In what appears to be a first, two papers have been retracted for including citations designed to help another journal improve its impact factor rankings. The articles in The Scientific World Journal cited papers in Cell Transplantation, which in turn appears to have cited to a high degree other journals with shared board members. Here’s … Continue reading A first? Papers retracted for citation manipulation
The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has found that a neuroscientist who studied the effects of pesticides on a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease made up data. As The Scientist reported on Friday, the ORI found that Mona Thiruchelvam faked cell counts in two grant applications and a number of papers that claimed to … Continue reading ORI finds Parkinson’s-pesticides researcher guilty of faking data; two papers to be retracted
Caution: Sexual innuendo ahead. The withdrawal method is a notoriously unreliable form of birth control. It seems that what happens between the sheets applies to paper as well as cotton. Here’s a retraction notice from BMC Research Notes that speaks — and nudges and winks — for itself. The 2011 article, “Effect of controlled and … Continue reading Wham, bam, no thank you, ram: Publisher error leads to retraction of already-withdrawn sheep sperm paper
Dipak Das, who until earlier this year ran a high-profile cardiovascular research center at the University of Connecticut, has recorded a slick looking video defense against allegations that he cooked data and manipulated images in scores of published studies, 12 of which have been retracted to date. Das, who was hit with a 60,000 pages … Continue reading Resveratrol researcher Das in video: Yes, I manipulated images, but only because the journals asked me to
A senior member of a high-profile foreign aid research team has left the project on the heels of a Lancet correction of a heavily criticized paper the team published earlier this month. Paul Pronyk, who until last week was director of monitoring and evaluation at Columbia University’s Center for Global Health and Economic Development, which … Continue reading Millennium Villages Project forced to correct Lancet paper on foreign aid as leader leaves team
It seemed like a touching tribute when Jiasheng Diao dedicated his 2009 article, “Crystal Structure of Butyrate Kinase 2 from Thermotoga maritima, a Member of the ASKHA Superfamily of Phosphotransferases,” in the Journal of Bacteriology to a deceased mentor, Miriam Hasson. Before her death in January 2006, of a brain tumor, Hasson and her husband, … Continue reading Journal retracts protein paper from scientist who misused deceased mentor’s data
As Stevie Nicks sang in Fleetwood Mac’s hit, “Landslide”: Well, I’ve been afraid of changing, cause I’ve built my life around you …. The authors of a 2010 paper in the journal Landslides might have taken those words a little too much to heart. Their manuscript, “Real-time slope water table forecasting by multi-tank model combined … Continue reading Fleetwood Mac, anyone? Landslides paper crumbles under weight of “significant originality issue”
Perhaps it’s appropriate given the Easter season, but we have learned that Naoki Mori, the Japanese cancer researcher who received a 10-year publishing ban from the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) for imagine manipulation, has published a new paper. Mori, who was fired and then rehired by the University of the Ryukyus over the scandal, … Continue reading Back in the saddle: After more than 30 retractions, Naoki Mori publishing again
The Journal of Clinical Oncology has issued an expression of concern about a 2003 article by a group of researchers in Spain who appear to have had recurrent problems with images. The paper has been cited 56 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the notice: It has been brought to our attention, … Continue reading JCO expresses concern over images from Spanish group that had aroused earlier concern
In 2010, a group of crystallographers immunologists and allergy researchers at the University of Salzburg published a paper in the Journal of Immunology claiming to have derived the structure of a birch pollen allergen. That structure, however, caught the attention of Bernhard Rupp, an eminent crystallographer. In January of this year, Rupp submitted a paper … Continue reading Protein structure retracted after investigation into “highly improbable features,” journal calls it fraud