Here’s the notice, for “The influence of friends, family, and older peers on smoking among elementary school students: Low-risk students in high-risk schools,” which appeared in Preventive Medicine in March 2006:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Author.
The authors voluntarily retract their article from Preventive Medicine on the grounds that some of the findings have been published elsewhere and were not appropriately referenced. This runs contrary to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) best practice guidelines for original publication. The data and conclusions published in the article are otherwise scientifically sound.
The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC), the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS), the Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation (CBRPE), and the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit (OTRU). It has been cited 31 times, according to Scopus.
We tried corresponding author Scott Leatherdale for comment, but have yet to hear back. The university tells Retraction Watch it’s investigating:
As we indicated in our statement entitled, “University of Waterloo Committed to Academic Integrity,” which appeared on our website on September 13, 2012, academic integrity and honesty are a significant part of who we are and how we define ourselves at the University of Waterloo. Academic integrity reflects our commitment to honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. It is a core value of our institution.
The authors of the article, “The influence of friends, family, and older peers on smoking among elementary school students: Low-risk students in high-risk schools,” which appeared in Preventive Medicine, requested a retraction because some of the information has been published elsewhere and was not properly referenced.
The University of Waterloo has established policies in place to assess and investigate such matters, and a range of well-defined consequences if our high standards for proper conduct are not upheld. The university has a rigorous process in place, and we are following it as we thoroughly investigate this matter.
Here’s the notice, for “The influence of friends, family, and older peers on smoking among elementary school students: Low-risk students in high-risk schools,” which appeared in Preventive Medicine in March 2006:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Author.
The authors voluntarily retract their article from Preventive Medicine on the grounds that some of the findings have been published elsewhere and were not appropriately referenced. This runs contrary to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) best practice guidelines for original publication. The data and conclusions published in the article are otherwise scientifically sound.
The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC), the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS), the Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation (CBRPE), and the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit (OTRU). It has been cited 31 times, according to Scopus.
We tried corresponding author Scott Leatherdale for comment, but have yet to hear back. The university tells Retraction Watch it’s investigating:
As we indicated in our statement entitled, “University of Waterloo Committed to Academic Integrity,” which appeared on our website on September 13, 2012, academic integrity and honesty are a significant part of who we are and how we define ourselves at the University of Waterloo. Academic integrity reflects our commitment to honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. It is a core value of our institution.
The authors of the article, “The influence of friends, family, and older peers on smoking among elementary school students: Low-risk students in high-risk schools,” which appeared in Preventive Medicine, requested a retraction because some of the information has been published elsewhere and was not properly referenced.
The University of Waterloo has established policies in place to assess and investigate such matters, and a range of well-defined consequences if our high standards for proper conduct are not upheld. The university has a rigorous process in place, and we are following it as we thoroughly investigate this matter.
In our Friday post, we wondered whether Norris’s 2009 masters’ thesis,“Contribution of Sarcoplasmic Reticulum Calcium Pumping to Resting Mouse Muscle Metabolism,” might have been compromised. Waterloo tells us Norris is no longer at the university:
The data published as part of an article in 2010 was also published in her master’s thesis. The university has revoked her master’s degree.
Norris and her supervisor, Russell Tupling, published another paper together, in 2010 but it seems unlikely any other studies will be retracted:
After the researchers discovered evidence of possible misconduct and informed their department, the university investigated further, as per the rigorous process in place for dealing with such allegations. Acting proactively, the researchers informed the journal that the article contained false data and requested its retraction. The university is unaware of any other papers affected by fabrication of this data.
The university has also referred te case to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), which funded Norris.
Kinesiology researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have been forced to retract a 2010 paper in the American Journal of Physiology — Cell Physiologyin the wake of revelations that the first author, then a graduate student, fabricated her data.
This article is being retracted, in agreement with all authors, due to data fabrication. The first author of this paper, Sarah Michelle Norris, has acknowledged that she fabricated data on the effects of cyclopiazonic acid (CPA), a highly specific inhibitor of sarco(endo)plasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPases (SERCAs), on resting oxygen consumption of isolated mouse muscles, in order to report a positive experimental outcome. The actual experimental data show that CPA (even 15 μM) had no effect on muscle oxygen consumption but the first author reported a progressive reduction in muscle oxygen consumption with increasing CPA concentrations peaking at a 50% reduction with 10 μM CPA. None of the co-authors participated in or had knowledge of the first author’s actions.
This work was supported by Grant MOP-86618 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (to A. R. Tupling). S. M. Norris was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Postgraduate Scholarship M award. E. Bombardier, I. C. Smith, and C. Vigna are all supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Postgraduate Scholarship D award.
It looks like Norris was doing similar work for her 2009 masters’ thesis at Waterloo, titled “ “Contribution of Sarcoplasmic Reticulum Calcium Pumping to Resting Mouse Muscle Metabolism”.
We wonder if that paper might also be compromised. We have attempted to reach her supervisor, A. Russell Tupling, but have yet to hear back. We also have a message out to Waterloo’s top research integrity officer and will update this post when we learn more.
Members of the group, including Norris and Tupling, also published a paper in another AJP journal, AJP Endocrinology and Metabolism, in 2010. That article has not been retracted.
We have long (well, for the past two years) wondered about the pitfalls of publishing in one’s own journal, and here’s a case that illustrates precisely how fraught that practice can be.
The journal Microfluidics and Nanofluidics has retracted a 2010 article, titled “Induced-charge electrokinetic phenomena,” by Dongqing Li and Yasaman Daghighi, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, for what appears to be extensive misappropriation of text and data.
The article has been retracted by request of the authors. Unaltered text was taken from a pre-published version of Bazant MZ, Squires TM (2010) Induced-charge electrokinetic phenomena. Curr Opin Colloid Interface Sci 15(2010) 203–213. Moreover, a few reproduced figures from other published articles lack appropriate references. The authors apologize for their negligence.
The paper has been cited five times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, including by another paper on which Daghighi and Li are co-authors.
In 2010, Li, who holds a prestigious “Canada Research Chair (Tier 1)” at Waterloo, was the top editor of Micro/Nano — a journal he founded. Daghighi was then his graduate student, and it’s pretty easy to see him assuring her of a plum publication. What’s less clear is how either of the authors might have gotten their hands on a pre-publication version of a paper that appeared in a different journal.
In any event, Li eventually stepped down from the editorship of the journal — voluntarily, we’re told — but managed to keep his name on the masthead as a member of the editorial board. The interim editor, Roland Zengerle, has not responded to our request for comment. Similarly, we spoke to a couple of Li’s fellow board members but could not get a comment on the record.
Waterloo has been tight-lipped about the case. Pearl Sullivan, chair of Li’s department, said the university conducted its own investigation into the paper but said the conclusions were
We asked whether Daghighi was solely to blame for the episode, to which Sullivan replied:
It’s a bit more complicated than that. It’s not a binary answer.
Sullivan said that Daghighi was still employed at Waterloo, to her knowledge, although we could not reach her for comment.
Bruce Mitchell, the school’s associate provost, responded to our request for an interview with the rather terse:
I am away from Waterloo on holidays, so am unavailable.
We figured that wasn’t an auto-reply, since the message came many hours after we’d initially emailed him (and we got silence to follow-up messages).
What’s interesting is that Mitchell is a staunch public advocate of academic good conduct. In the wake of a 2010 doping scandal that cost the school’s football team an entire season, his office launched an aggressive pro-integrity campaign. That includes online tutorials, videos and other materials, along with quotations from Waterloo students such as this:
Your degree is worth more if it’s from a school where rules against cheating are enforced. But there are grey areas where it’s not clear what is acceptable and what is not. Teachers need to take responsibility to provide clarification. Sometimes students help each other because they do not think that the teacher is available. Also, students are more likely to commit academic offenses when they are under pressure to get ahead, to meet deadlines, to get the grades they need etc. A lot depends on good contact with the teacher.”
We particularly liked this YouTube interview Mitchell conducted with the CBC and posted in April 2012:
As he states:
Our view is that integrity is something that everybody should have some interest and ownership of ….
Indeed.
Getting back to our first point, we’re curious what RW readers think about editors who publish their own studies in their own journals. Should “don’t print where you eat” be a new rule of thumb? Take our poll:
This week, Science for the People is looking at technology for keeping secrets safe from prying eyes and ears. We’re joined by Dan Younger, professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Waterloo, to discuss the remarkable work of his colleague Bill Tutte, who broke the German Lorenz Code during World War II. We’ll also discuss the cutting edge of quantum security with Physics and Computer Science Professor Shohini Ghose.
