Regular Retraction Watch readers may have noticed that many of the people whose fraud we write about are men. Certainly, the top retraction earners — Yoshitaka Fujii, Joachim Boldt, Diederik Stapel, and Naoki Mori, to name a few — all have a Y chromosome. But that doesn’t necessarily mean our sample size is representative. Now … Continue reading Are men more likely to commit scientific fraud?
We have a few follow-ups from stories we’ve recently covered: Terry Elton case initially chalked up to “disorganization,” not misconduct Ohio State University (OSU), which along with the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) recently sanctioned a pharmacy professor for image manipulation, “failed at first to recognize his deception,” according to an investigation by The Columbus Dispatch … Continue reading Catching up: OSU “missed fraud,” Dipak Das lost tenured professorship, Ivan on NPR’s Science Friday
A Brazilian author whose attorneys were the first to send the now-shuttered Science Fraud site a cease-and-desist letter has now had a paper retracted. As Retraction Watch readers may know, Science Fraud shut down earlier this week in response to legal threats. Those threats were preceded by a cease-and-desist letter last month from attorneys for … Continue reading Irony? Paper by author whose attorneys sent cease-and-desist letter to Science Fraud retracted
Here at Retraction Watch, we’ve covered retractions for misconduct, journal errors, editorial system hacking and even no particular reason. And that’s just in the last week. However, we’ve identified a new reported reason: carelessness. A paper in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry claimed to show how a tiny RNA causes fat cells to die. Instead, the … Continue reading RNA paper retracted for “carelessness in including some of the figures”
We’re not generally — or ever — in the habit of running job ads here on Retraction Watch. But the purpose of this post is to highlight a new position available at the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (ASBMB) that we think is a great opportunity and a step forward for the society. … Continue reading JBC publisher ASBMB hiring manager of publication ethics — and why Retraction Watch is cheering
October, apparently, is “studies of retractions month.” First there was a groundbreaking study in PNAS, then an NBER working paper, and yesterday PLoS Medicine alerted us to a paper their sister journal, PLoS ONE, published last week, “A Comprehensive Survey of Retracted Articles from the Scholarly Literature.” The study, by Michael L. Grieneisen and Minghua Zhang, … Continue reading Most retraction notices don’t involve research misconduct or flawed data: new study
A new study from a group of Boston-area economists sheds some light on whether retractions have downstream effects on related fields, particularly when it comes to funding. From the abstract of the working paper, called simply “Retractions,” by Pierre Azoulay, Jeffrey L. Furman, Joshua L. Krieger, and Fiona E. Murray: We find that scientifi c misconduct … Continue reading Collateral damage: What effect do retractions have on scientific funding?
It’s fair to say that we’ve been watching Elsevier over the past two-plus years, and we’ve also known they’ve been watching us. Last year, Tom Reller, the company’s vice president of global public relations, wrote that we “represent the new breed of science watchdog that is able to promote the results of their own investigations … Continue reading Elsevier on Retraction Watch: “scholarly publishing is better for it”
Last week was a bit of a whirlwind in Retraction Land, thanks to a big study of retractions in PNAS and a lot of resulting press coverage. So we didn’t have a chance to update readers on an ongoing story and discussion involving the PLoS journals. As ScienceInsider was first to report last week, the … Continue reading Catching up: PLoS Pathogens apologizes for retracting XMRV-prostate cancer paper before contacting a corresponding author
Have a seat, this one’s a howler. According to a retraction notice for “Computer application in mathematics,” published in Computers & Mathematics with Applications: