Mizzou investigating faculty as one heart beats as two in plagiarized — and now retracted — cardiac paper

The American Journal of the Medical Sciences has retracted a 2012 article on premature heartbeats by a group of authors in Missouri who took “significant” liberties with an earlier paper in Heart.

The offending paper, “Ventricular ectopic beats: an overview of management considerations, “was written by Amar Jadhav and colleagues at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, in Columbia, and published in the February issue of the AJMS.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Mizzou investigating faculty as one heart beats as two in plagiarized — and now retracted — cardiac paper

Pharmacology journal expresses concern over “similar, but updated” review

The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology has issued an “expression of concern” for a 2003 review article, based on a previous lecture, with close echoes to a paper that had appeared in one of The Lancet titles.

Here’s the notice for the article, by Peter Winstanley, dean of the Warwick Medical School in the United Kingdom: Continue reading Pharmacology journal expresses concern over “similar, but updated” review

Plagiarism costs Canadian lab-on-a-chip researcher a paper — in his own journal

We have long (well, for the past two years) wondered about the pitfalls of publishing in one’s own journal, and here’s a case that illustrates precisely how fraught that practice can be.

The journal Microfluidics and Nanofluidics has retracted a 2010 article, titled “Induced-charge electrokinetic phenomena,” by Dongqing Li and Yasaman Daghighi, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, for what appears to be extensive misappropriation of text and data.

As the notice explains: Continue reading Plagiarism costs Canadian lab-on-a-chip researcher a paper — in his own journal

Oh, snap: Cable wakeboarding injury paper falls to duplication

A team of what you might call daredevil researchers has lost a paper about a sport called cable wakeboarding after they tried to publish, in English, a very similar version of what they’d published in German.

We have a confession to make: Before sitting down to write this post, we had no idea what cable wakeboarding was. So before we discuss the retraction, here’s a definition, courtesy of CableWakeboarding.com:

Cable wakeboarding is simply wakeboarding while being pulled not by a boat, but by an overhead cableski system. It’s definitely the coolest addition to the distinguished list of extreme sports throughout the world, because it combines the best of the extreme nature of wakeboarding without the need for (or expense of) a boat. Cable is an enormously valuable and important element of the entire sport of wakeboarding.

Now to the retraction notice for “Cable wakeboarding, a new trendy sport: analysis of injuries with regard to injury prevention,” published online in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports online in 2010: Continue reading Oh, snap: Cable wakeboarding injury paper falls to duplication

A correction for Alirio Melendez, in Journal of Cellular Physiology

We’ve been covering the case of Alirio Melendez, three of whose papers have been retracted amidst questions about almost 70 studies. The latest development is a correction in the Journal of Cellular Physiology, which has already retracted one of his papers, of a study on which he was a co-author.

Here’s the correction for “Short dysfunctional telomeres impair the repair of arsenite-induced oxidative damage in mouse cells”: Continue reading A correction for Alirio Melendez, in Journal of Cellular Physiology

University of Nebraska investigating work of lung researchers as journal issues Expression of Concern

The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (AJRCCM) has issued an Expression of Concern about a paper published online earlier this year, after concerns about the data prompted an investigation by the University of Nebraska.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading University of Nebraska investigating work of lung researchers as journal issues Expression of Concern

Dental paper pulled for “unattributed overlap”

The Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B: Applied Biomaterials is retracting a 2010 paper by Turkish dental researchers for “unattributed overlap.”

We’re pretty sure that’s a euphemism for plagiarism we haven’t heard before — and it raises the question, could you have acceptable, attributed overlap?

The study has been cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, including by the retraction notice: Continue reading Dental paper pulled for “unattributed overlap”

Cardiff University looking into allegations of misconduct by group headed by its dean of medicine

Last December, we reported on a Journal of Immunology paper that was retracted after a Cardiff University investigation found the senior author had inappropriately manipulated images.  The inquiry found that there had been “no intention to mislead and subsequent repeats of the original experiments have shown that the paper’s conclusions remain sound,” the university told us at that time.

The senior author of the paper, Rossen Donev, had since moved on to the University of Swansea, and Cardiff had notified the Medical Research Council, which funded the work. The case seemed to end there.

But other work by Donev’s former lab group, which is led by BP Morgan, the dean of Cardiff’s medical school, has been the subject of scrutiny by at least one anonymous whistleblower. That whistleblower’s allegations — which also center on image manipulation — have been reported on the relatively new site Science Fraud, which posts allegations anonymously. They involve papers published in Cancer Research, Molecular Immunology, and the American Journal of Physiology.

We’ve now learned that Cardiff has “initiated its Procedure for Dealing with Allegations of Academic Misconduct in Research” after Clare Francis, another anonymous whistleblower whose name will probably be familiar to Retraction Watch readers, forwarded the concerns to university officials. Now, according to an email from Carole A Evans, Cardiff’s Director of Governance and Compliance Division: Continue reading Cardiff University looking into allegations of misconduct by group headed by its dean of medicine

Happy second anniversary, Retraction Watch: Plus, our plans for year three

We didn’t plan it this way, but our second anniversary gift came a few days early this week, when we learned that a retraction notice had cited us. Given that the traditional second anniversary gift is cotton, and we’re really not sure what to do with that information, we’re much happier — and humbled — by the mention.

Two years ago today, we launched Retraction Watch. When we looked back at year one, we had written more than 250 posts; that number is up to more than 600. We had a new record-holder in our first year, Joachim Boldt, with 88 retractions; we now have a new one, Yoshitaka Fujii, with 172 likely. This July, we crossed the three million-pageview threshold, and also saw our first 300,000-pageview month.

But numbers don’t always tell the whole story, Continue reading Happy second anniversary, Retraction Watch: Plus, our plans for year three

Family Practice affair: Diabetes paper pulled for redundancy, which journal calls “honest error”

Family Practice has retracted a 2009 review article on diabetes whose author had published a similar — in spots identical — paper two years earlier in another journal. We think the notice is nine-tenths solid, but there’s a part at the end that raises an important question about how much, or little, editors should do to accommodate the embarrassments of their authors.

The notice:

Continue reading Family Practice affair: Diabetes paper pulled for redundancy, which journal calls “honest error”