The author of a high-profile book about the history of North Korea is issuing 52 corrections to the next edition, scheduled to appear this spring. The changes follow heavy criticism of the book, alleging it contained material not supported by the list of references. Last month, author Charles Armstrong, a professor at Columbia University, announced on … Continue reading High-profile book on North Korea earns 52 corrections
A biologist in India has lost three papers that appear to have been part of a network of duplications. One paper published in 2012 was retracted — at the researcher’s request — for copying from a 2010 paper of his. In turn, both papers were duplicated in a paper that was published in 2016, and retracted … Continue reading Plant biologist loses three papers that made up a duplication ring
The week at Retraction Watch featured the harrowing story of a would-be whistleblower subjected to a forced mental exam (part of our partnership with the news team at Science), and Jeffrey Beall’s site about predatory publishers going dark. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The week at Retraction Watch featured a discussion of whether peer reviewers should replicate experiments, and a look at whether social psychology really has a retraction problem. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The week at Retraction Watch featured the heartfelt response of a researcher when she found out a paper she’d reviewed had been retracted, and a new member of our leaderboard. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The final week of 2016 at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a high-profile paper on diabetes from Harvard, and the retraction of a JAMA article on whether zinc was useful for the common cold. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Authors have retracted a JAMA article summarizing the evidence behind the benefits of a supplement, after the systemic review upon which it was based was withdrawn. The 2014 paper, “Oral Zinc for the Common Cold,” drew from a 2013 Cochrane Review, considered the gold standard for rigorous analyses of clinical treatments. That Cochrane review was … Continue reading JAMA article on zinc for the common cold retracted
A material science journal has retracted a paper after learning the authors took most of the content from a master’s thesis – and added the author as a co-author without his knowledge. The authors must have really liked this thesis – they lost another paper in 2015 for copying from the same document. Both retracted … Continue reading Lesson not learned: Researchers copied a master’s thesis — twice
Not all retractions result from researchers’ mistakes — we have an entire category of posts known as “publisher errors,” in which publishers mistakenly post a paper, through no fault of the authors. Yet, those retractions can become a black mark on authors’ record. Our co-founder Ivan Oransky and Adam Etkin, Executive Editor at Springer Publishing Co … Continue reading Dopey dupe retractions: How publisher error hurts researchers
“Deeply disturbing,” “heinous intellectual theft,” erosion of the “public’s trust in medical research:” These are just a few words used to describe a rare type of plagiarism reported in this week’s Annals of Internal Medicine. Although we’ve only documented a few cases where peer reviewers steal material from manuscripts and pass them off as their … Continue reading Dear peer reviewer, you stole my paper: An author’s worst nightmare