We have a new record for the longest time from publication to retraction: 80 years. It’s for a case report about a 24-year-old man who died after coughing up more than four cups of what apparently looked — and smelled — like pee. According to the case report titled “Een geval van uroptoë” published in 1923, … Continue reading We have a new record: 80 years from publication to retraction
Nearly three years ago, our co-founders Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus penned a column in Lab Times suggesting ways for readers to report alleged scientific misconduct. They are now retracting that advice. In the retracted column, they suggested initially contacting the editor of the journal that published the potentially problematic work, and if the editor suggests … Continue reading A Retraction Watch retraction: Our 2013 advice on reporting misconduct turns out to have been wrong
Despite acknowledging in its own pages that two recent high-profile retraction notices turned out to not tell the whole story, Nature will not be updating the original retraction notices, the journal tells us. We checked in with Nature after it published two Brief Communications Arising regarding two high-profile retractions of papers describing a new method of reprogramming … Continue reading Nature: No plans to change wording of STAP retractions
Earlier this year, Food and Nutrition Sciences retracted two papers from an author who criticized highly popular fish oil supplements after an additional round of peer review concluded his papers present a “biased interpretation,” among other issues. Last year, Brian Peskin lost a paper for an “undeclared competing interest” — namely, that he held patents and directed a … Continue reading Anti-fish oil researcher netted two more retractions
Francisco Gómez Camacho has lost an introduction in The Journal of Markets and Morality of a 2005 issue “for improper use of published material without attribution, as well as a a chapter in a collection of 13 scholarly essays by Brill Publishers due to “serious citation issues.” The introduction — to a translation of another scholars’ work, Luis de … Continue reading Two retractions cost economic historian book chapter and journal article
A paper on “the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial” whose puzzling publication (and retraction) history formed the basis of a series of Retraction Watch posts in 2013 and 2014 is back, as part of a new article in a different journal. Retraction Watch readers may recall a paper published in 2013 in Frontiers … Continue reading Recursive recursiveness: Retracted Lewandowsky et al conspiracy ideation study republished
Sometimes we run across retraction notices that are vague, and others that are contorted, but we’ve just found one that gets highest marks for being completely inscrutable. The article, “Bayes Clustering and Structural Support Vector Machines for Segmentation of Carotid Artery Plaques in Multicontrast MRI,” was written by a group from China and Cambridge University … Continue reading Opaque retraction notice for imaging paper
We don’t have much to go on here, for a retraction from the International Journal of Stem Cells. Here’s what we do know: Dental researchers at several universities in Egypt, including Cairo University, Future University, and Misr University published a paper together. According to the article, they gave dogs oral ulcers and then injected the ulcers … Continue reading Stem cell study retraction produces useless notice
This one’s a real mess. In June, a paper in Tumor Biology was retracted for at least four reasons, including bad data and hiding a trial sponsor (Merck). Some people who contributed work weren’t cited; at least one author had no idea his name would be on it. And that’s just what they tell us in the notice. Here’s the … Continue reading Failure to disclose drug company sponsor among litany of reasons for cancer retraction
The European Science Foundation (ESF) has threatened legal action against a scientist for calling an evaluation process supported by the agency “flawed” in a commentary piece in Nature. Amaya Moro-Martin, an assistant astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and an associate research scientist at The Johns Hopkins University, apparently angered the ESF with … Continue reading European Science Foundation demands retraction of criticism in Nature, threatens legal action