It appears to be Paper Mill Sweeps Week here at Retraction Watch. On Tuesday, we reported on an editor who believes one such operation was responsible for the withdrawals of at least two articles in her journal. Now, the Royal Society of Chemistry is retracting 68 articles, across three of its titles, after an investigation … Continue reading Publisher retracting 68 articles suspected of being paper mill products
Carol Shoshkes Reiss describes it as “especially striking.” I have been Editor-in-Chief of DNA and Cell Biology for the last decade. It has been rare for authors to request withdrawal of a paper they have submitted. However, in the last two weeks, six papers have been withdrawn on request. What really puzzled Reiss, a professor … Continue reading ‘Striking’: Journal editor suspects paper mills behind rash of withdrawn manuscripts
A veterinary researcher at the University of Maryland has lost seven papers for problematic images and other issues, bringing his retraction total to 13. Siba Samal, who studies viruses and vaccines, lost four of his articles in March after journals determined that figures in the papers were unreliable. And he was a co-author on papers … Continue reading U Maryland virus researcher up to 13 retractions
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Johns Hopkins student newspaper deletes, then retracts, article on faculty … Continue reading Weekend reads: Robots come to scientific publishing; questions about a COVID-19 vaccine; funding by lottery
A cancer researcher faked a dozen images in three papers and a conference presentation while employed at Harvard teaching hospitals, according to a new report by a federal U.S. watchdog. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) found that David Panka
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Journals flag concerns in three dozen papers by nutrition researchers … Continue reading Weekend reads: Hydroxychloroquine champion faces ethics charges; a serial plagiarist in philosophy; another author reaches 100 retractions
Pro tip to would-be fraudsters: If you’re going to submit new figures to support your claims, make sure they’re not obviously fake. That’s a lesson a group of cancer researchers learned the hard way for their 2016 article in DNA and Cell Biology titled “miR-106a-5p suppresses the proliferation, migration, and invasion of osteosarcoma cells by … Continue reading Researchers tried to correct a figure after questions on PubPeer. Then the real trouble started.
In July 2014, Elisabeth Bik notified PLOS ONE that she’d found three papers in the journal by a group of researchers who had clearly manipulated figures in the articles. More than six years later, the journal has finally retracted the publications. The authors were affiliated with the Fourth Military Medical University in Shaanxi, China. The … Continue reading “I do wish that journal editors would not take six years to perform an investigation and to retract.”
At least seven years after questions were first raised about work by a researcher at the University of Maryland Baltimore, School of Medicine, he has agreed to a three-year ban on Federal funding. Anil Jaiswal, whose first retraction appeared in 2013, faked data in eight NIH grant applications and six papers supported by Federal grants, … Continue reading Former Maryland researcher banned from Federal funding for misconduct
Didier Raoult, whose claims that hydroxychloroquine can treat COVID-19 have been widely disputed, has had a 2018 paper corrected for what his team says was unintentional duplication of a figure. Here’s the correction for “Identification of rickettsial immunoreactive proteins using a proximity ligation assay Western blotting and the traditional immunoproteomic approach,” which came four months … Continue reading Co-author of controversial hydroxychloroquine study has 2018 paper corrected for “unintentional mistake”