Last August, we reported on an Expression of Concern in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine for a paper on HIV and lung injury. The notice said that the University of Nebraska, home to several of the paper’s authors, had begun an inquiry. Today, the university issued a statement on the case, … Continue reading University of Nebraska clears HIV researchers of misconduct
Bharat Aggarwal, an MD Anderson researcher under investigation by his institution, has threatened to sue us. Today, we received a letter from the Houston firm of Paranjpe & Mahadass LLP telling us to pull every post related to their client off our site within 20 days, or they’d “file a lawsuit against” us on his … Continue reading MD Anderson’s Bharat Aggarwal threatens to sue Retraction Watch
Former National University of Singapore and University of Liverpool scientist Alirio Melendez has two more of the 20-something retractions suggested by the investigations into his work. Both appear in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Here’s the notice for “FcγRI-triggered generation of arachidonic acid and eicosanoids requires iPLA2 but not cPLA2 in human monocytic cells:”
What’s that sucking sound you hear from the journal Vacuum? Why, a retraction, of course. The journal is pulling a 2012 paper by a group of researchers from India who stole images and used them in misleading ways — that’s data fabrication, kids. Here’s the retraction notice for the article, titled “Microwave synthesis, characterization and … Continue reading Vacuum retracts paper on nanorods for plagiarism, image manipulation
We’ve been following the case of Kenji Okajima, a professor at Nagoya City University in Japan who was suspended for six months following an investigation into work in his lab. Bits of the story — including at least one other university investigation, and scrutiny of Okajima’s colleagues, one of whom was fired — have been … Continue reading Kenji Okajima retraction count grows to five
Last November we wrote about the case of Alejandra Bravo and Mario Soberón, a wife-husband team of microbiologists studying genetically modified crops, who had been disciplined by the National Autonomous University of Mexico for having manipulated images in 11 papers. The tinkering did not rise to the level of fraud, according to the university — … Continue reading Hefty correction in JBC for GMO researchers in image tampering case
We have poked fun at Pattern Recognition Letters before for failing to catch blatant plagiarism. We probably should have held off on those jokes for this post. A group of IT researchers from India has suffered the retraction of a paper in PRL for heavily basing the piece on at least four previous papers written … Continue reading “Considerable overlap” leads to retraction of medical imaging paper
Two researchers from Singapore are retracting a paper that included errors in three figures because there’s apparently no way to fix the mistakes and have the new work reviewed. Here’s the notice for “Host-dependent effects of the 3′ untranslated region of turnip crinkle virus RNA on accumulation in Hibiscus and Arabidopsis,” by Weimin Li and … Continue reading Paper with “missing or placed wrongly” controls retracted because there’s “no editorial mechanism to review the errors”
Retraction Watch readers may recall that we have been frequent critics of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) — published by the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (ASBMB) — for their opaque retraction notices. Such notices often read simply “This article has been withdrawn by the authors.” But we are — despite what … Continue reading Another win for transparency: JBC takes a step forward, adding details to some retraction notices
The Office of Research Integrity says Adam Savine, a former post-doc graduate student in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, committed misconduct in work that tainted three papers and six abstracts he submitted to conferences. One of Savine’s studies that drew some media attention involved Diederik Stapel-esque research showing which brain region lights up … Continue reading Wash U psych researcher cited in ORI probe, faces multiple retractions