrects figures McGill committee found had been “intentionally contrived and falsified”

nature 5 31The second of two corrections by McGill researcher Maya Saleh for what a university committee called “intentionally contrived and falsified” figures has run in Nature.

We reported in January that the McGill committee concluded that

two figures in [a] Nature paper had been “intentionally contrived and falsified.” One of those figures was duplicated in a PNAS paper, which also contained an image that  had incorrectly labeled some proteins.

The committee recommended corrections for both of the papers. The PNAS correction ran in February. Now, the Nature Corrigendum has appeared: Continue reading Nature corrects figures McGill committee found had been “intentionally contrived and falsified”

And the award for the most self-referential abstract ever goes to…

dev cogn neuroscienceHere at Retraction Watch, we like to dig for what lies behind sometimes opaque retraction notices. But today, thanks to Neil Martin, we have a glimpse into something a bit different: The back-and-forth between an author and his editor.

In Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Peter Reiner, of the University of British Columbia, wrote a comment on “Can transcranial electrical stimulation improve learning difficulties in atypical brain development? A future possibility for cognitive training,” by Beatrix Krause and Roi Cohen Kadosh.(Recent related work by Cohen Kadosh’s group has earned some media attention.

The comment is pretty straightforward, except for what’s listed as the abstract: Continue reading And the award for the most self-referential abstract ever goes to…

A double-bill from Digestive Diseases and Sciences, both for regurgitation — aka duplication

ddsComing back up?

Digestive Diseases and Sciences has retracted two papers for duplication.

The first paper, “Membrane-Bound Mucins and Mucin Terminal Glycans Expression in Idiopathic or Helicobacter pylori, NSAID Associated Peptic Ulcers,” was published in October 2012 by a group from Israel and the United States. It found that:

Cytoplasmic MUC17 staining was significantly decreased in the cases with idiopathic ulcer. The opposite was demonstrated for MUC1. This observation might be important, since different mucins with altered sialylation patterns likely differ in their protection efficiency against acid and pepsin.

But, as the retraction notice suggests, that much had been found before: Continue reading A double-bill from Digestive Diseases and Sciences, both for regurgitation — aka duplication