A Portuguese group has retracted two papers in the Journal of Bacteriology after mislabeled computer files led to the wrong images being used. And, we’ve learned in a heartfelt email, the first author was devastated. Here’s the notice for “MtvR Is a Global Small Noncoding Regulatory RNA in Burkholderia cenocepacia”:
The week at Retraction Watch featured papers by a fake author with a brilliant if profane name, and the unmasking of fraudster Diederik Stapel as a sock puppet. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Phyllis Wise, the chancellor of the University of Illinois and an obstetrics researcher, has called for a massive correction of a 2006 paper in Neuroscience for work she appears to have tried to pass off as having been previously unpublished — but which wasn’t. The article, “Estrogen therapy: Does it help or hurt the adult … Continue reading U. Illinois chancellor earns mega-correction for duplicate publication
The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has ruled in a case we’ve been following for nearly two years — and which seems to have been launched after Retraction Watch readers took a careful look at figures from what appeared to be an unrelated case. Takao Takahashi and Makato Suzuki, both former postdocs at a cancer … Continue reading Former UT-Southwestern cancer researchers faked data in 10 papers: ORI
When retraction notices and expressions of concern appear, particularly those that are opaque, we try our best to find out what’s behind them, whether it’s better explanations or the steps that led to moves. Today, we have one story in which we’ve been able to learn a lot more than usual. In April, Bas van … Continue reading A PNAS expression of concern appears — and so does its revealing backstory
Retraction Watch readers are of course familiar with the STAP stem cell saga, which was punctuated by tragedy last month when one of the authors of the two now-retracted papers in Nature committed suicide. In June, Science‘s news section reported: Sources in the scientific community confirm that early versions of the STAP work were rejected … Continue reading “Truly extraordinary,” “simply not credible,” “suspiciously sharp:” A STAP stem cell peer review report revealed
A prestigious cancer journal has pulled an article over “concerns” regarding some of the figures, which PubPeer commenters had tagged as suspect. A few weeks after the paper was published on June 9, comments on PubPeer began accumulating. Commenters called out both potentially manipulated and repeated images. The exact timeline is not clear, because Oncogene does not list … Continue reading Fudged figures sink breast cancer paper
Sometimes plagiarism can be tricky to catch when an article has to be translated before publication. That seems to be the case for two papers out of a hospital in Canakkale, Turkey, that discussed results of two different kinds of heart surgery. Here’s the retraction notice for “The effects of 21 and 23 milimeter aortic valve … Continue reading The tell-tale heart: Cardiovascular surgeons notch two retractions for plagiarism
A researcher at Tufts University has retracted a paper in Cell, a year after retracting a study on a similar subject from the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Here’s the notice for “SIRT1 Suppresses β-Amyloid Production by Activating the α-Secretase Gene ADAM10,” a 2010 paper by Tufts’ Gizem Donmez, MIT’s Leonard Guarante — of longevity research … Continue reading Cell retraction of Alzheimer’s study is second for Tufts neuroscientist
Although most of what Alanis Morissette sang about in her hit song “Ironic” wasn’t irony at all, had she included a line or two about Angela Adrian she would have nailed it. Adrian is an expert in intellectual property law, a former editor of the International Journal of Intellectual Property Management, a legal scholar whose … Continue reading Intellectual property lawyer loses papers for … plagiarism