Bad vibrations: Composites paper pulled after subsequent, duplicate article appears

Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering is retracting a 2011 paper by an Italian researcher who submitted a similar article to another journal. What makes this interesting is that the retracted article appears to be the one that was published first. The article, “Free vibrations of laminated composite doubly-curved shells and panels of revolution … Continue reading Bad vibrations: Composites paper pulled after subsequent, duplicate article appears

Legal medicine journal pulls paper over image goof

Irony alert: The Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, which really ought to know better, is retracting a 2012 article by an Australian researcher that threatened to run afoul of…privacy law. The article, “A challenging injury interpretation: Could this be a stab wound?” was written by Les Griffiths, of the Clinical Forensic Medical Unit at … Continue reading Legal medicine journal pulls paper over image goof

Journal “mistake” forces removal of toxicology study by leading scientist

We’ve seen this movie before: Researchers present a study at a scientific meeting, then learn to their surprise (and, sometimes, chagrin) that a journal has published the data in a supplement or other edition. That’s the case with a group of UK scientists whose abstract for a meeting of the British Toxicology Society wound up … Continue reading Journal “mistake” forces removal of toxicology study by leading scientist

Iranian mathematicians latest to have papers retracted for fake email addresses to get better reviews

It’s tempting to start calling this a trend. Three Elsevier math journals are among the latest scientific publications to be retracting papers because fake email addresses were used to obtain favorable peer reviews. The three papers appear in two journals: “On two subclasses of (α,β)-metrics being projectively related,” in the Journal of Geometry and Physics; … Continue reading Iranian mathematicians latest to have papers retracted for fake email addresses to get better reviews

Slew of retractions appears in Neuroscience Letters

We’re not sure how many you need for a “slew,” but we’ve seen five retractions in Neuroscience Letters recently, most of them because researchers republished translations of papers in English, so we thought we’d round them up in a post. We’ll start the count — appropriately, we think — with the notice for “Simple mental … Continue reading Slew of retractions appears in Neuroscience Letters

Comp sci journal retracts paper for overlap

The Journal of Systems Architecture has retracted a 2010 article by a group of researchers in China who tried to publish their work twice. The paper first appeared in July 2010 in the Journal of Software under the title, “Description and Verification of Dynamic Software Architectures for Distributed Systems.” At the time, it had three authors — … Continue reading Comp sci journal retracts paper for overlap

Glasgow’s Beatson Institute investigating circumstances of Cell retraction for inappropriate images

The Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, Scotland is looking into how inappropriate images ended up in a Cell paper that has just been retracted. Here’s the notice for the paper by Lynne Marshall, Niall S. Kenneth, and Robert J. White:

University College London mitochondrial biologist resigns after three retractions for image fraud

A biologist at University College London (UCL) has resigned his post and taken responsibility for “inappropriate figures manipulations” in three now-retracted papers. Assegid Garedew, formerly a senior research investigator in Salvador Moncada‘s group, stepped down earlier this summer in the midst of an investigation that should be completed soon, Moncada tells Retraction Watch. The three … Continue reading University College London mitochondrial biologist resigns after three retractions for image fraud

Former Tokyo Tech materials researcher sanctioned after bringing forward evidence of data fabrication

A materials researcher faced three months without salary, retired from his research position and may have to return a portion of a grant worth $1 million US as punishment after a postdoc in his lab was caught fabricating data. Seizo Miyata, formerly a materials researcher at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, headed a group that … Continue reading Former Tokyo Tech materials researcher sanctioned after bringing forward evidence of data fabrication

More shoes drop for Chinese author who made up peer reviewer addresses

Last month, we brought you the story of Guang-Zhi He of the Guiyang College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China, an enterprising fellow who got caught faking the email addresses of potential peer reviewers. At the time, Elsevier, who published journals where He published, told us there would be several retractions other than the one … Continue reading More shoes drop for Chinese author who made up peer reviewer addresses