Italian cancer specialist facing criminal investigation for misconduct

Institute of Endocrinology and Experimental Oncology
Institute of Endocrinology and Experimental Oncology

A leading Neapolitan cancer researcher is under criminal investigation for fraud, the Italian press is reporting.

Although we have only rough translations of the story, it seems the researcher, Alfredo Fusco, of the National Council of Research’s Institute of Experimental Endocrinology and Oncology, has been accused of manipulating images in published studies and to strengthen the case for grants from the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC).

The case covers eight papers published between 2001 and 2012, according to the media reports. We don’t know the specifics of the eight articles, nor why none appears yet to have been retracted. In our experience, the criminal inquiries usually follow the expose of scientific misconduct, not the other way around.

Fusco’s work is highly cited, with some 50 papers cited at least 100 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

According to the institute’s website: Continue reading Italian cancer specialist facing criminal investigation for misconduct

Cardiology researcher faked data in his prizewinning PhD thesis — and NIH, AHA grants: ORI

nitin_aggarwal
Nitin Aggarwal

Nitin Aggarwal, formerly of the Medical College of Wisconsin, faked data in his PhD thesis, grant applications to the NIH and American Heart Association, and in two papers, according to new findings by the Office of Research Integrity.

(The case would have apparently first been published in the Federal Register on October 2, except for the government shutdown.)

Here were their findings: Continue reading Cardiology researcher faked data in his prizewinning PhD thesis — and NIH, AHA grants: ORI

Alirio Melendez categorically denies data falsification, alleges cover-up

alirio_melendezAlirio Melendez, who was found guilty of scientific misconduct by the National University of Singapore and has had 13 papers retracted, says none of what he’s being accused of is true.

In a statement posted yesterday at ajmelendez.co.uk and this morning at Retraction Watch, Melendez acknowledges that fraud occurred in his laboratory, but “categorically” denies having taken part in it. Here’s the full statement: Continue reading Alirio Melendez categorically denies data falsification, alleges cover-up

Fallout from Science’s publisher sting: Journal closes in Croatia

Screen Shot 2013-10-17 at 10.11.01Science‘s John Bohannon has recently revealed the extent of poor or non-existent peer review in some journals that call themselves peer-reviewed, as we reported on here.

Now, an open-access publisher based in Rijeka, Croatia, called InTech, has cancelled its journal that was targeted and exposed by Science’s investigation. The journal was going to charge 400 euros to publish the paper by Bohannon.

The International Journal of Integrative Medicine has been “discontinued”, does “not accept submissions” and “is no longer active” states the publisher’s website.

The notice, posted just a day after Science published its piece, says: Continue reading Fallout from Science’s publisher sting: Journal closes in Croatia

Researcher who threatened Retraction Watch with lawsuit corrects funding source for several papers

Ariel Fernandez, source: Wikipedia
Ariel Fernandez, source: Wikipedia

Ariel Fernandez, an Argentine chemist (who claims to hold the fastest-awarded PhD from Yale) and the subject of institutional investigations at multiple universities, has corrected several papers recently. What makes the moves particularly unusual — and interesting — is the stated reason for the amendments: disclaiming any funding from the National Institutes of Health for the work.

Fernandez was the recipient in 2005 of a $275,880 award “Protein packing defects as functional markers and drug targets.” The following year he received $294,217, and in 2007, $284,461, for the same four-year project, if we’re reading the link correctly.

Fernandez, readers of this blog might recall, threatened us with legal action when we wrote last spring about an expression of concern regarding his 2011 paper in BMC Genomics, “Subfunctionalization reduces the fitness cost of gene duplication in humans by buffering dosage imbalances.” According to that notice: Continue reading Researcher who threatened Retraction Watch with lawsuit corrects funding source for several papers

Plant journal withdraws paper — or does it?

mol plantThe temporary withdrawal of a Molecular Plant paper had us scratching our heads, but the issue seems to be explained by a glitch.

If you click on this version of “Application of the CRISPR–Cas System for Efficient Genome Engineering in Plants” (subscription required), you see this:

This paper has been withdrawn pending a decision by the Editorial Board

But that page also says that the latest version of the paper was published on October 3. Clicking on that version sends you to the paper, which begins: Continue reading Plant journal withdraws paper — or does it?

Ask Retraction Watch: What’s a reviewer to do?

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

Another installment of Ask Retraction Watch:

I reviewed an article for two different journals that presented data from a large non-public data set.  A previous publication from the same group had presented findings on the same topic from the dataset, but the new paper didn’t mention these previous analyses. The new paper had more detailed analyses. As a reviewer, both times I said that they really needed to mention that there were previous analyses of the same topic from the same dataset and say what their new analysis was contributing (not much!).  Both times they basically refused and it got rejected. Then it got published in another journal (I didn’t review it this time) still without citing the previous analyses from the same data set.

Take our poll, and comment below. Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: What’s a reviewer to do?

Danish neuroscientist Penkowa, found guilty of misconduct, reappears as Scientology group headliner

penkowa
Penkowa, via press release

Milena Penkowa, the Danish neuroscientist who has had four papers retracted and was found to have committed misconduct, is in the news again, this time for speaking at a museum exhibition by a Scientology-founded group.

Titled ““Psykiatri – Dödens industri“ — “Psychiatry, Industry of Death” — the exhibition is at the museum of the Commission on Human Rights, which, according to a press release,

was established in 1969 in the United States of the Church of Scientology and psychiatry professor Thomas Szasz, the world’s most famous psychiatry critics, and in 1972 in Sweden, to investigate and expose abuses of human rights in mental health care and to clean up the field of mental healing.

As the Swedish Dagens Medicin newspaper reported (via Google Translate): Continue reading Danish neuroscientist Penkowa, found guilty of misconduct, reappears as Scientology group headliner

Is impact factor the “least-bad” way to judge the quality of a scientific paper?

plos biologyWe’ve sometimes said, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, that pre-publication peer review is the worst way to vet science, except for all the other ways that have been tried from time to time.

The authors of a new paper in PLOS Biology, Adam Eyre-Walker and Nina Stoletzki, compared three of those other ways to judge more than 6,500 papers published in 2005:

subjective post-publication peer review, the number of citations gained by a paper, and the impact factor of the journal in which the article was published

Their findings? Continue reading Is impact factor the “least-bad” way to judge the quality of a scientific paper?

Scientific American faces firestorm after removing blog post about scientist being called a whore

dnlee
Danielle Lee, via Twitter

We tend to stick to retractions in the peer-reviewed literature here at Retraction Watch, although we’ve made exceptions. Today’s post seemed like a good reason to make another exception, because while Nature Publishing Group-owned Scientific American is not a peer-reviewed journal, the science blogosphere and Twitter are lighting up this weekend with strong reactions to the magazine’s removal of a blog post by biologist Danielle Lee.

The incident was first noted by Dr. Rubidium, who wrote yesterday:

Scientist and science communicator @DNLee5 declined an offer to blog for free from biology-online.org and got called a ‘whore’.  @DNLee5 posted a thoughtful response on her Scientific American‘s blog ’The Urban Scientist‘.  A short time later, her response vanished…

(You can read Lee’s original post on Dr. Isis’s blog.)

Yesterday morning, Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina responded on Twitter: Continue reading Scientific American faces firestorm after removing blog post about scientist being called a whore