In August, we reported on an upcoming retraction of a paper in The Journal of Insect Behavior by Leonardo Gomes, a Brazilian forensic entomologist. At the time, one of the journal’s editors, Thomas Payne, told us that Gomes and his co-authors had been informed that “Dispersal and Burial Behavior in Larvae of Chrysomya megacephala and Chrysomya albiceps (Diptera, Calliphoridae),” would be retracted. Continue reading Retraction of paper by Brazilian entomologist downgraded to an Expression of Concern
Reason behind opaque Antioxidants & Redox Signaling retraction notice revealed
There’s an unhelpful retraction notice online in the journal Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, a Mary Ann Liebert publication. The paper, “Inhibition of LXRalpha-dependent steatosis and oxidative injury by liquiritigenin, a licorice flavonoid, as mediated with Nrf2 activation,” has been removed from the site, except for the abstract, which now has this in front of it:
THIS WORK HAS BEEN RETRACTED BY THE AUTHORS
That, as we’ve said before in exasperation, certainly clears things right up.
But we found out the reason for the retraction from Paul S. Brookes, an associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Here’s the letter he sent the editors of Antioxidants & Redox Signaling and Free Radical Biology and Medicine, an Elsevier title: Continue reading Reason behind opaque Antioxidants & Redox Signaling retraction notice revealed
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: What retractions say about scientific transparency
- photo by Cea via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/centralasian/
Recently, Ivan has been invited to speak to two groups — the Danforth Center, in St. Louis, and CrossRef members, at their annual meeting in Cambridge, Mass. — about retractions and Retraction Watch. He gave variations on the talk below, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: What Retractions Tell Us About Scientific Transparency.” In it, he discusses a number of cases we’ve uncovered at Retraction Watch, and offers some solutions for improving transparency. Use the arrows at the bottom of the slides to click through the presentation. Continue reading The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: What retractions say about scientific transparency
Chronic fatigue syndrome researcher Judy Mikovits arrested
Judy Mikovits, the embattled chronic fatigue syndrome researcher who was fired from her post at Reno, Nevada’s Whittemore Peterson Institute in September, was arrested yesterday in California.
The Ventura County, California Sheriff’s Department web site lists Mikovits under booking number 1259336, charged with a felony violation of California Penal Code section 1551.1, “Fugitive From Justice.” This is that section, according to FindLaw: Continue reading Chronic fatigue syndrome researcher Judy Mikovits arrested
Materials paper retracted after post-doc’s plagiarism
The Journal of Materials
Science: Materials in Medicine has retracted a 2011 paper after it was determined that the first author, then a post-doc at the University of Michigan, had plagiarized from another publication.
The first author of the retracted article, “Functionalization of titanium based metallic biomaterials for implant applications,” was the post-doc, Rahul Bhola, who received his PhD from the Colorado School of Mines and went to Michigan to work in the lab of Catherine Krull.
Fruit of that relationship was the paper — and here’s how that worked out: Continue reading Materials paper retracted after post-doc’s plagiarism
Breaking news: Prolific Dutch heart researcher fired over misconduct concerns
Don Poldermans, a leading heart specialist, has been fired over concerns that he committed research misconduct. According to a report on the website DutchNews.nl:
Erasmus University in Rotterdam has sacked a professor in cardio-vascular medicine for damaging the institution’s academic integrity and for ‘scientific misconduct’, the NRC reports on Thursday.
The professor is accused of faking academic data and compromising patient trust, the paper says. In particular, he failed to obtain patient consent for carrying out research and recorded results ‘which cannot be resolved to patient information,’ the university said.
Don Poldermans has spent years researching the risk of complications during cardio-vascular surgery and has some 500 publications to his name.
A spokesman for Poldermans told the paper he admitted not keeping to research protocols but denied faking data. Continue reading Breaking news: Prolific Dutch heart researcher fired over misconduct concerns
Retraction comes as death of PI leads to lost records
The Journal of Experimental Medicine has retracted a 2011 article after the principal investigator’s home institution suggested that the PI might have manipulated his data. Complicating matters, the PI in this case died two weeks after the paper appeared and his notes have gone missing — making an affirmative declaration of fraud or honest error difficult.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Retraction comes as death of PI leads to lost records
Physics retraction as rogue authors add six colleagues to a paper they didn’t write
Forged authorship — in which researchers add the names of people who’ve had nothing to do with a paper, either to boost its chance of being published, pay tribute (in a misguided way), or both — has become a common theme at Retraction Watch. But we’re pretty sure we haven’t seen a case involving as many faked authors as a now-retracted paper in Europhysics Letters. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Physics retraction as rogue authors add six colleagues to a paper they didn’t write
Ghost authorship? Two Meccanica retractions as an author’s work is plagiarized by disappearing scientists
About two years ago, Marc Duflot, a research engineer at Cenaero, heard a disturbing tale from a collaborator. The collaborator, it seemed, had been asked to review a paper submitted to a journal, and noticed that it was remarkably similar to a paper by Duflot. Duflot’s collaborator recommended that the journal reject the paper, and it did. Duflot tells Retraction Watch (we added a link to the paper in question):
Then, several months later, I discovered that the…paper had been submitted and accepted in Meccanica. If I remember correctly, I discovered it by searching the web with Google Scholar with terms related to my field of expertise.
So in January 2010, Duflot wrote to the editors of Meccanica to alert them to the plagiarism by the authors, M. Garzon and D. Sargoso of the University of Madrid. He concluded his email:
I am deeply disappointed by the fraudulent behaviour of M. Garzon and D. Sargoso. Strangely, I cannot find any mention of these two people on the web neither of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Madrid. Otherwise, I would have reported this to the head of their department.
An editorial assistant got back to him: Continue reading Ghost authorship? Two Meccanica retractions as an author’s work is plagiarized by disappearing scientists
Hormesis? Information scant in unhelpful retraction notice (Psst: It was plagiarism)
The latest issue of Dose-Response, the official journal of the International Dose-Response Society, has one of the uninformative retraction notices we’ve come to hate for their inscrutability: Continue reading Hormesis? Information scant in unhelpful retraction notice (Psst: It was plagiarism)