God giveth miracles … and it seems she taketh them away as well. A group of chemists in China has lost a 2018 paper which described a “miraculous” discovery that wasn’t. The paper was titled “A miraculous chiral Ir–Rh bimetallic nanocatalyst for asymmetric hydrogenation of activated ketones,” and it appeared in Organic Chemistry Frontiers, a … Continue reading ‘Miracle’ on ice as chemists pull nanocatalyst paper that fizzled
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper that claimed that scientists were … Continue reading Weekend reads: Citation manipulation gone wild; astrology meets research; a classic mistake in a study of free will
It’s become a sort of Retraction Watch Mad Libs: Author writes a paper that is so far, far, out of the mainstream. Maybe it argues that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. Or that vaccines cause autism. Truth squads swarm over the paper, taking to blogs and Twitter to wonder, in the exasperated tone of those who … Continue reading Journal retracts creationist paper “because it was published in error”
The authors of a 2017 paper on how chronic inflammation might hasten aging have retracted the work because it turned out to be a collage of previously published articles. The paper, “Chronic Inflammation: Accelerator of Biological Aging,” appeared in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, an Oxford University Press title. It has been cited 41 … Continue reading “We were very uncomfortable with this situation:” French group loses aging paper for “overlap”
A group of Australian researchers who studied the cat’s meow as a model for urinary incontinence and other motor-neural issues in people have lost a 2015 paper in the wake of a misconduct investigation. The target of the inquiry was Hari Subramanian, a former senior research fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute, part of the … Continue reading Misconduct probe of once rising star prompts retraction of cat’s meow paper
Which journals will publish replications? In the first post in this series, Mante Nieuwland, of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, described a replication attempt of a study in Nature Neuroscience that he and his colleagues carried out. Yesterday, he shared the story of their first submission to the journal. In the final installment today, … Continue reading One team’s struggle to publish a replication attempt, part 3
Title: Curcumin-Free Turmeric Exhibits Activity against Human HCT-116 Colon Tumor Xenograft: Comparison with Curcumin and Whole Turmeric What Caught Our Attention: We haven’t heard much about Bharat Aggarwal since his seven retractions in 2016 propelled him onto our leaderboard (and long after he threatened to sue Retraction Watch for our reporting). There was a whisper … Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Researcher who once threatened to sue Retraction Watch now up to 19 retractions
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, would you consider a tax-deductible donation of $25, or a recurring donation of an amount of your choosing, to support it? The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper on a “gut makeover,” a retraction following … Continue reading Weekend reads: Fallout from misconduct at Duke; does journal prestige matter?; the data on fake peer review
The week at Retraction Watch featured a look at what happens to authors when a journal is delisted, a reminder of how hard it is to figure out whether a paper has been retracted, and a survey on how common plagiarism is in economics. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
We seem to be past the worst of our technical issues, so thanks for your patience with us over the past few weeks. (Some of the fixes came at a cost, so we would be remiss if we did not ask readers to consider a donation to support our work.) The week at Retraction Watch featured … Continue reading Weekend reads: Automated image duplication detection?; journal editor frustrations; cash for catching errors