Category Archives: physical sciences retractions
Publisher retracts 350 papers at once
IOP Publishing has retracted a total of 350 papers from two different 2021 conference proceedings because an “investigation has uncovered evidence of systematic manipulation of the publication process and considerable citation manipulation.” The case is just the latest involving the discovery of papers full of gibberish – aka “tortured phrases” – thanks to the work … Continue reading Publisher retracts 350 papers at once
Posted by in physical sciences retractions
Editors retract algae study, citing “issues with the data”
The International Journal of Phytoremediation has issued a retraction for a 2013 article suggesting algae could shield against gamma radiation better than lead. Sadly, such an innovation was not to be — the editors have pulled the paper, saying: We are now cognizant that there are issues with the data and determinations made within the manuscript […]
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Duplication of “a major part of text and results” adds up to third retraction for mathematician
An article by Alexander Spivak, a mathematician based in Israel, is being retracted from the proceedings of a 2014 numerical analysis meeting because Spivak had already published “a major part of text and results” in a mathematics journal in 2010. Spivak, a member of the faculty of sciences at Holon Institute of Technology, has a bit of a […]
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“Significant concerns” and formal investigation unwind Nature Nanotech sequencing paper
Following “significant concerns” raised by outside researchers and a formal university investigation, a group of authors in Taiwan has retracted a Nature Nanotechnology paper on DNA sequencing after they “could not reproduce the results of the work,” or even provide “a complete set of raw data for the original experiments.” The paper, “DNA sequencing using electrical conductance measurements […]
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Flood paper washed away after “oversight” leads to publication of wrong manuscript
The editor of the Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering has retracted a paper mapping flood zones in Iran because the authors mistakenly uploaded a manuscript that had already been published elsewhere. According to corresponding author Majid Bagheri of K.N. Toosi University of Technology in Tehran, a different paper on wastewater treatment was accepted and peer-reviewed […]
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Geology dust-up: Second sand paper swept away for duplication
Citing an “abuse of the scientific publishing system,” the editors of Geomorphology have retracted a paper from a quartet of geologists in China for containing “significant similarity” to four other papers. It is the second recent retraction for the group: In a loop of self-plagiarism, the Geomorphology paper was cited as a source of copied material […]
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Fluid mechanics article retracted with no explanation
An article published earlier this year has been retracted from the Journal of Heat Transfer. But the retraction notice gives no information about what was amiss. The article is entitled “Neural Network Methodology for Modeling Heat Transfer in Wake Flow,” and the retraction notice, in full, reads: The above referenced paper is being retracted from […]
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Reporting errors sink chem paper on liquid-liquid equilibrium
A team of chemists at Hunan University and Zhejiang Shuyang Chemical Company in China have retracted a paper from the Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data after “inconsistencies with the literature” led them to discover “errors” in the way the data were reported. According to the corresponding author Qinbo Wang, in December 2014, Robert Chirico, an associate editor at […]
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Controversial Italian scientist loses 11 papers from journal he used to edit
Alberto Carpinteri is something of a Renaissance man. Along with championing a highly controversial form of energy generation called “piezonuclear fission,” which involves crushing rocks, the engineer has argued that the Shroud of Turin really is as old as Jesus, but carbon dating was thrown off by an earthquake. Not everyone agrees with his ideas: In […]
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Retraction notice for steel manufacturing paper leaves much to the imagination
Reading is hard and takes a long time, so it’s nice that the Iron and Steel Institute of Japan didn’t give us too much work to do with this 12 word retraction. Journal ISIJ International minced no words about why the 2014 paper on steel manufacturing was withdrawn, because there were no words. Here’s the notice for […]
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