Controversial pediatrics researcher has 20-year-old paper retracted for misconduct

A journal has retracted a paper on a drug for a blood disorder 20 years after it was published — and 17 years after an author of the article was told to request the move by his university. The retraction is of a paper in Therapeutic Drug Monitoring by Gideon Koren and colleagues, then at … Continue reading Controversial pediatrics researcher has 20-year-old paper retracted for misconduct

Found in translation: Authors blame language barriers after forging co-authors

When the merde hits the fan, blame the translator. That’s Rule 1 of botched international diplomacy — and, evidently, botched international science. Otolaryngology researchers in China have lost their 2018 paper in the American Journal of Translational Research for what they’re calling (with some degree of chutzpah) language barriers. The article, “Therapeutic ultrasound potentiates the … Continue reading Found in translation: Authors blame language barriers after forging co-authors

Weekend reads: Article retracted because of “racial characterizations;” India’s high retraction rate; meet the fraud finder

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 a judge’s ruling that a university could not revoke a … Continue reading Weekend reads: Article retracted because of “racial characterizations;” India’s high retraction rate; meet the fraud finder

Legal threats once again force corrections over a scale measuring medication usage

A journal is warning contributors that they should avoid using a controversial scale for assessing adherence to medication regimens or they might wind up wearing an omelette on their faces. The chicken here, of course, is the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale. The instrument was developed by a UCLA professor named Donald Morisky, who with a … Continue reading Legal threats once again force corrections over a scale measuring medication usage

A reviewer stole a manuscript and published it himself. But you wouldn’t know it from this retraction notice.

Fish off someone else’s peer review! So writes (in somewhat different words) Mina Mehregan, a mechanical engineer at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in Iran. Mehregan and a colleague recently discovered that they’d been victimized by a group of unscrupulous reviewers who used the pretext of a long turnaround time to publish a hijacked version of … Continue reading A reviewer stole a manuscript and published it himself. But you wouldn’t know it from this retraction notice.

Do the humanities need a replication drive? A debate rages on

Since last year, a half-dozen researchers have been having a debate: Should the humanities focus on replication? No, said Sarah de Rijcke and Bart Penders in Nature last August: “Resist calls for replicability in the humanities.” In the most recent piece on this subject, de Rijcke and Penders were joined by J. Britt Holbrook to again … Continue reading Do the humanities need a replication drive? A debate rages on

Weekend reads: A call for 400 retractions of papers on organ donors; “citation mania;” AAAS reassessing award for work on herbicide

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 the tale of the reviewer who told authors to cite … Continue reading Weekend reads: A call for 400 retractions of papers on organ donors; “citation mania;” AAAS reassessing award for work on herbicide

Weekend reads: New revelations about CRISPR’d babies experiment; Impact Factor developer warns against using single metrics; is peer review just a game?

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 eight retractions at once for a biochemist in Spain; a … Continue reading Weekend reads: New revelations about CRISPR’d babies experiment; Impact Factor developer warns against using single metrics; is peer review just a game?

Can a “nudge” stop researchers from using the wrong cell lines?

Anita Bandrowski, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, works on tools to improve the transparency and reproducibility of scientific methods. (Her work on Research Resource Identifiers, or RRIDs, has been previously featured on Retraction Watch.) This week, Bandrowski and colleagues  — including Amanda Capes-Davis, who chairs the International Cell Line Authentication Committee — published … Continue reading Can a “nudge” stop researchers from using the wrong cell lines?

Biochemist in Spain retracts eight papers at once

A high-profile researcher at the Universidad de Oviedo in Spain has retracted eight papers from the Journal of Biological Chemistry for figure issues. All of the papers were co-authored by Carlos López-Otín, who studies a group of enzymes that break down proteins, cancer genomics and aging, and whose lab web site boasts that His works … Continue reading Biochemist in Spain retracts eight papers at once