The Dutch media are reporting that Diederik Stapel, the Tilburg University social psychologist who fabricated data in dozens of studies, is facing a criminal probe for his misuse of some 2.2 million euros (roughly $2.8 million U.S.) in government grant funding.
A Retraction Watch commenter tipped us off this morning that the newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports (thanks to Google Translate): Continue reading Diederik Stapel faces criminal inquiry for misuse of funds
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews has retracted a 2008 paper by a group from the United States and Botswana, citing plagiarism and unauthorized use of data.
The article, “Solar chimney power generation project—The case for Botswana,” discussed a project by the Botswanan military to develop a power plant based on the chimney design. The paper is no longer available online, but we found this Wikipedia entry that mentions it: Continue reading Solar energy paper retracted for text, data misuse
A new study out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) today finds that two-thirds of retractions are because of some form of misconduct — a figure that’s higher than previously thought, thanks to unhelpful retraction notices that cause us to beat our heads against the wall here at Retraction Watch.
The study of 2,047 retractions in biomedical and life-science research articles in PubMed from 1973 until May 3, 2012 brings together three retraction researchers whose names may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers: Ferric Fang, Grant Steen, and Arturo Casadevall. Fang and Casadevall have published together, including on their Retraction Index, but this is the first paper by the trio.
Here’s a tip: If you’re going to claim you were first to discover something, even though you know you weren’t, don’t publish your claim in the same journal where the first finding appeared. Oh, and don’t ask the researchers who made the first discovery for help along the way.
Those, perhaps, are the cynical lessons from a retraction notice that appeared last week in the Journal of Chemical Physics: Continue reading Physics paper retracted because authors wrongfully claimed they got there first — in the same journal
The International Journal of Nanomedicine is retracting a paper it published in June that appears to contain an impressive amount of misappropriated text and figures.
The article, “Particokinetics: computational analysis of the superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles deposition process,” came from a group at the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, in São Paulo, Brazil, led by Walter Cárdenas. According to the notice: Continue reading Journal retracts nanoparticle paper, citing widespread misuse of sources
We couldn’t help noticing that the past few weeks have seen calls to retract two papers on food, from different sides of the political spectrum. One paper actually looked at the effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), while the GMO link in the other paper seems mostly to be in activists’ minds. Consider:
On the right, we have Henry I. Miller writing on Forbes.com about a study of rats fed genetically modified maize: “The honorable course of action for the journal would be to retract the paper immediately“: Continue reading Left and right apparently agree that “GMO” studies should be retracted (but they’re talking about different papers)
We’ve seen this movie before: Researchers present a study at a scientific meeting, then learn to their surprise (and, sometimes, chagrin) that a journal has published the data in a supplement or other edition.
That’s the case with a group of UK scientists whose abstract for a meeting of the British Toxicology Society wound up in the journal Toxicology — only to be expunged when they complained.
The work was titled “Molecular mechanisms involved in resistance of CLL cells towards ABT-737, a specific BCL-2 inhibitor.” Gerald Cohen, of the University of Leicester, who led the study, told us: Continue reading Journal “mistake” forces removal of toxicology study by leading scientist
A group of researchers from Austria, Canada, Germany, and the U.S. have retracted a 2008 paper in the Journal of Immunology after being unable to verify the contents of some key figures.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Immunology paper retracted because “documents were not archived with due diligence”
Michael Hertl, a leading dermatology researcher at Philipps-University Marburg, has been cleared of any wrongdoing in a case that spawned a retraction last year and two just-published retractions.
Felicitas Riedel, a legal officer for the university, tells Retraction Watch that the
…Committee for Scientific Misconduct of the Philipps-University Marburg closed the matter and submitted its results to the President of the University who in the meantime after examination consented with it.
The findings? Continue reading University clears leading dermatology lab head of misconduct as authors issue two corrections
Why just have three peer-reviewed publications when you can reuse figures to publish a fourth?
That’s the sort of thinking that got one research group slapped with a retraction of their 2009 study, “Carbon Nanotubes Are Able To Penetrate Plant Seed Coat and Dramatically Affect Seed Germination and Plant Growth.”
The journal ACS Nano, published by the American Chemical Society, issued the retraction on Aug. 20: Continue reading Reused figures lead to two chemistry retractions, one correction