Authors have retracted a paper from Cell after they were unable to reproduce data in two figures, compromising their confidence in some of the findings. The authors revisited their experiments after another lab was unable to replicate their data, about proteins that may play a role in lung cancer. The first author told Nature News in 2013 that … Continue reading Authors retract non-reproducible Cell paper
The Open Science Framework (OSF) has pulled a dataset from 70,000 users of the online dating site OkCupid over copyright concerns, according to the study author. The release of the dataset generated concerns, by making personal information — including personality traits — publicly available. Emil Kirkegaard, a master’s student at Aarhus University in Denmark, told us that … Continue reading Publicly available data on thousands of OKCupid users pulled over copyright claim
We’ve found four more retractions for an erstwhile accounting professor, bringing his total to 37. The latest retractions follow a 2014 investigation into the work of James E. Hunton by his former employer, Bentley University in Massachusetts, which found him guilty of misconduct, resulting in more than two dozen retractions. Here’s the list of retractions released by the American Accounting … Continue reading Former accounting prof adds 4 more retractions, bringing total to 37
Four different journals have pulled papers from the same authors due to alleged duplication or manipulation of images. All four papers have two authors in common — Jianting Miao and Wei Zhang, both based at The Fourth Military Medical University in Xi’an City, Shaanxi, China. Many of the other co-authors are also listed in two … Continue reading “Mixed up” images earn biologists four retractions
A pair of researchers affiliated with the University of Galati in Romania were suspended after duplicating work in their papers on materials used to build ships, earning them four retractions last year, and one the year before. According to Romanian newspaper Impact Est, in December an ethics committee found that co-authors Ionel Chirica and Elena-Felicia Beznea committed “a number of breaches of ethics,” including … Continue reading Authors suspended as duplications sink papers on ship building
The week at Retraction Watch featured an imposter editor and an author who threatened to sue a journal if it didn’t reverse a retraction. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
We’ve unearthed four more retractions for Khalid Zaman, an economist who lost 16 papers in 2014 for orchestrating fake peer review. That brings Zaman’s total to 20, and ties him at the #18 spot on our leaderboard. One of the more recently discovered retractions is for fake peer review, attributed to Zaman; one is for plagiarism, and two … Continue reading Peer review scam leader now up to 20 retractions
Here’s a joke for all you middle-schoolers out there. How are doctored images like bad pennies? They keep cropping up! Here’s the latest one we’ve picked up: Lung Cancer has retracted a 2014 paper on the genetics of tumors after concluding the authors cribbed a figure that had appeared in a 2005 feature story in … Continue reading Cancer paper that doctored image from Science story earns retraction
This week at Retraction Watch featured a confession about research misconduct, and a debate over whether a paper should have been retracted. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
An article has been retracted from a proceedings of an economics conference after the publisher identified errors in several parts of the study. The retraction follows criticism from a Romanian blogger, who contacted the journal about several issues, and posted communications she received about the paper, “Sustainability of Social Enterprises: A Discourse Analysis.” It was part … Continue reading Economics paper retracted due to “extensive changes”