We have a fourth retraction in the Journal of Biochemistry for Naohito Aoki, a Japanese researcher and former postdoc in a German lab, whose images have been called into question but whose retraction notices were scant. In this case, however, the journal, while not exactly overbrimming with information about the article, at least gives us … Continue reading Aoki notches fourth retraction for image problems
A pair of authors from Italy has retracted their 2012 article in the Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine for including chunks of text with a “high degree of similarity” from other published sources. But rest assured: the authors, we’re told, didn’t intend to do so. The article, “Central venous catheterization and thrombosis in newborns: … Continue reading Virtually verbatim text earns retraction of neonate paper, gives authors a pass
A former anthropologist at the Free University in Amsterdam appears to have made up data for at least 61 papers, and invented awards and other parts of his CV, according to a university investigation. The news was first reported by NRC Handelsblad and the Volkskrant newspaper. Bax, who studied an Irish town he called Patricksville, … Continue reading Dutch anthropologist Mart Bax faked 61 papers, says university
MIT’s Robert Weinberg, a leading cancer researcher who retracted a Cancer Cell paper earlier this year for “inappropriate presentation” of figures, has corrected a different paper in the same journal. Here’s the correction for “Species- and Cell Type-Specific Requirements for Cellular Transformation:” We were apprised recently of errors made in the assembly of Figures 2B, … Continue reading A Cancer Cell mega-correction for highly cited researcher who retracted paper earlier this year
The journal Clinical Research and Regulatory Affairs has retracted a 2012 article on over-the-counter drugs by a trio of pharmacy researchers in India who decided to “reproduce content to a high degree of similarity” from other sources. Here’s how the retraction notice puts it:
The journal Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces has retracted a 2011 paper by a group of researchers in India who misappropriated — and then manhandled — a pair of images from a previously published article by other scientists. The paper, “Synthesis and characterization of chitosan and grape polyphenols stabilized palladium nanoparticles and their antibacterial activity,” … Continue reading When two words colloid: “copied and manipulated” figures prompt retraction of nanoparticle paper
Case report: An 85-year-old man eats some chicken and unknowingly swallows a bone. After two days of worsening abdominal pain, he shows up to the emergency room. A CT scan reveals the bone perforating his colon. He is rushed to surgery, which is successful. Then, during his otherwise uneventful recovery, he develops female breasts. That’s … Continue reading Sir, that’s not my colon: Journal has a bite of a chicken and egg problem
Rakesh Kumar, a professor at the George Washington University, has retracted a paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) that was recently questioned on PubPeer. Here are Peer1’s comments from PubPeer about the paper, “Mechanism of MTA1 Protein Overexpression-linked Invasion:”
In what may be a first, a researcher in Turkey has withdrawn a paper because the patients whose cases she described wthdrew their consent after it was published. Here’s the notice, from Allergy, Asthma, & Clinical Immunology, of a paper titled “Severe contact dermatitis due to camomile: a common complementary remedy with potential sensitization risks:”
A chemistry paper on nanorods that became a lightning rod for criticism on chemistry blogs this week has been retracted. Here’s the notice for “Chopstick Nanorods: Tuning the Angle between Pairs with High Yield,” originally published in June in Nano Letters by Rajasekhar Anumolu and Leonard F. Pease of the University of Utah: