We have an update on a case we reported last week involving four papers in two different journals. The Journal of Bacteriology retracted two papers by Carlos Barreiro and colleagues, in notices that referred to the fact that …identical bands for the 16S rRNA probe controls in the Northern blots were reported to correspond to … Continue reading Update: Microbiologists face two more retractions for Northern blot problems
The journal Neurology has issued an Expression of Concern over recommendations it published earlier this year regarding the treatment of multiple sclerosis. The journal’s website received multiple comments from clinicians expressing their own concern about the flawed recommendation, which was published as part of a paper titled “The American Academy of Neurology’s Top Five Choosing Wisely … Continue reading Journal expresses concern over flawed multiple sclerosis treatment guideline
A group of bacteria researchers in Spain and Germany has lost two papers in the Journal of Bacteriology after the journal found evidence that they had reused figures. The two notices, for “Heat Shock Proteome Analysis of Wild-Type Corynebacterium glutamicum ATCC 13032 and a Spontaneous Mutant Lacking GroEL1, a Dispensable Chaperone” and “Transcriptional Analysis of … Continue reading Two Journal of Bacteriology papers retracted for data duplication spanning five years
We’ve heard a lot of rationalizations for plagiarism on this beat — “I didn’t know I had to cite that text”; “That author said it better than I ever could”; etc. — but here’s a new one for the wall of shame. Chemistry – A European Journal is retracting a 2012 article, “A New Indicator … Continue reading Plagiarism: It’s just an “approach” to writing papers, right?
Bharat Aggarwal, the MD Anderson researcher who has threatened to sue us while under investigation by his institution for alleged misconduct, now has two Expressions of Concern in addition to two corrections and two unexplained withdrawals. Both of the papers were published in Blood. The Expression of Concern for “Gambogic acid, a novel ligand for … Continue reading Two Expressions of Concern in Blood for MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, who has threatened to sue Retraction Watch
We’ve already reported on the retraction of a paper in a business ethics journal for plagiarism. Yes, plagiarism in an ethics journal. But it turns out there’s at least one more case of exactly the same thing, albeit in a different business ethics journal. Here’s the notice from the Journal of Business Ethics:
Coding errors in a database maintained by Pfizer have led authors to retract two heart biomarker papers in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The two notices, for “Prediction of cardiovascular events in statin-treated patients by lipid and non-lipid biomarkers” and “Plasma PCSK9 levels and clinical outcomes in the TNT (Treating to New … Continue reading Pfizer database errors cause two voluminous retractions for JACC statin-biomarker papers
Plant Physiology, the official journal of the American Society of Plant Biologists, has retracted a 2004 article by a team of ag industry researchers, including a former husband-wife duo, for what could be misconduct by the husband. The retraction notice is vague enough, however, that we’re not entirely sure what went wrong, and no one … Continue reading Spud dud, as agricultural industry potato paper gets pulled a decade after publication
Whose business are the reasons behind a retraction? Our readers will no doubt know by now that we think they’re basically everyone’s — at least if journals want us to believe that they’re interested in maintaining the integrity of the scientific record. But not all editors seem to agree. Hank Edmunds, for example, didn’t in … Continue reading Editor on retraction details: “I do not think this is the business of anyone but our journal, please”
Note (4/9/13): John McArthur contacted us with a few corrections, which we have made below. The Journal of Contaminant Hydrology has retracted a 2008 paper by a group of Indian scientists for plagiarism and the failure to adequately reference their sources. What makes this case somewhat unusual is that the journal allowed the authors to … Continue reading Arsenic-in-the-water paper with “interesting data” first corrected, now retracted