Tenth retraction appears for Jesús Lemus, this one in PLOS ONE

Just two days ago, we covered the ninth retraction for Jesús Lemus, “the veterinary researcher whose work colleagues have had trouble verifying, including being unable to confirm the identity of one of his co-authors.” And already another of his retractions has appeared in one of our daily alerts.

This one appears in PLOS ONE, for “Infectious Offspring: How Birds Acquire and Transmit an Avian Polyomavirus in the Wild:”

“Ephemeral nature” of samples — and co-author — leads to ninth Jesús Lemus retraction

Jesús Lemus — the veterinary researcher whose work colleagues have had trouble verifying, including being unable to confirm the identity of one of his co-authors — has notched his ninth retraction.

It’s a clear and comprehensive notice, from the Journal of Applied Ecology, despite the bizarre nature of the case:

Update: Microbiologists face two more retractions for Northern blot problems

We have an update on a case we reported last week involving four papers in two different journals. The Journal of Bacteriology retracted two papers by Carlos Barreiro and colleagues, in notices that referred to the fact that

…identical bands for the 16S rRNA probe controls in the Northern blots were reported to correspond to experiments using different strains and experimental conditions in articles published in this journal and in Microbiology over a period of 5 years…

We checked with the editor of Microbiology, Agnes Fouet, who tells us:

Two Journal of Bacteriology papers retracted for data duplication spanning five years

A group of bacteria researchers in Spain and Germany has lost two papers in the Journal of Bacteriology after the journal found evidence that they had reused figures.

The two notices, for “Heat Shock Proteome Analysis of Wild-Type Corynebacterium glutamicum ATCC 13032 and a Spontaneous Mutant Lacking GroEL1, a Dispensable Chaperone” and “Transcriptional Analysis of the groES-groEL1, groEL2, and dnaK genes in Corynebacterium glutamicum: Characterization of Heat Shock-Induced Promoters,” say the same thing:

Madoff retracts scientific paper

No, not that Madoff.

We’re talking about Robert Madoff, editor of Diseases of the Colon & Rectum. His journal is pulling a 2012 paper by a group of authors in Spain who seem to have been unable to back up their findings when they were found to contain errors.

The article, “Perianal versus endoanal application of glyceryl trinitrate 0.4% ointment in the treatment of chronic anal fissure: results of a randomized controlled trial. Is this the solution to the headaches?” looked at what evidently is a significant side effect of nitroglycerin treatment for anal fissures: headaches. According to the abstract:

Toothless wonder? Paper on “oldest human fossil in Europe” temporarily removed from journal’s site

A paper about a high-profile human fossil has been mysteriously removed from the journal that published it just two weeks ago.

Here’s the notice for “The oldest human fossil in Europe dated to ca. 1.4 Ma at Orce (Spain),” originally published on March 5:

Not in my journal: Two editors take stock of misconduct in their fields — and don’t find much

Today brings two journal editorials about misconduct and retractions. They take, if we may, a bit of an optimistic and perhaps even blindered approach.

In an editorial titled “Scientific misconduct occurs, but is rare,” Boston University’s Richard Primack, editor of Biological Conservation, highlights a Corrigendum of a paper by Jesus Angel Lemus, the veterinary researcher who has retracted seven papers:

Lifted figure prompts retraction of Oncogene paper by Roman-Gomez

The journal Oncogene has retracted a 2005 paper from a group led by Jose Roman-Gomez, a Spanish researcher who appears to be a serial image manipulator/misappropriator.

The article, “Promoter hypomethylation of the LINE-1 retrotransposable elements activates sense/antisense transcription and marks the progression of chronic myeloid leukemia,” was published online in September 2005 and has been cited 106 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Now comes this:

Retraction seven appears for Jesús Lemus

The retractions keep coming for Jesús A. Lemus. Here’s the notice for retraction seven, in Molecular Ecology:

Retraction six appears for Jesús Angel Lemus

Jesús A. Lemus, he of the likely ghost author and questionable data, has earned his sixth retraction, this one in Biology Letters.

Here’s the notice for “Stress associated with group living in a long-lived bird:”