Search Results for: elsevier

U.S. gov’t researchers withdraw climate paper after using pseudonyms

Climate scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have withdrawn a study they wrote under eyebrow-raising pseudonyms. The withdrawn paper, about predicting surface temperatures of planets, appeared in Advances in Space Research in August, 2015, and is authored by Den Volokin and Lark ReLlez. Normally, a withdrawal wouldn’t raise our eyebrows, but climate scientist Gavin Schmidt pointed out on Twitter … Continue reading U.S. gov’t researchers withdraw climate paper after using pseudonyms

Peer review manipulation fells another study

A spectroscopy journal has retracted a 2016 study after concluding that its editors had been misled by a fake review. According to the retraction notice, the journal — Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy — accepted the paper due to positive feedback from someone assuming the identity of an expert reviewer, using an … Continue reading Peer review manipulation fells another study

Cancer researcher logs 5th retraction

A cancer researcher has added a fifth retraction to his name — but the notice doesn’t mention any problems with the paper itself.  Rather, the Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia decided to retract the paper because it referenced other papers that had been retracted as a result of data manipulation. The notice doesn’t … Continue reading Cancer researcher logs 5th retraction

A plagiarism loop: Authors copied from papers that had copied from others

Note to self: If you’re going to duplicate your own work, don’t copy from papers that plagiarize others’ research. Just such a mistake has cost a PhD candidate three papers — although his co-author argues that a company is in part to blame. Hossein Jafarzadeh, who is studying mechanical engineering at the University of Tehran, apparently asked a … Continue reading A plagiarism loop: Authors copied from papers that had copied from others

You’ve been dupe’d: Results so nice, they’re published twice

With retraction notices continuing to pour in, we like to occasionally take the opportunity to cover several at a time to keep up. We’ve compiled a handful of retractions that were all issued to papers that were published twice by at least one of the same authors — known as duplication. (Sometimes, this can be … Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Results so nice, they’re published twice

7th retraction for Ohio researcher who manipulated dozens of figures

A pharmacology researcher at Ohio State University has added his seventh retraction, four years after a finding of misconduct by the U.S. Office of Integrity (ORI). An analysis of the work of Terry Elton determined that he had falsified and/or fabricated Western blots in eighteen (18) figures and in six (6) published papers.  In 2012, the ORI … Continue reading 7th retraction for Ohio researcher who manipulated dozens of figures

Uranium study pulled after author says data were falsified

A researcher has pulled a paper about uranium oxide fuel pellets after notifying the journal the data had been falsified — and, what’s more, the publisher can’t verify the identities of the co-authors.  Originally, the Journal of the European Ceramic Society paper suggested a way to increase the compatibility of uranium oxide fuel pellets, which are … Continue reading Uranium study pulled after author says data were falsified

Researcher in Brazil earns 12th retraction for recycling text and figures

A scientist in Brazil has gained his twelfth retraction for reusing text and figures from previously published papers. In 2011, Elsevier announced that it would retract 11 papers by Claudio Airoldi, a researcher at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil. Subsequently, he was suspended for 45 days, and his co-author on the 11 … Continue reading Researcher in Brazil earns 12th retraction for recycling text and figures

Beleaguered plant scientist with 22 corrections avoids 3 more

Cell will not be issuing corrections for three papers co-authored by prominent plant biologist Olivier Voinnet, after readers on PubPeer raised questions about some of the images.  The news may be a welcome relief for Voinnet, based at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who has recently issued 22 corrections and seven retractions. Ongoing questions about his work have also earned … Continue reading Beleaguered plant scientist with 22 corrections avoids 3 more

Cell Press dismisses fraud allegations in high-profile genetics papers

Cell Press has dismissed accusations of image manipulation in two well-cited papers.  In June 2015, we reported that the publisher was investigating anonymous allegations of more than a dozen instances of manipulation of images in the papers published in Cell and Molecular Cell in 1999 and 2001, respectively.  After assessing the original high-resolution versions of images from the laboratory notebook of … Continue reading Cell Press dismisses fraud allegations in high-profile genetics papers