Rowdy Roddy Pilferer: Wrestling journal takes down plagiarized paper

A journal devoted to wrestling science — we’re not sure if it’s the only one — has given the old reverse frankensteiner to a 2016 article whose authors stole much of their text from a conference presentation one of them had reviewed for the meeting. The article, “The Role of Goal Setting, Collectivism, and Task Orientation […]

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Bogus affiliation scuttles paper on Atlantic currents

An oceanography journal has retracted a 2017 paper by a group of researchers in China after learning from a reader that one of the authors had a bogus affiliation in the United States. The paper, “Southward migrations of the Atlantic Equatorial Currents during the Younger Dryas,” appeared in early spring in Limnology and Oceanography, a […]

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Engineering journal removes article co-authored by former president of Iran

Does failing to disclose that you were once a leader in the “Axis of Evil” deserve retraction? An engineering journal has pulled a 2017 paper whose authors included Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ahmadinejad, the notorious anti-Semitic and anti-West president of Iran from 2005 to 2013, was a civil engineer […]

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Lost citation snuffs out Aussie fire paper

A journal has retracted a 2016 paper on wildfires in Australia because the authors neglected to cite earlier work — an unintentional lapse, they said. The article, “Projected changes in Australian fire regimes during the 21st century and consequences for Ecosystems,” appeared in the International Journal of Wildland Fire. The authors are Sandy Harrison and Douglas […]

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Newspaper series prompts CDC to correct paper on Legionnaire’s disease

Post-publication peer review isn’t just for scientists. Newspaper reporters can help correct the scientific record, too. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has corrected a journal article on Legionnaire’s disease after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette revealed what seems to be efforts by the researchers to misrepresent their data. In a series of articles […]

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After 35 years, philosophy journal corrects article…by a cat

In 1982, Bruce Le Catt wrote a response to a paper in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy critiquing an earlier article about prosthetic vision. But Le Catt was no ordinary author. No, he was a cat, the beloved pet of David Lewis, a world-class philosopher who just happened to be the author of the article […]

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Researcher who stole manuscript during peer review earns second retraction

The researcher whose brazen theft of a manuscript he had reviewed prompted a “Dear plagiarist” letter from the aggrieved author once the deceit was discovered has lost a second paper for plagiarism. International Scholarly Research Notices, a Hindawi publication, has retracted a 2012 study by Carmine Finelli and colleagues, citing widespread misuse of text from […]

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What a report into scientific misconduct reveals: The case of Frank Sauer

Oct. 3, 2011, was the beginning of the end for Frank Sauer’s tenure at the University of California, Riverside. On that day, an anonymous emailer contacted Sauer’s institution with accusations that the biochemist had cooked his research in at least eight papers over a 16-year period. Sauer was found to have doctored images in studies […]

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Inclusion of “personal correspondence” in evolution paper prompts retraction, new journal policy

Hearsay is not admissible as evidence in court — and it doesn’t seem to go very far in science, either. A pair of researchers in the field of human evolution have lost a paper which contained data from “personal correspondence” that the providing party apparently did not enjoy seeing in print. The article, “Early hominin […]

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“An evolving and inconsistent tale:” Biochemist barred from federal grants for five years

In 2013, Frank Sauer blamed “visual distortion” for problems with the images in his papers and grant applications. That explanation gave way to the production in 2016 of a mysterious and ominous letter from an unnamed researcher claiming that they’d sabotaged Sauer’s work in a plot of revenge. Soon after, Sauer was claiming that a […]

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