For the second time this month, Retraction Watch has been slapped with the threat of a lawsuit, this time Ariel Fernandez, whose work in BMC Genomics became the subject of a recent expression of concern.
Today, Fernandez emailed one of us (Adam) the following message:
Continue reading Retraction Watch threatened with legal action…again
The next several weeks are shaping up as busy ones for Retraction Watch, as we make appearances in three cities: Continue reading Come see Retraction Watch in Calgary, Fort Collins, Montreal, New York, and Seattle
Math journal editors can add — but they can also subtract.
That’s what happened to a 2012 paper in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications (JMAA), “On the fractional Ostrowski inequality with uncertainty.”
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Oops: Math journal retracts paper accepted by “accidental administrative error”
A 2003 paper is now subject to an Expression of Concern after its author reused a lot of its material in a 2007 paper.
Here’s the Expression of Concern for “New therapeutic target in primary headaches – blocking the CGRP receptor” by Lars Edvinsson of the University of Copehagen: Continue reading Duplicate publication of headache paper earns Expression of Concern, erratum
A former researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis has won back the right to apply for Federal research funding despite a 2011 finding against him by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
Philippe Bois, a cancer researcher now working at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida, argued that the alleged misconduct in the ORI findings — which led to a three-year ban on applying for funding — was actually honest error. As Bois’s attorneys explained last year: Continue reading Researcher found by ORI to have committed misconduct earns back right to apply for Federal grants
BMC Genomics has issued an expression of concern for a 2011 paper by a prominent Argentine chemist, Ariel Fernandez, whose work covers several disciplines — “His research spans representation theory in algebra, physical chemistry, molecular biophysics, and more recently, molecular evolution and drug discovery” — and institutions. And therein lies the tale.
Fernandez appeared as the first author of the article, titled “Subfunctionalization reduces the fitness cost of gene duplication in humans by buffering dosage imbalances,” along with a pair of researchers from Taiwan. Fernandez’s affiliations were listed as being with the Instituto Argentino de Matemática “Alberto P. Calderón”, CONICET (National Research Council of Argentina), in Buenos Aires, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, and the Morgridge Institute for Research, in Madison, Wisc.
According to the abstract:
Continue reading “Conflicting investigations” prompt expression of concern in BMC Genomics
We’ve already reported on the retraction of a paper in a business ethics journal for plagiarism. Yes, plagiarism in an ethics journal. But it turns out there’s at least one more case of exactly the same thing, albeit in a different business ethics journal.
Here’s the notice from the Journal of Business Ethics: Continue reading University of Virginia doctoral candidate plagiarizes in business ethics journal, but remains in program
April showers bring … database errors?
The other day, we wrote about two retractions in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and another in the American Heart Journal, stemming from database errors.
Seems to be catching.
The Economist (among other outlets) this week is reporting about a similar nother database glitch — not, we’ll admit, a retraction — involving a landmark 2010 paper by a pair of highly influential economists. The controversial article, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” by Harvard scholars Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, argued that countries that took on debt in excess of 90% of their gross domestic product suffered sharp drops in economic growth. That evidence became grist for the austerity mill, including Paul Ryan.
Turns out, that conclusion was based to some extent on an Excel error. Continue reading Influential Reinhart-Rogoff economics paper suffers spreadsheet error
Scientific experiments are like recipes: With the right components and the proper steps, the end result can be a thing of beauty. But if you start with a cup of salt instead of a cup of flour, well, even the neighbor’s schnauzer won’t touch that batch of sugar cookies.
That’s a little like the situation we have in “Controls on topographic dependence and temporal instability in catchment-scale soil moisture patterns,” a paper published in February in Water Resources Research by Michael Coleman and Jeffrey Niemann of Colorado State University.
According to the notice:
Continue reading Calibration error sends moisture paper down the drain
Steven Eaton, a UK scientist who cooked experiments while at the U.S.-based contract research outfit Aptuit, has been given a three-month prison term, making him the first person to serve time under a 1999 British law called the Good Laboratory Practice Regulations, according to the BBC.
As the BBC reported: Continue reading UK researcher who faked data gets three months in jail