Last month, we covered the retraction of a paper by A.M.K. El-Ghonemy, of Al-Jouf University in Saudi Arabia. The engineer now has a second retraction in the same journal, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. Here’s the notice for “Waste energy recovery in sea water reverse osmosis desalination plants, Part-1: Review”:
Math journal editors can add — but they can also subtract. That’s what happened to a 2012 paper in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications (JMAA), “On the fractional Ostrowski inequality with uncertainty.” Here’s the notice:
Scientific experiments are like recipes: With the right components and the proper steps, the end result can be a thing of beauty. But if you start with a cup of salt instead of a cup of flour, well, even the neighbor’s schnauzer won’t touch that batch of sugar cookies. That’s a little like the situation … Continue reading Calibration error sends moisture paper down the drain
Coding errors in a database maintained by Pfizer have led authors to retract two heart biomarker papers in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The two notices, for “Prediction of cardiovascular events in statin-treated patients by lipid and non-lipid biomarkers” and “Plasma PCSK9 levels and clinical outcomes in the TNT (Treating to New … Continue reading Pfizer database errors cause two voluminous retractions for JACC statin-biomarker papers
Markets undergo flash crashes — when stocks or bonds rapidly nosedive in value and then just as rapidly recover — every day. On May 6, 2010, for example, the entire equity market flamed out and then nearly recovered its value all in the matter of hours. Economic papers can do the same, apparently. Take the … Continue reading Markets crash, and so does a paper explaining why
A pair of Iranian physicists is facing the retraction of one of their papers after editors found out some of the work was plagiarized from two textbooks and an encyclopedia. Here’s the notice:
A University of Wisconsin scientist who was found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have faked data in two papers, has had a second study retracted. Here’s the notice: for “Secretory phospholipase A2 IIA is up-regulated by TNF-α and IL-1α/β after transient focal cerebral ischemia in rat,” by Rao Adibhatla and colleagues and … Continue reading Second retraction appears for University of Wisconsin neuroscientist who faked images
Quick updates on work by two people whose names appear frequently on Retraction Watch: Diederik Stapel and Ulrich Lichtenthaler. Last month, we reported on the 50th retraction for Stapel. Here’s number 51 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, for “The flexible unconscious: Investigating the judgmental impact of varieties of unaware perception:”
Laurence Cole, an obstetrics researcher at the University of New Mexico, made an appearance on this blog in November 2011 after the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology published a remarkably heavy-handed retraction of one of his papers. Shortly after, we learned that the retraction was preceded by a strongly-worded letter from an attorney representing … Continue reading New Mexico obstetrics researcher violated research subject protocols: Retraction notice
Last year, Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues posted a paper, scheduled for an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, with a, shall we say, provocative title: NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science In an interview last year with Lewandowsky, NPR gathered some of the reactions … Continue reading Why publishers should explain why papers disappear: The complicated Lewandowsky study saga