The week at Retraction Watch featured a new grant to our parent non-profit organization, a retraction from the NEJM, and our first-ever retraction. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Two journals published by Elsevier are retracting a pair of material science papers that appear to share figures. The papers — in Materials Letters and Optics Communications — discuss photonic crystals, a kind of material used to manipulate light. They share the same first author, Zheng-qi Liu at Jiangxi Normal University and Nanjing University in China, as well as … Continue reading Duplication shatters two photonic crystal papers
This version of Hurricane Isaac — based on the force of nature that hit Louisiana in 2012 — didn’t get very far. Atmospheric Research has retracted a paper on a simulation of the hurricane just a few months after it was published. The paper included two features that commonly get a paper retracted: erroneous data, and a dispute over … Continue reading “Significant errors in the data” stop Hurricane Isaac paper
The week at Retraction Watch featured a particularly misleading retraction notice, and a university stripping a graduate of her PhD for misconduct. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
This morning, our thoughts are with the people of Paris. The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper claiming dramatically higher rates of sexual trauma among men in the military, and a look at whether gender plays a role in peer review. Also: We’re hiring. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Authors of a study on a potential biomarker for ovarian cancer have been hit with two retractions after the results were published twice. We don’t usually see both copies of a duplicated paper retracted, but this is a somewhat unusual case. In November 2011, a group of authors submitted the paper to Gynecologic Oncology. But two months’ prior, the … Continue reading “Dual submission issues” retract both copies of ovarian cancer paper
The authors of a Cell Metabolism paper are pulling it after discovering blot images that “appear more than once in independent and unrelated experiments.” Just how the duplication occurred in the 2009 paper — about transcription of mitochondrial DNA — remains a mystery, the authors note: …the reasons for the errors are still under investigation… Meanwhile, … Continue reading University investigating duplicated images in retracted paper
An electrical engineering paper published in April has been retracted because of similarities to a 2012 paper from different authors, including “almost identical” data in two of the papers’ tables. The authors were unable to provide the original numbers for the suspect tables, along with a pair of “similar” figures, which bore a striking resemblance … Continue reading Retraction strikes power grid paper with “almost identical” content to previous study
We’ve learned about two more retractions we missed for Diederick Stapel, the Dutch social psychology researcher who has now racked up a total of 57 retractions by our count. Both retractions were issued after a committee released a report which established fraud in dozens of papers co-authored by Stapel. Stapel is still #4 on our leaderboard.
This week at Retraction Watch featured nine more fake peer review retractions, this time from Elsevier, and an update to the retraction count for one-time record holder Joachim Boldt. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: