The Journal of Neuroscience has retracted a 2009 article by a group from Mount Sinai (now the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) for suspicious Western blots.
The paper, “Requirement for Protein Synthesis at Developing Synapses,” came from the lab of Deanna Benson, a Parkinson’s expert. According to the abstract, which is still available on the journal’s website:
A group of authors has withdrawn a paper from the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), but readers won’t know why.
The paper, “Static High-Gradient Magnetic Fields Activate Transient Receptor Potential Vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) Ion Channels Enabling Remote Control of Cell Function,” whose corresponding author is Thomas Simmet of Ulm University, appeared online on June 11. Since June 24, the PDF of the paper has been stamped: Continue reading Researchers get a mulligan: JBC paper withdrawn sans explanation
The Journal of Chemical Sciences, the journal of the Indian Academy of Sciences, has retracted a 2012 paper by a group of researchers in India and South Korea who stole material (and a lot of it) from a 2009 article for their reactant.
The retraction notice (it’s a pdf) speaks quite well for itself:
Continue reading “Clear case of plagiarism” forces retraction of chemistry paper
Retraction Watch readers are by now more than likely familiar with the growing concerns over reproducibility in science. In response to issues in fields from cancer research to psychology, scientists have come up with programs such as the Reproducibility Initiative and the Open Science Framework.
These sorts of efforts are important experiments in ensuring that findings are robust. We think there’s another potential way to encourage reproducibility: Giving journals an incentive to publish results that hold up.
As we write in our latest LabTimes column, we have already called for a Transparency Index Continue reading Time for a scientific journal Reproducibility Index
A pair of chemists from China who published their colleagues’ data without knowledge or permission have lost the article to retraction. They also have another retraction on a similar topic, which we covered before.
The article, which appeared in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces in 2012, was titled “Nanoporous PtCo Surface Alloy Architecture with Enhanced Properties for Methanol Electrooxidation.” The authors, Huajun Qiu and Feixue Zou, are listed as being with the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Shandong University, in Jinan, China.
As the retraction notice states: Continue reading Our bad! Researchers take colleagues’ data, lose paper
We’ve often found that when some authors refuse to sign retraction notices, there’s a much bigger story than terse notices let on. And a retraction in this week’s Nature of a 19-year-old paper is a shining example of that.
Here’s the brief notice for “Oligosaccharide ligands for NKR-P1 protein activate NK cells and cytotoxicity,” a 1994 paper by researchers from the UK and the Czech Republic that had already been subject to a 1996 correction: Continue reading Retraction of 19-year-old Nature paper reveals hidden cameras, lab break-in, evidence tampering
The Journal of Theoretical and Applied Physics has retracted a 2012 paper by a pair of Iranian cosmologists who failed to adequately cite one of the critical references on which they based their work.
We think that falls under the broader category of plagiarism — after all, as Heisenberg famously postulated, the same text cannot simultaneously appear in two published articles under different authorship. Or something like that.
The paper in question, “Torsion of space-time in f (R) gravity,” deals with, as this Wikipedia entry states: Continue reading Gravity paper yanked for plagiarism by another name
Two studies by Adam Savine, the former Washington University neuroscience graduate student found by the Office of Research Integrity to have falsified data, have been retracted.
Here’s the notice for one: Continue reading Retractions arrive for former Wash U neuroscience grad student found to have committed misconduct
The Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences has retracted a paper it published earlier this year on the use of facial biometrics to identify humans.
The reason: Evidently, those biometrics had already largely been described by another group.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading “Soft biometrics” for human ID paper guilty of identity theft, retracted
A University of Copenhagen researcher who co-authored papers with Milena Penkowa — once the subject of misconduct and embezzlement inquiries — has been found by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (acronym UVVU in Danish) to have acted in a “scientifically dishonest” and “grossly negligent” manner.
Two different researchers brought complaints against Bente Klarlund Pedersen and three of her co-authors (not including Penkowa) and the committee has ruled on both. According to a one-page English summary of the draft ruling on complaints brought by Jamie Timmons: Continue reading Danish committee: Researcher acted in “scientifically dishonest” and “grossly negligent” manner