A paper that tested the clinical value of honey on venous ulcers has been pulled by the Journal of Clinical Nursing after an investigation uncovered “errors in the data analysis.” Last year, the authors pulled another paper on the healing properties of honey on wounds. We just discovered this second retraction, which appears in the September 2015 … Continue reading Authors retract second study about medical uses of honey
We’ve found two recent retractions and an expression of concern for Joachim Boldt, former prominent anesthesiologist and currently Retraction Watch leaderboard’s 2nd place titleholder. He now has 94 retractions. One of the retracted articles contains falsified data, along with a researcher who didn’t agree to be a co-author, according to an investigation by the Justus Liebig University Giessen, where Boldt … Continue reading Boldt’s retraction count upped to 94, co-author takes legal action to prevent 95th
On Monday, we reported on 64 new retractions from Springer journals resulting from fake peer reviews. Yesterday, SAGE — which retracted 60 papers for the same reason just over a year ago — added 17 additional retractions to their list. The articles were published in five different journals, and one retraction involved authorship fraud in … Continue reading 17 retractions from SAGE journals bring total fake peer review count to 250
This is officially becoming a trend: Springer is pulling another 64 articles from 10 journals after finding evidence of faked peer reviews, bringing the total number of retractions from the phenomenon north of 230. Given that there have been about 1,500 papers retracted overall since 2012, when we first reported on the phenomenon, faked reviews have been … Continue reading 64 more papers retracted for fake reviews, this time from Springer journals
Editors at BioMed Central have taken the unusual step of updating a retraction notice after an investigation found the authors were not responsible for a peer review process gone awry. The paper is one of dozens of other papers retracted in March for fake peer reviews. That month, the paper “Clinical application of contrast enhanced ultrasound to … Continue reading BMC editors update retraction after investigation clears authors of faking peer reviews
Following questions “about the integrity of the microscopy images,” Materials Science and Engineering: A has retracted a paper on the properties of sheets of aluminum under strain. The images in question show sheets after a few rounds of a process called “constrained groove pressing,” which smushes sheets between two grooved plates, and then between two flat plates, to … Continue reading Images “may not be trustworthy”: Aluminum sheets paper folds into retraction
Cell biologist Jacob Hanna, the highly cited stem cell researcher currently at the Weizmann Institute of Science, has posted a long erratum for a 2005 paper in Blood for “inadvertent mistakes,” among other issues; soon after, Hanna’s team issued another erratum for a 2009 Cell Stem Cell paper. There’s more to tell: Last month, commenters … Continue reading Cell biologist Hanna issues two errata; images mysteriously disappear from Imgur
Eurosurveillance is investigating potential problems with study on the deadly breakout of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in South Korea. The notice was issued after the journal discovered that study data might have been used without permission. “Epidemiological investigation of MERS-CoV spread in a single hospital in South Korea, May to June 2015,” was published … Continue reading Journal quarantines MERS paper, posts EoC for “rights to use the data”
Have you seen our “unhelpful retraction notices” category, a motley collection of vague, misleading, and even information-free entries? We’d like to make it obsolete, and we need our readers’ help. Here’s what we mean: Next month, Ivan will be traveling to Rio to take part in the World Conference on Research Integrity. One of his … Continue reading What should an ideal retraction notice look like?
In our line of work, we see it all — mega-corrections that don’t quite rise to the level of retraction, letters to the editor that point out seemingly fatal flaws in papers that remain untouched, and studies retracted for what seem like minor reasons. It can make you wonder what makes a paper worthy of … Continue reading When should a paper be retracted? A tale from the obesity literature