Did the author of a now-retracted article bribe a critic to silence him?

Authors react in a variety of ways to criticism of their work. Some stonewall, some grit their teeth but make corrections, and others thank their critics. But what about bribery? After an economist alerted a journal and government agency to potential problems with a 2015 paper, he says the first author tried to bribe him […]

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A diabetes researcher sued his former employer for defamation. Here’s the story.

The last decade hasn’t exactly been drama-free for Franck Mauvais-Jarvis, head of the Diabetes Research Program at Tulane University. After being accused of falsifying three figures in a submitted manuscript, Mauvais-Jarvis sued his accusers and officials at his former employer — Northwestern University — for defamation and conspiracy in 2011. In 2014, a judge dismissed the suit. We […]

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“Strange. Very strange:” Retracted nutrition study reappears in new journal

In an unusual turn of events, a nutrition paper has come back to life a year after being pulled from its original publication. After the paper was retracted from the journal Obesity, the authors revised it and republished it in another journal, Pediatric Obesity. Both journals are published by Wiley. The second version of the paper […]

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After lawsuit threat, journal forces author to heavily revise education paper

Under threat of a lawsuit, an education journal changed its mind about publishing a paper that it had already accepted after peer review. Last summer, Education Policy Analysis Archives, published by the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, informed San Francisco State University professor Stanley Pogrow that the journal would be publishing […]

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Whistleblower gets court backing in defamation case — but at a cost

It’s been a long and winding road for a whistleblower at Indiana University, South Bend. After Mark Fox, a professor of management and entrepreneurship accused two business professors of plagiarism in 2012, a university investigation found one of the two men — Douglas Agbetsiafa, the former chair of the economics department — guilty of plagiarism, and […]

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Nature paper with massive correction can’t be reproduced, says independent group

In 2011, authors of a Nature letter caught some flak for issuing a lengthy correction to a neuroscience paper that had raised eyebrows within days of publication — including some suggestions it should be retracted. The correction notice, published months after the original letter, cited errors in image choice and labeling, but asserted the conclusions remained valid. Now, those […]

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Plagiarism concerns raised over popular blockchain paper on catching misconduct

A graduate student at McGill University is raising concerns that a popular F1000Research paper may have plagiarized his 2014 blog post that — ironically — proposed a method to prevent scientific misconduct. The student calls the paper “a mirror image” of his work. The February 2016 F1000Research paper, “How blockchain-timestamped protocols could improve the trustworthiness of medical science,” was highlighted […]

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Scientists call for retraction of “seriously misleading” paper with asbestos industry ties

Eleven scientists are asking a journal to consider retracting an asbestos paper with industry ties for including “seriously misleading information,” “several wrong statements,” and thrice citing a journal that doesn’t appear to exist. Editors of the journal, Epidemiology Biostatistics and Public Health, however, say they will not retract the article, based on the advice of two […]

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Corrections chip away at asbestos paper for conflicts of interest, “misleading” citation

The journal Epidemiology Biostatistics and Public Health has issued back-to-back corrections for a 2015 paper after the authors failed to disclose conflicts of interest with the asbestos industry and included an “erroneous citation.” The mistaken citation was more than just a clerical error, critics argue — it undermines one of the key arguments of the paper, “Critical […]

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Four retractions follow Swedish government findings of negligence, dishonesty

A Swedish ethical review board has censured two biologists and their employer, Uppsala University, for events related to “extensive image manipulations” in five papers published between 2010 and 2014. The case has led to criticism from an outside expert — who brought the allegations to Uppsala — over the current system in Sweden for handling […]

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