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Retracted scientist makes Top 10 list

Denyse O'Leary
March 4, 2016
News, Peer review
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What’s hot? What’s not?/Niklas Bildhauer, Wikimedia

From Retraction Watch:

Author with seven retractions makes Thomson Reuters list of top scientists — plus another twist

A cancer researcher who recently retired from MD Anderson Cancer Center — and also recently lost seven papers from one journal following a multi-year investigation — is one of the world’s top scientists, according to a new ranking.

…

We have a long history with Aggarwal — after he told us in 2012 that MD Anderson was investigating his work, he later threatened to sue us for reporting on the case.

But there’s another twist to the story, and that’s the identity of the person stepping into Aggarwal’s endowed chair position (the Ransom Horne, Jr. Professorship for Cancer Research) at MD Anderson. That would be Keith Baggerly, whose name should be familiar to our readers: Baggerly is a bioinformatician who helped expose the flaws in the work by now-discredited cancer researcher Anil Potti. More.

All this feels a lot funnier if we do not have friends or relatives facing cancer and haven’t spent a lot of time, energy, and money raising funds for research. ):

See also: Can you trust what you read in medical journals? Not necessarily.

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Comments
Test. Eric Anderson
D, sadly true. KF kairosfocus
KF
The main force of the article is a statistical-mechanical study of degrees of observed freedom during hand operation, using a Data Glove and data logging with noise filtering. The harshness of the reaction above and the dismissiveness on substance are clearly connected to philosophical differences; not to the general substance of the article — whatever particular errors of detailed observation or statistical analysis may have obtained. I think the article is intended to be about a preparatory study towards development of robotic hands with focus on how to simplify. It is particularly ironic that the article comes out of a study carried out in China which is under the rule of a declaratively atheistic oligarchy.
Yes, that's interesting. The authors claimed the "offending" text was the product of translation errors. It was not meant to mean what it seems to. Perhaps that's true (benefit of the doubt?). But the presence of the "offending" words (regardless of whether it was intentional or by mistake), confirmed two known issues with peer-review (1) it dies not seem to work well in catching any potential problem in the reviewed paper and (2) the censorship police reacts with virulence. Dionisio
D, as predicted:
Retraction Following publication, readers raised concerns about language in the article that makes references to a 'Creator', and about the overall rationale and findings of the study. Upon receiving these concerns, the PLOS ONE editors have carried out an evaluation of the manuscript and the pre-publication process, and they sought further advice on the work from experts in the editorial board. This evaluation confirmed concerns with the scientific rationale, presentation and language, which were not adequately addressed during peer review. Consequently, the PLOS ONE editors consider that the work cannot be relied upon and retract this publication. The editors apologize to readers for the inappropriate language in the article and the errors during the evaluation process. 4 Mar 2016: The PLOS ONE Staff (2016) Retraction: Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0151685. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0151685 View retraction
The implications on underlying attitudes are inadvertently revealing. KF PS: The main force of the article is a statistical-mechanical study of degrees of observed freedom during hand operation, using a Data Glove and data logging with noise filtering. The harshness of the reaction above and the dismissiveness on substance are clearly connected to philosophical differences; not to the general substance of the article -- whatever particular errors of detailed observation or statistical analysis may have obtained. I think the article is intended to be about a preparatory study towards development of robotic hands with focus on how to simplify. It is particularly ironic that the article comes out of a study carried out in China which is under the rule of a declaratively atheistical oligarchy. kairosfocus
This one is still on, but they said it's being retracted as we speak, after the Darwinian police caught it and started to scream out loud in panic. :) Both the HTML and PDF formats are still available online, but probably soon will be taken away. You may want to write a separate post on this:
The explicit functional link indicates that the biomechanical characteristic of tendinous connective architecture between muscles and articulations is the proper design by the Creator to perform a multitude of daily tasks in a comfortable way. Hand coordination should indicate the mystery of the Creator’s invention. In conclusion, our study can improve the understanding of the human hand and confirm that the mechanical architecture is the proper design by the Creator for dexterous performance of numerous functions following the evolutionary remodeling of the ancestral hand for millions of years.
Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living Ming-Jin Liu, Cai-Hua Xiong, Le Xiong, Xiao-Lin Huang PLOS Published: January 5, 2016 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146193 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0146193
Dionisio
It's more a problem of what counts nowadays as peer review. But the good thing is, groups like Retraction Watch are starting to get some sunlight on the problem. News
News, How did this one go through undetected by the peer-review system? Were they sleeping or on vacation? :) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientific-study-paper-creator-intelligent-design-plos-one-creatorgate-a6910171.html Dionisio

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