Search Results for: post-doc

A mess: PLOS mistakenly publishes rejected ADHD-herbicide paper, retracts it

PLOS One has retracted a paper that links the most commonly used herbicide to ADHD, after it was “published in error.” According to the note, the paper was “editorially rejected following peer review and consultation with the Editorial Board,” but ended up going through the production process anyway. When we contacted the authors, they filled us in … Continue reading A mess: PLOS mistakenly publishes rejected ADHD-herbicide paper, retracts it

Duplication of “a major part of text and results” adds up to third retraction for mathematician

An article by Alexander Spivak, a mathematician based in Israel, is being retracted from the proceedings of a 2014 numerical analysis meeting because Spivak had already published “a major part of text and results” in a mathematics journal in 2010. Spivak, a member of the faculty of sciences at Holon Institute of Technology, has a bit of a … Continue reading Duplication of “a major part of text and results” adds up to third retraction for mathematician

Weekend reads: Duplication rampant in cancer research?; meet the data detective; journals behaving badly

This week saw us profiled in The New York Times and de Volkskrant, and the introduction of our new staff writer. We also launched The Retraction Watch Leaderboard. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Weekend reads: Gay canvassing study redux; editors fired; how the world’s biggest faker was caught

This week at Retraction Watch was dominated by the Science same-sex marriage study, after we broke the news Wednesday morning that one of its authors had requested its retraction. (And crashed our servers in the process.) So the first section of this Weekend Reads will focus on pieces following up on that story: The New … Continue reading Weekend reads: Gay canvassing study redux; editors fired; how the world’s biggest faker was caught

SfN journal retracts paper, bans UPenn researchers over “data misrepresentation”

The Journal of Neuroscience has yanked an Alzheimer’s paper and banned three University of Pennsylvania authors from publishing there temporarily, following conflicting investigations by the university and the publisher, the Society for Neuroscience, into the data. The 2011 paper looked into the cellular makeup of the characteristic plaques that develop in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. … Continue reading SfN journal retracts paper, bans UPenn researchers over “data misrepresentation”

U Colorado “golden boy” grad student faked data in drug lab, says investigation

A graduate student at the University of Colorado Denver faked data in his work at a drug research lab that has notched two retractions and an expression of concern over “data integrity,” according to an extensive university investigation. It seems like many more retractions are on the horizon for grad student Rajendra Kadam, who worked in the … Continue reading U Colorado “golden boy” grad student faked data in drug lab, says investigation

Faking data earns stem cell researcher a ban on federal funding

The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has sanctioned Kaushik Deb, a former post-doc at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who “engaged in misconduct in science by intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly” fabricating data in papers in both Science and Nature (which ultimately rejected his manuscript). Deb was big news in 2007, when Science retracted his paper. Articles … Continue reading Faking data earns stem cell researcher a ban on federal funding

Weekend reads: Senator loses degree for plagiarism; bad colitis poetry; fraud on the big screen

The week at Retraction Watch featured papers by a fake author with a brilliant if profane name, and the unmasking of fraudster Diederik Stapel as a sock puppet. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Is it better to retract a paper, or publish a letter calling the conclusions “unphysical?”

Sometimes publishers and authors decide it’s easier to retract a paper than leave it up for discussion by other scientists. That seems to be the case here: The authors of a paper in Langmuir retracted it in September for a math mistake, but not before the journal refused to publish a comment criticizing the publication. … Continue reading Is it better to retract a paper, or publish a letter calling the conclusions “unphysical?”