Another busy week at Retraction Watch, which we kicked off by asking for your support. Have you contributed yet? Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web:
Another busy week here at Retraction Watch, with many in the scientific world glued to their browsers for more information on the latest stem cell controversy. Hear Ivan on the BBC discussing what that story means for post-publication peer review. Elsewhere around the web:
Retraction Watch readers will likely be familiar with the story of Paul Brookes, the University of Rochester researcher whose identity as the person behind Science-Fraud.org was revealed in January 2013. That revelation — and legal threats — forced Brookes to shutter Science-Fraud.org. In a new illuminating interview in Science, Brookes discusses the legal threats he … Continue reading So what happened after Paul Brookes was forced to shut down Science-Fraud.org?
The editors of the journal Micron — an Elsevier title — have retracted its first paper ever, and in an editorial marking the occasion, take on a number of issues in scientific publishing misconduct. The beginning of the editorial (which is paywalled):
A co-author of two papers claiming to have shown how to create stem cells simply and easily has requested their retraction, the Wall Street Journal is reporting:
Time for another installment of Ask Retraction Watch: Let’s say I’m collecting relevant papers to write a review, or preparing a project, and I have rather limited time. I find a few interesting papers, bump into some paywalls, ask the authors for the .pdf without any response, and finally I decide to pay, say, $20 … Continue reading Should readers get a refund when they pay to access seriously flawed papers?
A pair of researchers at the University of Maryland have retracted a paper in Cell Death & Differentiation after it became clear that one of the figures had been duplicated from an earlier paper. Here’s the notice, dated December 13, 2013, for “INrf2 (Keap1) targets Bcl-2 degradation and controls cellular apoptosis,” by Suryakant Niture and … Continue reading Figure duplication kills cell death paper
The authors of a 2008 study purporting to explain how the herbicide atrazine acts on cancer cells have asked the journal that published it to retract it for “inadvertent errors,” Retraction Watch has learned. The notice for “G-Protein-Coupled Receptor 30 and Estrogen Receptor-a are Involved in the Proliferative Effects Induced by Atrazine in Ovarian Cancer … Continue reading Herbicide-ovarian cancer study to be retracted
If you’ve come across a case of plagiarism and want to report it to the proper authorities, a new article in the journal Ethics & Behavior would be a good place to start. Mark Fox, a professor of management and entrepreneurship at Indiana University, and Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, Denver, … Continue reading Want to report a case of plagiarism? Here’s how
We’ve been reporting on retractions of research published by Cardiff University scientists following an investigation into their work. On Monday, we noted a new retraction of work by the group in Cancer Research, which we thought was the second retraction following one in the Journal of Immunology in 2011. But it turns out there was … Continue reading A third retraction stemming from Cardiff investigations