Another site hit with DMCA takedown notice for post about Anil Potti

nanopolitanRetraction Watch readers may recall that earlier this month, WordPress removed ten of our posts about Anil Potti — the former Duke oncology researcher who has retracted or corrected 19 papers — after a false DMCA copyright claim against us. The site which claimed the copyright violations — and which no longer exists — actually plagiarized our posts, not the other way around.

We’re still waiting for those posts to be reinstated; our understanding is that they’ll be back later this week. In the meantime, Nanopolitan, another site that wrote about Potti has been hit with what looks like a false DMCA claim.

Blogger, Nanopolitan’s host, has taken down one post. One of the owners of Nanopolitan, Abi, writes: Continue reading Another site hit with DMCA takedown notice for post about Anil Potti

Duplication leads to collapse in Nondestructive Testing

Call it uncreative non-destruction. ntecover

A team from China and, it appears, Mississippi, has lost a paper in Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation for duplicate publication.

Here’s the notice (a PDF): Continue reading Duplication leads to collapse in Nondestructive Testing

MIT lab retracts Cell synapse tagging paper for falsification or fabrication

cell feb 2013A rising star at MIT has retracted a paper after an investigation found that her former postdoc had “falsified or fabricated figures.”

Alice Ting, winner of an NIH Directors Pioneer Award and named one of Technology Review’s “Innovators Under 35,” published the paper, “Imaging Activity-Dependent Regulation of Neurexin-Neuroligin Interactions Using trans-Synaptic Enzymatic Biotinylation,” in Cell in 2010 along with Amar Thyagarajan.

The notice is refreshingly detailed given the circumstances: Continue reading MIT lab retracts Cell synapse tagging paper for falsification or fabrication

Not in my journal: Two editors take stock of misconduct in their fields — and don’t find much

biol conservToday brings two journal editorials about misconduct and retractions. They take, if we may, a bit of an optimistic and perhaps even blindered approach.

In an editorial titled “Scientific misconduct occurs, but is rare,” Boston University’s Richard Primack, editor of Biological Conservation, highlights a Corrigendum of a paper by Jesus Angel Lemus, the veterinary researcher who has retracted seven papers: Continue reading Not in my journal: Two editors take stock of misconduct in their fields — and don’t find much

Duplication forces retractions of two 15-year-old entomology papers

jtbA Brazilian entomologist, Claudio Jose von Zuben, has been forced to retract two papers from 1997 after editors became aware that he and his colleagues had used the same figure in both.

First, the notice from Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz: Continue reading Duplication forces retractions of two 15-year-old entomology papers

Plagiarism flushes sanitation paper

sci total envSometimes, the headlines just write themselves.

Two scientists in India have had a paper retracted after it became clear they had plagiarized a study by a Swedish researcher. Here’s the notice for “A conceptual model of people’s approach to sanitation,” from Science of the Total Environment: Continue reading Plagiarism flushes sanitation paper

Parasitology plagiarists get retraction — and a publishing ban

A1_10905_Cover page 1Are plagiarists parasites? And what if they work in the field of parasitism — like M. Shafiq Ansari and colleagues at Aligarh Muslim University in India?

The Journal of Insect Behavior is retracting a 2011 paper by Ansari’s group, “Foraging of host-habitat and superparasitism in Cotesia glomerata: A gregarious parasitoid of Pieris brassicae,” for its similarity to a 2003 article on the same species by other researchers. The insect in question is a form of wasp that, in a case of life imitating Alien, lays its eggs in living caterpillars, which the little buggers eat from the inside out. (Turnabout apparently is fair play in this grisly interaction.)

Here’s the retraction notice (it’s a PDF): Continue reading Parasitology plagiarists get retraction — and a publishing ban

A retracted Cell paper reappears elsewhere, sans author who didn’t sign retraction notice

acta neuropathologicaOne of the things we try to do here at Retraction Watch is keep tabs on retracted work that appears again the literature. We did that twice in one day last year, once with a paper about chimps that was retracted from Biology Letters and ended up in the Journal of Human Evolution, and then again with a PLOS ONE paper on on “longevity genes” that had been retracted from Science.

Today, we have another case. Continue reading A retracted Cell paper reappears elsewhere, sans author who didn’t sign retraction notice

Transplant journal retracts three papers over possible organ trafficking

exptclintransThe journal Experimental and Clinical Transplantation has retracted three papers by a group of Lebanese researchers who appear to have been engaging in illicit trafficking of human kidneys.

According to the notice: Continue reading Transplant journal retracts three papers over possible organ trafficking

One plagiarized economics paper that won’t need to be retracted

s and bLate last year, we covered a paper wondering why there were so few retractions in business and economics journals. That post was on our minds as we read a fantastic piece of reporting by reporters at the Scarlet & Black, the Grinnell College student paper.

The story concerns Brian Swart, a Grinnell economics professor who “abruptly resigned in the middle of last semester,” reporters Peter Sullivan and Hayes Gardner note. As is unfortunately often the case, the university wouldn’t say why Swart was leaving. But Sullivan and Gardner didn’t leave it there. They talked to “professors from other institutions involved in the situation” and got the food of investigative reporters everywhere: Documents. Those interviews and documents showed that: Continue reading One plagiarized economics paper that won’t need to be retracted