Search Results for: press release

After backlash, publisher to retract article that surveyed parents of children with gender dysphoria, says co-author

Springer Nature will retract an article that reported results of a survey of parents who thought their children’s gender dysphoria resulted from social contagion. The move is “due to concerns about lack of informed consent,” according to tweets by one of the paper’s authors.  The article, “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1655 Possible … Continue reading After backlash, publisher to retract article that surveyed parents of children with gender dysphoria, says co-author

Dutch university can revoke PhD for fake data, court rules

In 2018, a newly minted PhD made an uncomfortable discovery.  At a conference, he saw other researchers presenting the results of their attempt to replicate the work of one of his fellow students at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who had found a relationship between heavy rainfall and the number of prisoners in Nigeria in … Continue reading Dutch university can revoke PhD for fake data, court rules

Nature editors retract influential cancer paper with “unreliable” data 

Editors at Nature have retracted a 2015 paper on breast cancer metastases citing trouble with the data in the supplementary materials.  The paper, “The hypoxic cancer secretome induces pre-metastatic bone lesions through lysyl oxidase,” was first published in May 2015 and has been cited 352 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.  This marks the … Continue reading Nature editors retract influential cancer paper with “unreliable” data 

Wiley paused Hindawi special issues amid quality problems, lost $9 million in revenue

Hindawi, the open access publisher that Wiley acquired in 2021, temporarily suspended publishing special issues because of “compromised articles,” according to a press release announcing the company’s third quarter financial results.  Brian Napack, Wiley’s president and CEO, specifically noted the “unplanned publishing pause at Hindawi” as a factor that “challenged” the company this year.  The … Continue reading Wiley paused Hindawi special issues amid quality problems, lost $9 million in revenue

Contamination leads to swift retraction for Science paper on the origins of Omicron in Africa

The authors of a paper that proposed the Omicron variant of SARS-Cov-2 had evolved in Western Africa months before it was first detected in South Africa have retracted their study after discovering contamination in their samples, as several scientists had suggested on Twitter was the case.  The article, “Gradual emergence followed by exponential spread of … Continue reading Contamination leads to swift retraction for Science paper on the origins of Omicron in Africa

Weekend reads: ‘Illegal practices in palaeontology’; ‘a fake badge of integrity’; researcher jailed

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 270. There are more than 36,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most … Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Illegal practices in palaeontology’; ‘a fake badge of integrity’; researcher jailed

BMJ says it’s “an ongoing effort” to find articles by plagiarizing concussion researcher Paul McCrory

Weeks after the British Medical Journal corrected a press release about nine retractions and dozens of expressions of concern to mark articles by a prominent concussion expert, a spokesperson for the journal told us it’s still “an ongoing effort” to identify all the articles on which the expert is the sole author.  The concussion researcher, … Continue reading BMJ says it’s “an ongoing effort” to find articles by plagiarizing concussion researcher Paul McCrory

Exclusive: NIH researcher resigned amid retractions, including Nature paper

A tenure-track investigator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a division of the National Institutes of Health, resigned in March, as questions mounted about her work, Retraction Watch has learned.  Jennifer Martinez has retracted at least two papers, including a 2016 Nature paper with the chair of the immunology department at St. … Continue reading Exclusive: NIH researcher resigned amid retractions, including Nature paper

Company’s Alzheimer’s treatment study earns a flag

A journal has issued an expression of concern for a federally-funded paper on Alzheimer’s disease after a sleuth on PubPeer noted potentially duplicated figures in the article.  We shouldn’t forget to mention, as the paper did, that one of the authors – a prominent scientist who happens also to be a co-editor in chief of … Continue reading Company’s Alzheimer’s treatment study earns a flag

Exclusive: Former associate dean and ‘highly cited researcher’ was demoted by university

A former associate dean for research at the University of Wyoming who was named as one of Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers for 2021 was sanctioned by the university years ago, Retraction Watch has learned. Jun Ren, who studies the heart and diabetes, left Wyoming sometime in 2019 or 2020, according to a press release noting … Continue reading Exclusive: Former associate dean and ‘highly cited researcher’ was demoted by university