With this post, we’re going to try a new feature: Ask Retraction Watch. What we really mean by that is ask Retraction Watch’s readers, who time and time again have shared their expertise and made us smarter. So if you have questions you’d like posed in this space, find our contact info here.
Here goes. A reader asks: Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: Is this plagiarism?
The authors of a 2013 paper in the journal Foods which sounded alarms about the concentrations of pesticides in vegetables and other commercial crops have pulled the article, citing an insurmountable mistake. To wit: the levels of pesticides they reported were, in fact, not what the data really showed.
The article, titled “Health risk assessment of pesticide residues via dietary intake of market vegetables from Dhaka, Bangladesh,” came from a group from that country and Australia. Continue reading Pesticide paper retracted for “major errors”
Perhaps what Garrison Keillor says about people is also true of scientific papers:
Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
There’s been another retraction in social psychology, but before you lump it together with the field’s problem children — read: Diederik Stapel — it seems to be an example of researchers coming forward about an honest error.
Here’s the notice for “The Motivated Self: Self-Affirmation and the Better-Than-Average Effect,” originally published last year in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin: Continue reading Paper on “better-than-average effect” retracted for being, well, worse than average
In February, we brought you the story of Konstantin Meyl, a
professor who claims to have developed “a self-consistent field theory which is used to derive at all known interactions of the potential vortex”
At the time, one of Meyl’s papers — which a reviewer had called “way out there” — had just been retracted, for duplication. Now a second paper — among the works from which the first retracted paper had drawn — has been retracted.
Here’s the notice from the Journal of Cell Communication and Signaling (which is buried in a footnote at the bottom of the paper): Continue reading Author of “way out there” paper merging physics and biology has second paper retracted
If it seems that we write “irony alert” often, well, can you blame us? The Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries (we’ll call it JLPPI for short) has retracted a paper it published earlier this year for plagiarism from multiple sources.
The article, “FTA vs. Tripod-Beta, which seems better for the analysis of major accidents in process industries?” was written by two occupational health researchers at Hamadan University of Medical Sciences in Iran. According to the abstract:
Continue reading Irony alert: Authors lose paper in loss prevention journal for plagiarism
Irony alert: If you’re going to publish a paper on the importance of hearing from many voice in a debate, better make sure every voice is heard.
Here’s a case where some got muted.
Third World Quarterly, a Taylor & Francis title, has retracted a paper it published recently because only one of the authors — a co-editor of the special issue in which the paper appeared — was listed on the final article. Here’s the retraction notice, which explains the publisher’s mishap: Continue reading E pluribus unum (oops!) forces retraction of social justice article
In what may be a first, a researcher in Turkey has withdrawn a paper because the patients whose cases she described wthdrew their consent after it was published.
Here’s the notice, from Allergy, Asthma, & Clinical Immunology, of a paper titled “Severe contact dermatitis due to camomile: a common complementary remedy with potential sensitization risks:” Continue reading Camomile allergy case report retracted after patients withdraw consent post-publication
A group of chemical engineers in China has retracted their article on photocatalysts after alerting the journal that images in the paper did not show what they’d reported.
The article, which appeared in Catalysis Communications earlier this year, was titled “Synthesis and characterization of novel Cu2O/PANI composite photocatalysts with enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability,” and was written by Xiufang Wang, Guangmei Chen and Jun Zhang of the School of Materials and Chemical Engineering at Anhui University of Architecture, in Hefei.
Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Paper retracted because images “were, in fact, electron microscopy results of totally different catalysts”
A chemistry paper on nanorods that became a lightning rod for criticism on chemistry blogs this week has been retracted.
Here’s the notice for “Chopstick Nanorods: Tuning the Angle between Pairs with High Yield,” originally published in June in Nano Letters by Rajasekhar Anumolu and Leonard F. Pease of the University of Utah: Continue reading Nano Letters retracts chopstick nanorod paper questioned this week on chemistry blogs
A researcher at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands has been fired for research fraud, and the university is retracting two papers, the Dutch press is reporting.
But don’t ask us who the employee was. That information is conspicuously absent from the medical center’s communications on the subject.
Here’s a press release from Leiden, in English via Google Translate: Continue reading Leiden University fires employee for research fraud, two retractions to follow