A materials scientist in Japan was found guilty of plagiarism and fabrication of data in a May 2019 paper, resulting in a six-month suspension, according to her institution.  Ye Zhang, of the Bioinspired Soft Matter Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), was the senior author of “Enzyme-mediated dual-targeted-assembly realizes … Continue reading Okinawa university suspends researcher for six months following findings of plagiarism and faked data

A materials scientist in Japan was found guilty of plagiarism and fabrication of data in a May 2019 paper, resulting in a six-month suspension, according to her institution.  Ye Zhang, of the Bioinspired Soft Matter Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), was the senior author of “Enzyme-mediated dual-targeted-assembly realizes … Continue reading Okinawa university suspends researcher for six months following findings of plagiarism and faked data

A group of authors at Nagoya University and Kyoto University have retracted a 2019 Nature paper because of errors. Here’s the retraction notice: We would like to retract this Letter. Nature previously issued an Editorial Expression of Concern (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2756-0) after we, the authors, alerted the journal to potential problems with the matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI–TOF) mass … Continue reading Authors retract Nature paper after realizing some data were “calculated wrongly”

A group of authors at Nagoya University and Kyoto University have retracted a 2019 Nature paper because of errors. Here’s the retraction notice: We would like to retract this Letter. Nature previously issued an Editorial Expression of Concern (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2756-0) after we, the authors, alerted the journal to potential problems with the matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI–TOF) mass … Continue reading Authors retract Nature paper after realizing some data were “calculated wrongly”

A stem cell researcher in Japan could end up with 23 retractions after officials at his former institution confirmed that he’d committed research misconduct in nearly two dozen papers.  According to a report released last week by Akichi Gaikun University, Nobuaki Ozeki misused images, fabricated data and recycled text in 20 papers. Ozeki has had … Continue reading Stem cell researcher’s retraction count may near two dozen

A group of researchers at Aichi Gakuin University in Nagoya, Japan, continues to lose papers for duplication of images and text from their previous work, and is now up to 19 retractions. Here’s a typical notice, for “Bone morphogenetic protein-induced cell differentiation involves Atg7 and Wnt16 sequentially in human stem cell-derived osteoblastic cells,” a paper … Continue reading Two and a half years after findings of misconduct, stem cell researchers up to 19 retractions

A radiology journal has retracted two papers about the fallout from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan over concerns that the researchers used “ethically inappropriate data” from the people they studied.  The articles, which appeared in the Journal of Radiological Protection in 2017, were written by  Makoto Miyazaki, of the Department of Radiation Health … Continue reading Fallout over Fukushima fallout papers continues as two are retracted

An itinerant materials scientist whose former lab head has accused publicly of misconduct is up to nine retractions for manipulating his data.  We last wrote about Hossein Hosseinkhani in 2016, after he’d lost seven papers stemming from his time as a researcher in the lab of Yasuhiko Tabata, of the Institute for Frontier Life and … Continue reading Materials scientist up to nine retractions

A group of pharmacology researchers in Japan have now lost four papers over concerns about the validity of their data.   The studies come from a group at Kobe Gakuin University, which conducted a misconduct investigation into the articles last year and concluded that 10 papers were affected. (Note: The report is in Japanese and does … Continue reading Investigation at Japanese university leads to four retractions