Caught Our Notice: Retraction eight as errors in Wansink paper are “too voluminous” for a correction

Title: Shifts in the Enjoyment of Healthy and Unhealthy Behaviors Affect Short- and Long-Term Postbariatric Weight Loss What Caught Our Attention: Cornell food marketing researcher Brian Wansink, the one-time media darling who has been dogged by mounting criticism of his findings, has lost another paper to retraction. As we’ve noted in the past, corrections for … Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Retraction eight as errors in Wansink paper are “too voluminous” for a correction

Finnish institute finds no evidence to support misconduct in diabetes paper

An investigation at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has found no evidence of misconduct by one of its former researchers in a diabetes paper. We previously reported on the case after the VTT was accused of cutting corners in a previous investigation into Matej Orešič (now based at the Steno Diabetes Center in […]

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Finnish universities must now use courts to revoke degrees

A court in Finland has ruled that universities must go through the court system if they want to revoke a degree. In a precedent-setting decision, a body dubbed “the court of last resort in administrative cases” in Finland ruled that universities must apply to them to revoke someone’s degree. The ruling, which occurred this month, took place after a […]

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Biologist critiques own paper, journal retracts it — against her wishes

The journal Evolution has retracted a 2007 paper about the roles of the different sexes in searching for mates, after the same author critiqued the work in a later paper.  The case raises important questions about when retractions are appropriate, and whether they can have a chilling effect on scientific discourse. Although Hanna Kokko of the University […]

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Sparks fly in Finland over misconduct investigation

Researchers in Finland are criticizing an investigation by VTT Technical Research Centre into one of its scientists. The investigation followed allegations about the VTT’s plasma and serum metabolomics (QBIX) group, previously led by Matej Orešič (who is now based at the Steno Diabetes Center in Gentofte, Denmark) and Tuulia Hyötyläinen. Kai Simons, who conducted an […]

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Author added to paper after investigation at University of Helsinki

An author has been added to a biochemistry paper following an investigation by the University of Helsinki. Karen Sabatini, currently a biochemist at the University of San Diego, was erroneously left off the author list of a paper published in 2010 in Soft Matter. She apparently left Helsinki in 2010. The circumstances may be unclear, but one thing we […]

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Predatory journals published 400,000 papers in 2014: Report

The number of so-called “predatory” open-access journals that allegedly sidestep publishing standards in order to make money off of article processing charges has dramatically expanded in recent years, and three-quarters of authors are based in either Asia or Africa, according to a new analysis from BMC Medicine.* The number of articles published by predatory journals spiked […]

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Which countries have the most retractions, for which reasons?

One of the questions we often get — but are careful to answer with some version of “we don’t know because we don’t have a denominator” — is how retraction rates vary by scientific field and country. We’ve noticed that the reasons for retraction seem to vary among countries, but didn’t really have the data. […]