Publishing gadfly demands journal editor’s resignation, then has “fairly incomprehensible” paper rejected

A scientific publishing gadfly who was banned earlier this year from an Elsevier journal for “personal attacks and threats” has had a paper rejected by a Springer journal after he called for the editor’s resignation because of alleged incompetence. As detailed in a comment left at Retraction Watch, Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva submitted a … Continue reading Publishing gadfly demands journal editor’s resignation, then has “fairly incomprehensible” paper rejected

Taiwan’s education minister resigns in wake of SAGE peer review scandal

Taiwan’s education minister, Chiang Wei-ling, whose name appeared on several of 60 retracted articles by Peter Chen — apparently the architect of a peer review and citation syndicate we were first to report on last week — has resigned over the publishing scandal. According to the University World News:

SAGE Publications busts “peer review and citation ring,” 60 papers retracted

This one deserves a “wow.” SAGE Publishers is retracting 60 articles from the Journal of Vibration and Control after an investigation revealed a “peer review and citation ring” involving a professor in Taiwan. [Please see an update on this post.] Here’s the beginning of a statement from SAGE:

Mystery box sinks immunology paper

Biochemical Journal has pulled a 2006 paper for an undisclosed “background subtraction box” in an image – which, if you take a not-particularly-close look at the figure to the right, means somebody added a black rectangle over the control lane. Here’s the notice: for “Phosphorylation of Ser158 regulates inflammatory redox-dependent hepatocyte nuclear factor-4a transcriptional activity”:

Serbian journal lands in hot water after challenge on 24 hour peer review that cost 1785 euros

This story began as a report of a one-off case of potential predatory practice last month, and has escalated to an official call to disband an entire international editorial board, and an accusation against the editor of mass-scale nepotism and other publishing misconduct. The journal, Archives of Biological Sciences (ABS) is the official publication of … Continue reading Serbian journal lands in hot water after challenge on 24 hour peer review that cost 1785 euros

Cancer genetics group retracts three papers for “inappropriate presentation of data”

A group of cancer genetics researchers in Italy and the U.S. has retracted three papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) after it became aware they had duplicated some bands in their figures. Here are the three papers:

Update: Lab head shares “painful” process that led to Molecular Cell retraction

Last month, we published a guest post by Jean Hazel Mendoza about the retraction of a Molecular Cell paper for sampling errors, flawed analysis, and and miscalculation. Mendoza heard back from Jean-François Allemand, the head of one of the labs involved. Allemand tells Retraction Watch by email that when his group tried to repeat the … Continue reading Update: Lab head shares “painful” process that led to Molecular Cell retraction

Duck, duck, gone: Duplication plucks bird flu paper

If it looks like a duck flu study, and quacks like a duck flu study, and it’s word-for-word the same as a duck flu study… Zoonoses and Public Health has retracted a 2013 paper on bird flu in Myanmar because the authors had published the article previously in a different journal. The article, “Risks of … Continue reading Duck, duck, gone: Duplication plucks bird flu paper

Obokata agrees to retract both STAP stem cell papers: Report

Last month we wrote that Haruko Obokata, the Japanese stem cell researcher whose work is under a cloud of suspicion, had agreed to call for the retraction of one of two disputed Nature papers about her findings. Now Reuters is reporting that Obokata will ask for the second article to be pulled, as well (one … Continue reading Obokata agrees to retract both STAP stem cell papers: Report