Obesity Surgery won’t retract papers by weight loss surgeon who published fake data elsewhere

Earlier this week, we reported on the case of Edward Shang, a weight loss surgeon who was forced to retract a study after it became clear that he had enrolled only about a third as many patients as he claimed — if he enrolled any at all. In that post, the editor in chief of Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, who retracted the paper, told us he had flagged the issue for Obesity Surgery editors, who had also published Shang’s work.

Yesterday, we heard back from the editor of Obesity Surgery, Scott Shikora, who tells us that he’s reviewed Shang’s four publications in his journal: Continue reading Obesity Surgery won’t retract papers by weight loss surgeon who published fake data elsewhere

Correcting The Anatomical Record: Article pulled after former student lifted lab findings

The Anatomical Record, the official organ of the American Association of Anatomists, weighs its acceptances on “the quality of the research, its originality and significance to our readership.”

So it’s not surprising that when it gets duped, it gets angry.

Consider the following retraction notice that appeared recently in the publication for an article it ran early 2010: Continue reading Correcting The Anatomical Record: Article pulled after former student lifted lab findings

Vacuum force researcher retracts paper that failed to name collaborators

Science doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Even vacuum science.

The International Journal of Modern Physics A has retracted a 2011 paper by a physicist who failed to acknowledge the contributions — instrumental, it seems — of his collaborators.

The paper, “Measurement of the Casimir Interaction Between a au Sphere and au Gratings” [au in this case being the atomic symbol for gold, not the French article], was published last summer by Ricardo Decca as part of a conference proceedings. According to the notice: Continue reading Vacuum force researcher retracts paper that failed to name collaborators

Author retracts weight loss surgery paper after admitting most, if not all, of the subjects were made up

If you had read “Aerobic endurance training improves weight loss, body composition, and co-morbidities in patients after laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass,” a 2010 paper in Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, you might have been convinced by the title and findings that exercise was a good idea for people who’d had stomach stapling.

After all, the authors had operated on “60 consecutive morbidly obese patients” and then randomized them into “a low-exercise group (aerobic physical exercise 1 time for 1 hr/wk) or a multiple-exercise group (APE 2 times for 1 hr/wk)” so they could collect data on “age, gender, length of hospital stay, operative details, co-morbidities, postoperative complications, initial body weight and height, postoperative weight, and body composition.” When they did that, they found that “The multiple exercise group had a significantly more rapid reduction of body mass index, excess weight loss, and fat mass compared with the low-exercise group.”

Except that at best they had only operated on about a third the number of patients they said they had. Continue reading Author retracts weight loss surgery paper after admitting most, if not all, of the subjects were made up

A correction for Luk van Parijs and colleagues for a “clerical error”

Luk van Parijs, a former associate professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who was fired in 2005 after confessing to data fabrication and sentenced last year to six months of house arrest, can add another correction to his list of several retractions and errata.

Here’s the notice for “Interferon γ is required for activation-induced death of T lymphocytes,” from the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM): Continue reading A correction for Luk van Parijs and colleagues for a “clerical error”

Pair of graphene papers retracted

Graphene has been hot for several years. Here’s what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences had to say about it in 2010 when awarding two researchers the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work:

Graphene is a form of carbon. As a material it is completely new – not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper. As a conductor of heat it outperforms all other known materials. It is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even helium, the smallest gas atom, can pass through it. Carbon, the basis of all known life on earth, has surprised us once again.

But one researcher may have allowed his enthusiasm for graphene to get ahead of him. He and his unwitting co-authors have now lost two papers thanks to that enthusiasm. Continue reading Pair of graphene papers retracted

Assay come, assay go: Corporate takeover leads to retraction of device analysis

A group of hematology researchers in Canada lost a publication to the merger of two medical device makers, after the acquiring company apparently decided not to pursue marketing the product in question.

An April 23 retraction notice in the International Journal of Laboratory Hematology about the article, “Enhanced flagging and improved clinical sensitivity on the new DxH 300TM Coulter® cellular analysis system,” originally published in February, tells the tale: Continue reading Assay come, assay go: Corporate takeover leads to retraction of device analysis

JACS temporarily pulls “space dinosaurs” paper for alleged duplication

Duplication has, as we noted on Twitter the other day, been tripping up more and more scientists. And now self-plagiarism has snared a prominent Columbia University chemist in a paper that left many people scratching their heads to begin with.

As reported by the Chembark blog and Nature, the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) has pulled a paper by Ronald Breslow for alleged duplication. The page for “On Evidence for the Likely Origin of Homochirality in Amino Acids, Sugars, and Nucleosides on Prebiotic Earth,” originally published on March 25, now includes this: Continue reading JACS temporarily pulls “space dinosaurs” paper for alleged duplication

Journal retracts two Stapel papers, on salesmen and on women who change their names when they marry

The journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology has retracted two articles by Diederik Stapel, the Dutch researcher who has admitted falsifying his data. Stapel was suspended from his post at Tilburg University in September.

Here are the notices, which appear together: Continue reading Journal retracts two Stapel papers, on salesmen and on women who change their names when they marry

Authors’ public dispute over retraction notice in Cytokine ends in a draw, bruises journal

Cytokine had an interesting retraction notice this year that points up the pitfalls — perhaps necessary, perhaps not — that journals can step in when they give authors the benefit of the doubt.

Here’s the story: A doctoral student named Varun Kesherwani was working in the lab of Ajit Sodhi, a U.S.-trained and well-published cell biologist at Banaras Hindu University. Kesherwani’s Linkedin page lists him as a postdoc at the University of Nebraska.

The two were co-authors on a 2007 paper in Cytokine, “Quantitative role of p42/44 and p38 in the production and regulation of cytokines TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-12 by murine peritoneal macrophages in vitro by Concanavalin A.” (That paper has been cited nine times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, including by the retraction notice.)

But it seems Kesherwani, who was listed as the paper’s corresponding author despite his junior status, did not have his mentor’s blessing when he submitted the manuscript. Continue reading Authors’ public dispute over retraction notice in Cytokine ends in a draw, bruises journal