Partial retractions — as opposed corrections or the full monty — are unusual events in scientific publishing. But they appear to come in twos. The journal Infection and Immunity, the work of whose editor, Ferric Fang, is much admired by this blog, has a fascinating example of the breed in its February issue. The article … Continue reading Plague paper partially retracted
A group of cardiology researchers formerly of the University of Cologne has retracted two papers, after investigations into allegations of misconduct led to an admission of guilt by one of the lab’s junior members. Here’s the first retraction, for “Connexin 43 acts as a cytoprotective mediator of signal transduction by stimulating mitochondrial KATP channels in … Continue reading Two patch-clamping retractions in PNAS and the JCI after first author admits image manipulation
Dutch investigators have released their final report into the case of Diederik Stapel, the social scientist and erstwhile faculty member at Tilburg University who fabricated data in 55 articles and book chapters. So far, 31 of Stapel’s published papers have been retracted — three others have expressions of concern — although more might follow. In … Continue reading Going Dutch: Stapel inquiry eyes credulous colleagues, institution, prompts national soul search
Today, on Thanksgiving in the U.S., Retraction Watch is taking a bit of a holiday as we dig into some turkey — not to be confused with retractions from Turkey. We’d like to give thanks for the thousands of Retraction Watch readers all over the world who’ve helped us shine a spotlight on the scientific … Continue reading Giving thanks for plagiarism detection software: Catching up on retractions for the sincerest form of flattery
The work of Sam W. Lee, a cancer biologist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, has come under fire at Science Fraud lately over concerns about the possible reuse of images in his group’s published studies. Turns out there’s some there, there after all. The journal Current Biology has issued a pretty thorny correction for … Continue reading Image correction in Current Biology for Harvard’s Sam Lee
We’re not generally — or ever — in the habit of running job ads here on Retraction Watch. But the purpose of this post is to highlight a new position available at the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (ASBMB) that we think is a great opportunity and a step forward for the society. … Continue reading JBC publisher ASBMB hiring manager of publication ethics — and why Retraction Watch is cheering
Forgive us if we’re a tad skeptical here, but we’re not convinced about the, um, sincerity of the following retraction notice. The International Journal of Biological Macromolecules has retracted a paper it published earlier this year by a group of Canadian researchers who had already published the same paper in a different journal. The article, … Continue reading “Administrative error” leads to duplication retraction
As we’ve noted before, we generally let duplication retractions make their way to the bottom of our to-do pile, since there’s often less of an interesting story behind them, duplication is hardly the worst of publishing sins, and the notices usually tell the story. (These are often referred to — imprecisely — as “self-plagiarism.”) But … Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Catching up on authors who liked their work enough to use it again
A bit of intellectual property indiscretion has led to the retraction of a paper by Korean scientists. Although the details are fuzzy, several of the authors are affiliated with a Korean pharma company called SK. The paper, “A Novel Carbamoyloxy Arylalkanoyl Arylpiperazine Compound (SKL-NP) Inhibits Hyperpolarization-Activated Cyclic Nucleotide-Gated (HCN) Channel Currents in Rat Dorsal Root … Continue reading Loose lips sink paper on company’s experimental pain drug
We’ve had a few unofficial record-holders here at Retraction Watch. The current leader in the retraction column, for example, is Yoshitaka Fujii, who will likely retract 172 papers. He took that record from Joachim Boldt, with just shy of 90. Today, we’ll take a stab at another record, longest time between publication and retraction. The … Continue reading And the winner for longest time on record between publication and retraction is…