Marc Abrahams, of Improbable Research and the Ig Nobels, found something remarkable earlier this evening, as he is wont to do:
That’s right, a paper written by two Penises and a von Boning. But much to Abrahams’ chagrin, he notes: Continue reading The case of the three retracted Penises
Here’s a warning to would-be plagiarizers: Don’t submit to the journal Molecules unless you have no problem being called out by name when you’re busted.
Consider: The journal is retracting a paper it published earlier this year after learning that the article contained verbatim text — and lots of it — from previously published papers.
The article, “Cytotoxicity and Anti-Inflammatory Activity of ethylsulfanyltriazoloquinazolin,” was written by a group that included Amira M. Gamal-Eldeen, of the National Research Center in Cairo, Egypt. Why single out Dr. Gamal-Eldeen, you ask? Read for yourself: Continue reading Your bad: Journal yanks paper for plagiarism and duplication, and points fingers
Another installment of Ask Retraction Watch. A reader asks:
I was curious, what happens to papers after retraction?
In some cases the papers are retracted by authors claiming that they found some error in the data. As I know, that retraction means that paper is retracted from the whole literature. If the original authors want to publish part of the paper or the whole paper itself after removing or correcting the erroneous part, is that OK? Or are they guilty of duplication?
If the authors want to republish the corrected data, should they inform the editors about earlier retraction or not? I believe if they inform the editors, they will spoil any chance of the paper being accepted.
Vote in our poll, and comment below.
Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: Can data from retracted papers be republished?
The author of a scholarly work on Christian theology — in particular, that dealing with what the Bible has to say about the relationship of Christians with Jews and other non-believers in Christ — has lost the article for violating the Eighth Commandment. (Or Seventh, depending which version of said commandments you read.)
The paper, “Social identity, ethnicity and the gospel of reconciliation,” was written by Jason Goroncy, of the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, in Dunedin, New Zealand, and the Department of Practical Theology at the University of Pretoria, in South Africa. It appeared in the journal Theological Studies (also known as HTS Teologiese Studies).
The abstract states:
Continue reading Thou shalt not plagiarize: Eighth commandment violation results in retraction
Ulrich Lichtenthaler, the management professor at the University of Mannheim who has had a dozen papers retracted, has now lost his license to teach.
The WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management, where Lichtenthaler earned his PhD, announced the move Friday, saying (courtesy Google Translate): Continue reading Management prof with 12 retractions loses his license to teach
As the bumper sticker says, “Regime change starts at home.” Seems to be the case with scientists these days.
This month we have seen commendable instances of researchers retracting papers after identifying flaws in their own data — an outbreak of integrity that has us here at Retraction Watch applauding. (We’ve even created a new category, “doing the right thing,” at the suggestion of a reader.)
Today’s feel-good story comes from the lab of Karl Svoboda, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus, in Ashburn, Va. Back in June, Svoboda and his colleagues published “Whisker Dynamics Underlying Tactile Exploration,” in the Journal of Neuroscience. Here’s what the abstract had to say about the study:
Continue reading It’s an epidemic! Another group does the right thing, retracting neuroscience paper
Time for another installment of Ask Retraction Watch. Today’s query comes from a postdoc:
I have a question regarding publications in different languages: Can I publish the same identical data in two different languages? Would this be considered duplication?
Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: Can I publish identical data in two different languages?
The authors of an article in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules have pulled the paper in what appears to be an authorship dispute sparked by premature submission.
The paper, “Renaturation and one step purification of the chicken GIIA secreted phospholipase A2 from inclusion bodies,” came from a group of researchers in Tunisia and Marseille, France, and was published online last May. It has yet to be cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. As the abstract states:
Continue reading Retraction for iffy data as authors of chicken enzyme paper lay an egg
MIT’s Robert Weinberg, a leading cancer researcher who retracted a Cancer Cell paper earlier this year for “inappropriate presentation” of figures, has corrected a different paper in the same journal.
Here’s the correction for “Species- and Cell Type-Specific Requirements for Cellular Transformation:”
We were apprised recently of errors made in the assembly of Figures 2B, 3A, 4A, 4B, and 5G, resulting in the incorporation of incorrect representative images in these figures. These errors occurred during the electronic assembly and have no bearing on the conclusions of the study. The corrected figures are shown below. The authors apologize for any possible confusion this might have caused.
Here’s the original Figure 2 and caption, followed by the new version (read all the way to the end of the post for more details on how this came to light): Continue reading A Cancer Cell mega-correction for highly cited researcher who retracted paper earlier this year
We’ll say it again: We like being able to point out when researchers stand up and do the right thing, even at personal cost.
In December 2011, Pamela C. Ronald, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues published a paper in PLOS ONE,”Small Protein-Mediated Quorum Sensing in a Gram-Negative Bacterium.” Such quorum sensing research is a “hot topic” right now, so not surprisingly the paper caught the attention of other scientists, and the media, including the Western Farm Press. The study has been cited eight times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
One of those scientists who took notice was Ronald’s UC Davis colleague Jonathan Eisen, who posted about the paper on his blog. That was on January 9, 2012. But if you go to that post today, you’ll see that Eisen struck through most of it, and added this comment: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Researchers retract quorum sensing paper after public process