This week at Retraction Watch featured some big numbers: How a request to correct a single paper turned into 19 retractions, and 18 tips for giving horrible presentations. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A study linking vaccines to autism and other neurological problems has been removed by a Frontiers journal after receiving heavy criticism since it was accepted last week. The abstract — published online in Frontiers in Public Health after being accepted November 21 — reported findings from anonymous online questionnaires completed by 415 mothers of home-schooled children 6-12 years … Continue reading Study linking vaccines to autism pulled following heavy criticism
Recently, the editors of a journal about management science received a submission from a prominent Dutch economist. But something didn’t feel right about it. For one, the author submitted the paper using a Yahoo email address. So the editors contacted the author via his institutional email; immediately, the researcher denied having submitted the paper — … Continue reading A new way to fake authorship: Submit under a prominent name, then say it was a mistake
The week at Retraction Watch featured the story of a graduate student who fought back after being caught in the middle of a fraud case, and the retraction of a hotly debated paper from Nature Cell Biology. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
There are a lot of accusations about research misconduct swirling around, and not every journal handles them the same. Recently, Cell Metabolism Scientific Editor Anne Granger and Cell Metabolism Editor-in-Chief Nikla Emambokus shared some details about their investigative procedure in “Weeding out the Bad Apples.” We talked to them about why they don’t necessarily trust accusations leveled on … Continue reading How a Cell journal weeds out the “bad apples”
Two sets of authors based largely at Harvard Medical School have each retracted a paper for duplication in the same journal. Both papers — which are more than a decade old — were pulled in The Journal of Clinical Investigation on November 1 by their respective corresponding authors. One paper’s last author told us it … Continue reading Two Harvard-led groups pull well-cited cancer papers for duplication
After five years, Elsevier has finally issued a notice of retraction for a paper it announced it was pulling for fraud in 2011. All of the papers were produced by a research group in Brazil; all were retracted after the publisher conducted an investigation, concluding that the NMR results had been manipulated. At the time, … Continue reading Official notice published for chem paper slated for retraction in 2011
A new analysis of more than 30 clinical trials co-authored by a bone researcher based in Japan is casting doubt on the legitimacy of the findings. Yoshihiro Sato, based at Mitate Hospital, has already retracted 12 papers, for reasons ranging from data problems, to including co-authors without their consent, to self-plagiarism. Most of these retracted papers are … Continue reading Analysis casts doubt on bone researcher’s body of work
Two journals sharing the same title — allegedly due to an “academic divorce” between the founders — are giving two different accounts to why a paper may (or may not) have been retracted. Confused yet? We are. Here’s what we can piece together. The journal Amphibian and Reptile Conservation once had two editors, Craig Hassapakis and Robert Browne; … Continue reading Two journals, same name: Did one editor retract the other’s paper?
Two former researchers at Duke University at the center of a lawsuit by a whistleblower to recoup millions in federal funding have lost yet another paper. This is hardly the first retraction for Erin Potts-Kant, who used to work in the pulmonary lab of now-retired William Michael Foster. Earlier this year, a lawsuit filed by a … Continue reading Former Duke researcher at center of lawsuit lodges 16th retraction