Retraction Watch

Ask Retraction Watch: Can authors republish their own previous work as as review?

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

Another installment of Ask Retraction Watch:

In journal club, we have been discussing a review paper on recent previous publications by the review’s authors. Basically this was a short review summarizing the findings of a few other papers by the same authors on a given topic. The images presented and textual narrative essentially repeated published contents with slight modifications, wrapping up with expected future developments on the topic.

My question: Is a review paper “allowed” to reintroduce previously published contents, and if so, to what extent? And should it be slightly modified (e.g. to avoid copyright problems) or be presented in the same exact manner?

Take our poll, and comment below. Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: Can authors republish their own previous work as as review?

Sensing a pattern? Pattern Recognition Letters misses rampant plagiarism in modeling paper

It really isn’t fair to pick on Pattern Recognition Letters, but, well, if the shoe fits…

We had fun at the expense of the journal the last time we found that a duplicate publication had escaped the editors. This time, plagiarism is to blame.

A group of authors from the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences published, then promptly lost, their September 2013 article in PRL titled “Model-based 3D tracking of an articulated hand from single depth images.”

The abstract: Continue reading Sensing a pattern? Pattern Recognition Letters misses rampant plagiarism in modeling paper

Fernández genetics paper in limbo over data concerns

Ariel Fernández, the protein researcher whose theories of drug design lately have come in for questioning, has lost a paper, at least for the moment.

The article, “Supramolecular Evolution of Protein Organization,” appeared online in Annual Reviews of Genetics prior to print. It lists Fernández’s affiliation as ProWD Sciences, in Madison, Wisc. Not much exists on the web about that company, however, except an under-construction site. (ProWD, by the way, is short for PROtein-Water-Dehydron, Fernández’s area of interest.)

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Fernández genetics paper in limbo over data concerns

Analyze this! Analytical Letters retracts chemistry paper for authorship misdirection

Analytical Letters has retracted a 2011 article by a chemistry researcher at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, who seems to have avoided giving credit where credit was due.

The article, “Conducting Polymer Matrix Poly(2,2′-bithiophene) Mercury Metal Incorporation,” was written (so readers were told) by Suzanne Lunsford.

Here’s how the retraction notice explains it: Continue reading Analyze this! Analytical Letters retracts chemistry paper for authorship misdirection

Social work researchers lose paper for misuse of data

Irony alert: If you’re going to publish in the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, you’d better be able to play well with others.

Not so, it seems, with a certain Darrel Montero. Montero, an associate professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University, and his colleagues have lost their 2012 paper in the journal for what appears to be a case of data theft.

As the retraction notice explains:

Continue reading Social work researchers lose paper for misuse of data

PubMed now allows comments on abstracts — but only by a select few

PubMed today launches a pilot version of PubMed Commons,

a system that enables researchers to share their opinions about scientific publications. Researchers can comment on any publication indexed by PubMed, and read the comments of others.

In general, we’re big fans of post-publication peer review, as Retraction Watch readers know. Once it’s out of its pilot phase — and we hope that’s quite soon — PubMed Commons comments will be publicly available. So this is a step forward — but only a tentative one. That’s because of the first bullet point in the terms of service commenters agree to: Continue reading PubMed now allows comments on abstracts — but only by a select few

Nursing journal pulls Novo Nordisk growth hormone paper over data provenance

The Journal of Pediatric Nursing has retracted a 2013 article (meeting abstract, really) on growth hormone after the drug company that employed the authors cried “take it back.”

The research appears to have been presented at a meeting of the Pediatric Endocrinology Nursing Society, and looked at inefficiency in the use of devices for administering growth hormone. All but one of the authors is listed as working for Novo Nordisk, an international pharmaceutical firm.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Nursing journal pulls Novo Nordisk growth hormone paper over data provenance

Marc Hauser corrects a tiny part of the scientific record

Last month, we reported on the upcoming publication of a new book by Marc Hauser, the former Harvard psychologist found guilty of misconduct by the Office of Research Integrity. The main thrust of our post was questioning why two leading science writers would blurb the new book, Evilicious, but we also pointed out that Hauser hadn’t even bothered to note in his list of publications that one of his papers had been retracted. That seemed consistent with his neither admitting nor denying misconduct, as is reported by the Office of Research Integrity in their findings.