Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have retracted a paper on using thalidomide, which led to an estimated 10,000 birth defects by the time the drug was pulled from the market in 1961, to prevent chemo-induced sterility. Alkylating agents, which prevent DNA replication in cells, are a commonly-used cancer treatment. Unfortunately they also damage the ovaries and testes, … Continue reading Thalidomide paper retracted for lab error
In December, we reported that economist Khalid Zaman was losing 16 papers over faked peer reviews. Now, Retraction Watch has learned that he left his job at COMSATS Information Technology Center in Abbottabad, Pakistan on December 26, seven days after our post. He’s now looking for a new job, including at Beaconhouse National University in … Continue reading Anyone want to hire an economist who retracted 16 papers for fake peer reviews?
This was a week of stem cell retractions, fake peer reviews, legal threats, and we announced that we’ve been awarded a $400,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
In April 2012, we wrote about a case of disputed authorship and misused data involving one Varun Kesherwani, a former postdoc at the University of Nebraska. As we reported then, Kesherwani was first author of a paper in Cytokine. The second author, Ajit Sodhi, of Banaras Hindu University, claimed to have had no knowledge of … Continue reading Former postdoc threatens Retraction Watch with lawsuit over vague defamation claims
Fuel, an Elsevier title, has pulled an article on coal pollution because the authors took much of the work from an earlier paper of theirs in another journal. The article, “Co-firing of coal and biomass: Development of a conceptual model for ash formation prediction,” was published in September by a group from Australia and The … Continue reading Non-renewable resource: Fuel yanks paper for duplication
Here’s another installment of PubPeer Selections:
Yesterday, we reported on the discovery by BioMed Central that there were about 50 papers in their editorial system whose authors had recommended fake peer reviewers. Those “reviewers” had submitted reviews of a number of manuscripts, and five of the papers had been published. (BMC posted a blog examining the case this morning.) For some … Continue reading The Peer Review Scam: How authors are reviewing their own papers
The week at Retraction Watch began with a case of a South Korean engineer who had to retract ten studies at once. Here’s what was happening elsewhere, along with an update on a story we covered a few days ago:
The Elsevier journal Biological Conservation has put out an apology, but not a retraction, after outcry over a bizarre, misogynistic non sequitur in a book review by Duke conservation biologist Stuart Pimm. Here’s the introduction to Pimm’s review of Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth, which went online in October ahead of its December print publication:
Taylor & Francis has withdrawn a paper published online after a disagreement with the authors about page charges. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, Judit Dobránszki, Jean Carlos Cardoso, and Songjun Zeng had submitted the manuscript, “Genetic transformation of Dendrobium,” to GM Crops and Food: Biotechnology in Agriculture and the Food Chain earlier this year. It was … Continue reading Journal retracts paper when authors refuse to pay page charges