If you’re a Retraction Watch reader in New York or St. Louis, come see Retraction Watch live. On Thursday, October 20, Ivan will be on a SONYC panel at Rockefeller University [please see update at end]. On the 25th, he’ll give a talk at the Danforth Center in St. Louis.
More info: Continue reading Upcoming Retraction Watch appearances: New York, St. Louis
While looking at a recent retraction notice in the Journal of Phycology, the one of us with small children at home couldn’t help but imagine a conversation between cartoon character SpongeBob and his nemesis, Plankton:
SpongeBob: You used me … for land development! That wasn’t nice.
Sheldon J. Plankton: Haven’t you figured it out, SpongeBob? Nice guys finish last. Only aggressive people conquer the world. Ha ha ha ha!
SpongeBob: Well … what about aggressively nice people?
Who knew the world of phytoplankton could be so cutthroat? (Spoiler alert: we did.)
Consider: The Journal of Phycology — phycology is the study of algae and related organisms — is retracting a paper after learning that one of the three co-authors, well, wasn’t. Cyanobacteria may be the oldest known life form on earth, but the hyper-ambitious aren’t far behind.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading ExpungedBob? Algae journal pulls phytoplankton paper with unwitting co-author
We’ve fallen a bit behind in our coverage of retractions in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), so we wanted to call attention to two very helpful ones from recent months.
Here’s one notice, which appeared online on August 5: Continue reading Two detailed retraction notices appear in PNAS
The other day we reported that Naoki Mori had lost his 23rd paper to retraction for image manipulation and duplication. Turns out we were wrong by a pretty wide margin.
The International Journal of Cancer has retracted seven more articles by the disgraced Japanese researcher, all for the same reasons:
The following article has been retracted through agreement between the first author and several coauthors, the journal Editor in-Chief, Peter Lichter, and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. … After an investigation the retraction has been agreed due to inappropriate duplication of images and overlap with other published work.
The papers are as follows: Continue reading That’s a Mori! Seven more retractions brings latest count to 30
Ivan will be joining Richard van Noorden, author of Nature‘s feature last week on retractions, for a live Q&A today at 11 a.m. Eastern (4 p.m. BST). Join us and ask questions here.
And while you have your calendars out, Ivan is part of a SONYC panel next week in New York on retractions. Get a free ticket here.
The National University of Singapore (NUS) is reviewing about 70 papers by Alirio Melendez, a once-promising researcher whom, as we’ve reported, has been forced to retract a paper in Nature Immunology and has another paper in Science subject to an Expression of Concern.
The Straits Times, which reported the NUS investigation this weekend, says Melendez’ former team is cooperating:
In Singapore, the eight researchers involved include scientists, academics, research fellows and students from NUS and DSO National Laboratories. DSO and the personnel involved are assisting the university in its investigation.
The story continues: Continue reading 70 papers by Alirio Melendez under investigation: report
The retraction total for Naoki Mori continues to rise.
The October issue of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications has retracted a 2007 paper by Mori et al for the same issues — manipulated images — that brought down the 20-odd other papers of his since the scandal broke in late December.
Here’s the notice for the pulled paper, titled “Downregulation of citrin, a mitochondrial AGC, is associated with apoptosis of hepatocytes:” Continue reading Another retraction for Naoki Mori (make that 23?)
Believe it or not, we look for policies to praise here at Retraction Watch HQ, especially if they mark a change from approaches that we and others have criticized. So we were heartened to read this retraction notice in The Journal of Neuroscience for “Lmx1b-Controlled Isthmic Organizer Is Essential for Development of Midbrain Dopaminergic Neurons:”
The Journal of Neuroscience has received a report describing an investigation by the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which found major data misrepresentation in the article by Guo et al. Because the results cannot be considered reliable, The Journal is retracting the paper.
The study has been cited five times since it was published in 2008, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s some background on why we thought we’d have something to praise, from a Nature feature this week on retractions: Continue reading Does a new retraction suggest a glimmer of hope for transparency at the Journal of Neuroscience?
Talk about a career-killer. The following retraction, from Genetics and Molecular Research, an online journal, spares nothing in its evisceration of an unfortunate graduate student who compiled an impressive list of transgressions in a single manuscript.
The 2010 article, titled “Genetics and biochemical analyses of sensor kinase A in Bacillus subtilis sporulation,” came from the lab of Masaya Fujita at the University of Houston. The first author was a now-former graduate student named Jean-Calvin Nguele. Whether the title is accurate, we can’t say, but apparently not much else was.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Transparency in action as genetics paper falls to fraud — and lots of it
One of the themes we’ve hit hard here at Retraction Watch is that there is tremendous variation in how journals deal with retractions. Some make notices crystal clear, while others seem to want to make them as opaque as possible. Some editors go out of their way to publicize withdrawals, while others bury them and won’t talk about them when they appear.
In a Nature feature out today on retractions, Richard van Noorden highlights those disparities. He also highlights the fact that there are more retractions to talk about: As a graphic accompanying the piece makes clear, retractions have risen 10-fold in the last decade, even as the number of papers published has grown by less than fifty percent.
But even with that growth, the number of retractions — we’re on track for 400 this year, according to Thomson Reuters — is a vanishingly small percentage of the 700,000 papers published annually. Still, science prides itself on transparency — or should, anyway. van Noorden gives Ivan the chance to offer some advice to those scientists and editors who are reluctant to acknowledge there’s ever any dirty laundry in science: Continue reading Do editors like talking about journals’ mistakes? Nature takes on retractions