Posts

May 17, 2013

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3:30 PM | How does a paper get published without the alleged corresponding author knowing?

The Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering ran a retraction yesterday that’s left us scratching our heads. The paper, “Wettability-gradient-driven micropump for transporting discrete liquid drops,” was published on February 8 of this year. For a paper published in a journal run by the Institute of Physics, the retraction notice reads like a mix of Hindenburg […]

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2:30 PM | Update: Microbiologists face two more retractions for Northern blot problems

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 […]

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1:30 PM | Liver study a twin, gets retracted

The liver is the only internal organ that can regenerate. So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Egyptian researchers tried to publish the same paper about liver ischemia twice in different journals. They succeeded — for a little while, at least. The Journal of Molecular Histology is retracting the second of the articles to appear. […]

May 16, 2013

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3:04 PM | Half of researchers have reported trouble reproducing published findings: MD Anderson survey

Readers of this blog — and anyone who has been following the Anil Potti saga — know that MD Anderson Cancer Center was the source of initial concerns about the reproducibility of the studies Potti, and his supervisor, Joseph Nevins, were publishing in high profile journals. So the Houston institution has a rep for dealing […]

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1:37 PM | BioMed Central retracts study it published twice while buying journal

Yesterday, we wrote about the retraction of a paper that ended up published despite the fact that peer reviewers had recommended rejecting it. Today, we have the (short) tale of a paper retracted because the publisher posted it a second time while they were buying the journal where it appeared. Here’s the notice for “The […]

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1:37 PM | BioMed Central retracts study it published twice while acquiring journal

Yesterday, we wrote about the retraction of a paper that ended up published despite the fact that peer reviewers had recommended rejecting it. Today, we have the (short) tale of a paper retracted because the publisher posted it a second time while they were buying acquiring the journal where it appeared. Here’s the notice for […]

May 15, 2013

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6:00 PM | Lack of conflict of interest disclosure undoes scoliosis study

The journal Scoliosis has retracted a 2012 paper by a pair of German spine doctors over what the editors have called a less-than-fully declared conflict of interest involving one of the authors. That should be relatively straigtforward – but it’s not quite. Turns out the article does include a disclosure, although perhaps the information it […]

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3:00 PM | Nanotech researcher SK Sahoo notches fifth retraction

Nanotech researcher SK Sahoo, whom as we reported in February lost four papers from Acta Biomaterialia for what the journal called “highly unethical practices,” has actually retracted five papers from that journal. According to a notice for “Enhanced cellular uptake and in vivo pharmacokinetics of rapamycin loaded cubic phase nanoparticles for cancer therapy” that appears […]

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1:30 PM | Editor inadvertently spurns reviewers; retraction ensues

The Journal of Multivariate Analysis has retracted a paper it was never meant to publish — a problem, it seems, of multivariate analyses. The article, titled “Regression estimation with locally stationary long-memory errors,” came from a par of statisticians in Chile, Wildredo Palma and Guillermo Ferreira. It appears that the article did not pass muster […]

May 14, 2013

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9:30 PM | Four color problem, odd Goldbach conjecture, and the curse of computing

For over twenty-three hundred years, at least since the publication of Euclid’s Elements, the conjecture and proof of new theorems has been the sine qua non of mathematics. The method of proof is at “the heart of mathematics, the royal road to creating analytical tools and catalyzing growth” (Rav, 1999; pg 6). Proofs are not […]... Rav, Y. (1999) Why Do We Prove Theorems?. Philosophia Mathematica, 7(1), 5-41. DOI: 10.1093/philmat/7.1.5 Why Do [â€¦]

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3:00 PM | “Bird vocalizations” and other best-ever plagiarism excuses: A wrap-up of the 3rd World Conference on Research Integrity

What are the best excuses you’ve seen for plagiarism? James Kroll, at the National Science Foundation’s Office of Inspector General, has collected a bunch over the years (click on the image to enlarge): Bird vocalizations. Really. Kroll’s slide was part of a 3rd World Conference on Research Integrity talk he gave on his office’s investigations into […]

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1:30 PM | Mislabeled sample leads to a chain reaction of physics retractions

Two different teams of physicists have retracted papers from Physical Review B after realizing that a sample used in the paper published first — and which formed the basis of the second paper — was mislabeled. Here’s the notice for the first paper, “s-wave superconductivity in barium-doped phenanthrene as revealed by specific-heat measurements,” by Jianjun […]

May 13, 2013

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8:30 PM | Journal expresses concern over flawed multiple sclerosis treatment guideline

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 […]

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2:30 PM | Cossu-UCL follow-up: PLOS ONE paper to be corrected

We have a follow-up from last week’s story about a University College London (UCL) investigation into the work of Giulio Cossu that found errors but no “deliberate intention to mislead.”UCL said it will not make the full report available: …on the advice of UCL’s Freedom of Information officer UCL will not be releasing the report […]

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1:30 PM | Referencing failure (we mean, plagiarism) leads to retraction of water testing paper

From the Not Saying What You Mean Files: Environmental Monitoring and Assessment has retracted a recent article by authors in Kuwait who appear to have plagiarized, although you couldn’t really tell from the notice. The paper, “Detection of bacterial endotoxin in drinking tap and bottled water in Kuwait,” appeared in the December 2012 issue of […]

