Search Results for: press release

Coptic cop-out? Religion journal won’t pull paper based on bogus ‘gospel’

What the Harvard Theological Review giveth, it evidently will not taketh away. The venerable publication about religious matters is refusing to retract a 2014 article by a noted scholar of early Christianity despite evidence that the article — about Jesus’s wife — was based on a forgery. The paper, by Harvard theologian Karen King, described … Continue reading Coptic cop-out? Religion journal won’t pull paper based on bogus ‘gospel’

Seventh retraction appears for cancer researcher who sued PubPeer commenters

Fazlul Sarkar, who sued PubPeer commenters for criticizing his work, has logged two more retractions, bringing his total to seven. The two retractions appear in the Journal of Cellular Physiology, and follow five others released last week by another Wiley journal, Journal of Cellular Biochemistry. All notices mention an investigation at Wayne State University, where Sarkar … Continue reading Seventh retraction appears for cancer researcher who sued PubPeer commenters

More than $100M worth of research may be tainted by govt lab misconduct

Misconduct by a chemist at a Colorado lab run by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has potentially affected  24 research and assessment projects, supported by $108 million in federal funding, government officials have disclosed. According to a June 15 statement from the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees … Continue reading More than $100M worth of research may be tainted by govt lab misconduct

Leiden requests two retractions over misconduct

The Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) has asked a journal to retract two papers after revealing a former employee manipulated data. The report does not name the individual nor the journal, but notes that they work in a molecular field, and are currently employed by a university outside The Netherlands. According to a news release about … Continue reading Leiden requests two retractions over misconduct

Pharmacology journal pulls paper for “insufficient scientific quality;” authors disagree

Against the authors’ wishes, a pharmacology journal has retracted a paper after receiving two messages questioning the “soundness of the experimental results.” The editors of the journal, Frontiers in Pharmacology, issued an expression of concern about the paper in April 2016, and investigated it following the allegations. According to the retraction notice, the authors disagree with the retraction. Here’s the … Continue reading Pharmacology journal pulls paper for “insufficient scientific quality;” authors disagree

Researcher accused of fraud, embezzlement acquitted by Italian court

An Italian court has acquitted a gastroenterologist who was accused of fraud and embezzlement.   An earlier institutional investigation into Stefano Fiorucci, based at the University of Perugia in Italy, found that he had manipulated images in publications that he allegedly used to win two million Euros of funding. The story, which has dragged on for years, … Continue reading Researcher accused of fraud, embezzlement acquitted by Italian court

PLOS ONE republishes removed chronic fatigue syndrome data

PLOS ONE has republished data that were abruptly removed two weeks ago after the authors expressed concerns they did not have permission to release them. The dataset — de-identified information from people with chronic fatigue syndrome — was removed May 18, noting it was “published in error.” But this week, the journal republished the dataset, saying the authors’ university had … Continue reading PLOS ONE republishes removed chronic fatigue syndrome data

PLOS ONE paper plagiarized from 17 articles — yes, 17

A PLOS ONE paper about chronic pain plagiarized from multiple sources — 17, in fact. According to the retraction notice released by the journal last week, the paper contains “extensive verbatim use of text from other sources.” How did this make it past the editors? The journal published the paper in 2012 — before it began screening … Continue reading PLOS ONE paper plagiarized from 17 articles — yes, 17

PLOS editors discussing authors’ decision to remove chronic fatigue syndrome data

After PLOS ONE allowed authors to remove a dataset from a paper on chronic fatigue syndrome, the editors are now “discussing the matter” with the researchers, given the journal’s requirements about data availability. As Leonid Schneider reported earlier today, the 2015 paper was corrected May 18 to remove an entire dataset; the authors note that … Continue reading PLOS editors discussing authors’ decision to remove chronic fatigue syndrome data

Publicly available data on thousands of OKCupid users pulled over copyright claim

The Open Science Framework (OSF) has pulled a dataset from 70,000 users of the online dating site OkCupid over copyright concerns, according to the study author. The release of the dataset generated concerns, by making personal information — including personality traits — publicly available. Emil Kirkegaard, a master’s student at Aarhus University in Denmark, told us that … Continue reading Publicly available data on thousands of OKCupid users pulled over copyright claim