This case of plagiarism is a little weirder than usual. A paper has been retracted from Semigroup Forum because it includes material taken from another researcher’s manuscript — which was handwritten. In fact, the same journal had already published a paper by the plagiarized researcher, also based on the same manuscript. The journal editor told us that, although the two papers … Continue reading Paper plagiarizes from handwritten manuscript
A sixth retraction has appeared for a diabetes researcher who previously sued a publisher to try to stop his papers from being retracted. Mario Saad‘s latest retraction, in PLOS Biology, stems from inadvertent duplications, according to the authors. Though an investigation at Saad’s institution — the University of Campinas in Brazil — found no evidence of misconduct, a critic … Continue reading Researcher who sued to stop retractions gets his sixth
Background factors such as culture, location, population, or time of day affect the success rates of replication experiments, a new study suggests. The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used data from the psychology replication project, which found only 39 out of 100 experiments live up to their original claims. The authors … Continue reading Context matters when replicating experiments, argues study
The editors of a journal that recently retracted a paper after the peer-review process was “compromised” have published the fake reviews, along with additional details about the case. In the editorial titled “Organised crime against the academic peer review system,” Adam Cohen and other editors at the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology say they missed “several fairly obvious … Continue reading Editors say they missed “fairly obvious clues” of third party tampering, publish fake peer reviews
If you need evidence of the value of transparency in science, check out a pair of recent corrections in the structural biology literature. This past August, researchers led by Qiu-Xing Jiang at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center corrected their study, first published in February 2014 in eLife, of prion-like protein aggregates called MAVS … Continue reading Structural biology corrections highlight best of the scientific process
In July 2015, DNA and Cell Biology began routinely scanning manuscript submissions for plagiarism using iThenticate; since then, it’s rejected between four and six manuscripts each month for that reason alone. Additional submissions have been rejected after the journal realized the authors had digitally altered figures. The level of misconduct “shocked” editor-in-chief Carol Shoshkes Reiss, as … Continue reading What happened after a journal decided to get tough on plagiarism?
When a researcher discovered one of the images in her papers was a duplication, she asked the journal to fix it — but the journal decided to retract the paper entirely. The researcher, Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, is currently being investigated by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden after a number of her papers were questioned on PubPeer. She told … Continue reading Biologist under investigation asks journal to swap image, journal retracts the paper
We’ve unearthed four more retractions for Khalid Zaman, an economist who lost 16 papers in 2014 for orchestrating fake peer review. That brings Zaman’s total to 20, and ties him at the #18 spot on our leaderboard. One of the more recently discovered retractions is for fake peer review, attributed to Zaman; one is for plagiarism, and two … Continue reading Peer review scam leader now up to 20 retractions
A team of biologists have earned a fifth retraction for a paper containing manipulated images, following an investigation by the Swedish government. Last year, the investigation found that former Uppsala University doctoral student Apiruck Watthanasurorot had manipulated figures in five papers, four of which have already been retracted. Earlier this year, we reported that his … Continue reading Biologists earn 5th retraction following Swedish investigation
A pair of stem cell researchers have earned two corrections, the result of images that were mislabeled, distorted, or compiled incorrectly, according to the notices. Kang Cheng prepared the gels when he was a research fellow in last author Sanjeev Gupta‘s lab at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Gupta told us he reviewed the original gels, and the errors didn’t affect the … Continue reading Stem cell researchers fix two papers following PubPeer comments