Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) has dismissed an anonymous accusation against economist Peter Nijkamp and two of his colleagues, including one of his graduate students, regarding issues related to “data acquisition and data processing.” The announcement, released last week, determined the latest complaint was “unfounded:”
A nutrition journal is retracting a paper about potential dangers of eating food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for duplicating a figure, as news stories from Italy are reporting accusations that the last author falsified some of his research. In the paper, Federico Infascelli, an animal nutrition researcher at the University of Naples, and his colleagues showed modified genes … Continue reading Paper claiming GMO dangers retracted amid allegations of data manipulation
Investigations at two institutions at Taiwan determined in 2013 that a renewable energy researcher duplicated his own work; the researcher agreed to pull 10 papers. A total of six have been withdrawn or retracted, two in November, 2015. Shyi-Min Lu is the corresponding author on the two newly retracted papers, from Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. The retractions follow investigations at the … Continue reading Renewable energy researcher recycled material, agrees to withdraw 10 papers
A Cancer Cell paper that caused a flurry of activity on the website PubPeer is under investigation, after the last author announced on the site that he’d requested a correction from the journal. The 2012 paper sparked a lively dialogue last month on the post-publication discussion site, as commenters questioned Western blot images in which … Continue reading Cancer Cell paper under investigation following anonymous queries on PubPeer
Two journals have retracted papers by a biologist at the University of Tokyo who admitted to scientific misconduct, including data duplication and misrepresentation. Another journal is planning to retract one of the researcher’s papers later this month. Hyun Kim studies a protein known as the “ski protein.” However, one analysis of the role of ski protein in development was … Continue reading Retractions follow misconduct by biologist, one more on the way
We have a new record for the longest time from publication to retraction: 80 years. It’s for a case report about a 24-year-old man who died after coughing up more than four cups of what apparently looked — and smelled — like pee. According to the case report titled “Een geval van uroptoë” published in 1923, … Continue reading We have a new record: 80 years from publication to retraction
SEOUL — In one of the single biggest instances of misconduct we’ve ever come across, prosecutors in South Korea are seeking up to 18 months’ prison time for 75 professors who are among those charged with plagiarizing science and engineering textbooks wholesale. Prosecutors say that since the 1980s, 179 professors at 110 universities across the … Continue reading Korean prosecutors seek jail time for professors in massive plagiarism scheme
In Latin America, retractions for plagiarism and other issues have increased markedly — which may be a positive sign that editors and authors are paying closer attention to publishing ethics, according to a small study published in Science and Engineering Ethics. The authors examined two major Latin American/Caribbean databases, which mostly include journals from Brazil, and have been indexing … Continue reading Is an increase in retractions good news? Maybe, suggests new study
Olivier Voinnet, a well-known plant scientist at the ETH in Zurich, has notched his 7th retraction for a highly cited paper. The 2003 paper was pulled when “additional image manipulations” came to light after The Plant Journal issued a correction earlier this year. The retraction follows an investigation into — and then retraction of — several other papers co-authored by Voinnet. The … Continue reading Voinnet retracts highly cited paper, bringing his total to 7
A paper suggesting that exposure to sunlight might help prevent hip fractures in the elderly has been retracted, due to duplication and “concerns about the underlying data.” An expression of concern that appeared last July flagged the 2005 paper as containing text that matched another paper with the same first author that was published in 2011. According … Continue reading Osteoporosis paper felled by concerns with “scientific integrity”