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5:30 AM | Quasi-magical thinking and superrationality for Bayesian agents

As part of our objective and subjective rationality model, we want a focal agent to learn the probability that others will cooperate given that the focal agent cooperates () or defects (). In a previous post we saw how to derive point estimates for and (and learnt that they are the maximum likelihood estimates): , […]... Masel, J. (2007) A Bayesian model of quasi-magical thinking can explain observed cooperation in the public good game. Journal of Economic Behavior , 64(2), [â€¦]

May 10, 2013

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3:00 PM | Two Journal of Bacteriology papers retracted for data duplication spanning five years

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 […]

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1:30 PM | Madoff retracts scientific paper

No, not that Madoff. We’re talking about Robert Madoff, editor of Diseases of the Colon & Rectum. His journal is pulling a 2012 paper by a group of authors in Spain who seem to have been unable to back up their findings when they were found to contain errors. The article, “Perianal versus endoanal application […]

May 09, 2013

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5:30 PM | Lichtenthaler retraction count rises to 11

Ulrich Lichtenthaler’s retraction record is now in the double digits, with his 10th and 11th retractions coming in the Journal of Product Innovation Management. Here’s one notice, for a paper cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: The following article from Journal of Product Innovation Management, The Impact of Aligning Product Development and […]

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3:00 PM | UCL finds errors in work by biologist Cossu, but no “deliberate intention to mislead”

A cell biologist at University College London (UCL) who has had one paper retracted and another corrected has been cleared of misconduct by the university. The news, first reported by Times Higher Education, comes after a retraction of a paper by Giulio Cossu prompted by pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis that we wrote about in January. […]

May 08, 2013

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11:30 PM | Evolutionary games in set structured populations

We have previously discussed the importance of population structure in evolutionary game theory, and looked at the Ohtsuki-Nowak transform for analytic studies of games on one of the simplest structures — random regular graphs. However, there is another extremely simple structure to consider: a family of inviscid sets. We can think of each agent as [...]... Tarnita, C., Antal, T., Ohtsuki, H., & Nowak, M. (2009) Evolutionary dynamics in set structured populations. Proceedings [â€¦]

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8:00 PM | Failure to reproduce experiments, errors lead to retraction of pancreatic cancer paper

The authors of a paper in Laboratory Investigation have retracted it after they were unable to “reproduce key experiments,” and discovered “several minor errors.” Here’s the retraction notice for “Slug enhances invasion ability of pancreatic cancer cells through upregulation of matrix metalloproteinase-9 and actin cytoskeleton remodeling,” by Liqun Wu and colleagues of The Affiliated Hospital of [...]

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1:30 PM | A new record? 27-plus years later, a notice of redundant publication

A 1984 paper in Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B is now subject to a notice of redundant publication because a lot of it had been published in Cell the same year. Whether 28 years — 27 years and 9 months, to be precise — is any kind of official record is unclear, since [...]

May 07, 2013

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1:30 PM | Double-dipping leads to removal of petroleum research paper

Iranian scientists have lost one of two articles they submitted — and published — simultaneously to different journals. Watch as confusion ensues. The retracted paper, “Permeability Estimation of a Reservoir Based on Neural Networks Coupled with Genetic Algorithms,” appeared online in August 2011 in Petroleum Science and Technology, a Taylor & Francis journal. According to the liner [...]

May 06, 2013

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3:00 PM | Paper by Bristol-Myers Squibb researchers retracted for “unsolved legal reasons”

A group of researchers at Bristol-Myers Squibb has had a paper retracted for reasons we can’t quite figure out. All the notice for “Simultaneous expression of antibody light and heavy chains in Pichia pastoris: improving retransformation outcome by linearizing vector at a different site,” published in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, says is: This article has [...]

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1:30 PM | Plagiarism: It’s just an “approach” to writing papers, right?

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 [...]

May 03, 2013

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3:00 PM | Retraction for image issues forces correction of herbal remedies editorial

Back in March, we wrote about the case of Chinese researchers who pulled their 2011 paper in the Journal of Molecular Medicine on ginseng’s potential as a heart remedy because a couple of their images were suspect (duplicated was the word they’d used). Turns out the journal suffered some collateral damage. JMM also has corrected [...]

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1:06 PM | Two Expressions of Concern in Blood for MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, who has threatened to sue Retraction Watch

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 [...]

May 02, 2013

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4:35 PM | Heart pulls sodium meta-analysis over duplicated, and now missing, data

The journal Heart has retracted a 2012 meta-analysis after learning that two of the six studies included in the review contained duplicated data. Those studies, it so happens, were conducted by one of the co-authors. The article, “Low sodium versus normal sodium diets in systolic heart failure: systematic review and meta-analysis,” came from an eclectic [...]

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1:30 PM | Scientists doing the right thing: Malfunctioning lab equipment leads to retraction of neuroscience paper

For the second time inside of a week, we come to praise scientists who did the right thing when they realized their lab equipment or reagents weren’t performing as expected. Here’s the retraction of a 2011 paper in Cerebral Cortex: The retraction of the article “AREAL DIFFERENCES IN DIAMETER AND LENGTH OF CORTICOFUGAL PROJECTIONS (Cereb. [...]