In 2009, Donald Williamson made what many biologists said was an extraordinary claim: The reason caterpillars become butterflies is that two different species accidentally mated with one another. As Brendan Borrell explained at the time in Scientific American:
Today, we have the pleasure of presenting a guest post from Mico Tatalovic, who has just published a piece in the monthly magazine Tehnopolis on retractions in journals in his home country, Croatia. Here, he describes the reporting that went into that feature, which he says was inspired by Retraction Watch. You may think that in a … Continue reading How do Croatian scientists deal with retractions and misconduct? A guest post by Mico Tatalovic
Last March, the journal Genomics retracted a paper, “Discovery of transcriptional regulators and signaling pathways in the developing pituitary gland by bioinformatic and genomic approaches,” for reasons that don’t really fit into a tight lede sentence. Let’s just say that at times the problems involved both questions of authorship and the validity of the research. More … Continue reading Retracted retraction leaves Genomics paper intact — but authors wonder if anyone will know
The other day we reported that Naoki Mori had lost his 23rd paper to retraction for image manipulation and duplication. Turns out we were wrong by a pretty wide margin. The International Journal of Cancer has retracted seven more articles by the disgraced Japanese researcher, all for the same reasons: The following article has been … Continue reading That’s a Mori! Seven more retractions brings latest count to 30
The retraction total for Naoki Mori continues to rise. The October issue of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications has retracted a 2007 paper by Mori et al for the same issues — manipulated images — that brought down the 20-odd other papers of his since the scandal broke in late December. Here’s the notice for … Continue reading Another retraction for Naoki Mori (make that 23?)
Margaret Munro, a Postmedia News reporter whose work we’ve had the chance to admire before, has a few great stories running in Canadian papers today about what happened in some recent scientific fraud investigations. She bases the stories on Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) documents obtained under a freedom of information request. NSERC — … Continue reading Unveiled: Anonymous researcher found guilty of fraud in Canadian funding agency documents
Ten days ago, we reported on the dismissal of Zhiguo Wang, a Montreal Heart Institute researcher who had already retracted two papers because of image manipulation. At the time, an official said the institute had requested three more retractions, but when we asked which three papers, we were told: As written in the press release, the MHI has … Continue reading Third retraction from dismissed Montreal cardiology researcher Zhiguo Wang appears
A completely unhelpful retraction notice appears in the September issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution for “Investigating the Role of Natural Selection on Coding Sequence Evolution in Salmonids Through NGS Data Mining,” a paper first published in March. Here’s the entire notice for the paper — which has been removed completely from the journal’s site, … Continue reading Author of retracted Molecular Biology and Evolution paper explains opaque notice that’ll still cost you $32
At least four retractions have appeared involving the work of a group of Japanese researchers who appear to have reused figures — and doctored them — in multiple manuscripts. The authors, led by Yoshiyuki Hattori, of Dokkyo University School of Medicine in Mibu (whose motto, by the way, is “where character is developed through learning” … Continue reading New retractions of diabetes, cardiovascular papers from Japan involve repeat use of figures
The American Journal of Psychiatry has issued an Expression of Concern about a 2003 paper that was apparently simultaneously submitted to a German-language journal. According to the notice in the August 2011 issue of the journal (link added):