This one deserves a “wow.” SAGE Publishers is retracting 60 articles from the Journal of Vibration and Control after an investigation revealed a “peer review and citation ring” involving a professor in Taiwan. [Please see an update on this post.] Here’s the beginning of a statement from SAGE:
We haven’t covered that many retractions in economics, and a 2012 paper found very few such retractions. Now, a new study based on a survey of economists tries to get a handle on how often economists commit scientific misconduct. Here’s the abstract of “Scientific misbehavior in economics,” which appeared in Research Policy:
The Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology — now BioMed Research International — has retracted a 2012 paper by a group from China who seem really to have admired a related 2007 article by a team from the Scripps Research Institute — and evidently other work, as well. Here’s the abstract of the now-retracted paper, titled … Continue reading Recombinant protein paper retracted for recombining others’ work
It’s time to review the reviews. That’s the central message of a new paper in Trends in Ecology & Evolution , “Errors in science: The role of reviewers,” by Tamás Székely, Oliver Krüger, and E. Tobias Krause. The authors propose that the process of manuscript reviewing needs to be evaluated and improved by the scientific publishing … Continue reading Is it time for a journal Review Quality Index?
Another very busy week at Retraction Watch. There were a lot of gems elsewhere. Here’s a sampling:
Chemist Sanjeeb Kumar Sahoo, of the Institute of Life Sciences in Bhubaneswar, India, has earned his sixth retraction for image shennanigans, this time in Applied Materials & Interfaces. Sahoo, as we reported last year, had lost five articles in Acta Biomaterialia for what the journal called “highly unethical practices.” The latest retraction involves an article … Continue reading SK Sahoo notches sixth retraction
In response to “an extraordinary outpouring of discussions on open data and its place in scientific publishing” following a February 24 announcement about a new data policy at PLOS, the publisher has apologized and corrected the record. The new policy — which was actually first announced on January 23, as we noted here — had … Continue reading Following criticism, PLOS apologizes, clarifies new data policy
A group of authors in Korea has lost their 2013 paper on treating vision loss after one of the two cases they’d reported turned out to have been fatally flawed. The paper, “Isolated central retinal artery occlusion as an initial presentation of paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria and successful long-term prevention of systemic thrombosis with eculizumab,” had … Continue reading “Critical data” errors force retraction of vision paper
A group of bird researchers in Korea has lost their 2006 paper on DNA barcoding of that country’s avian species because they feathered the article with material from others. The paper, “DNA barcoding Korean birds,” appeared in Molecules and Cells, published by Springer for the Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology and has been … Continue reading Clone call for bird gene bar-coding paper
An international team of researchers from the NIH, Harvard, the University of Michigan, and two Chinese universities — Fourth Military Medical University and China Medical University — has retracted their 2012 paper in Nature after they — and a number of other groups — were unable to reproduce the key results. The original abstract for … Continue reading Nature paper retracted following multiple failures to reproduce results