The rush to be first unfortunately sometimes means sacrificing being right.
A 2013 study in the journal PLOS ONE found that retractions of science paper publications are on the rise, according to Live Science, due to a few factors. "Predatory" online journals take money for studies that they guarantee will be published. Other retractions are due to fraudulent data and sloppy science.
In the spirit of "Top ____ of 2014" lists, here are some of the year's notable retractions.
Fraudulent HIV Vaccine Success
This story broke in 2013, but the retraction occurred in 2014, according to The Scientist. Dong-Pyou Han, a former researcher at Iowa State University, tainted samples of rabbit blood with human blood, so it seemed as if his HIV vaccine was working. In a rare turn of events, the researcher is facing criminal charges and ISU has to pay back $500,000 of his salary.
Happy Meal Blues
A study that estimated the effects of fast food on children's weight has been retracted since it was found the scientists used an outdated model for childhood weight changes, according to Retraction Watch. Researchers initially claimed that children who eat fast food twice a week could avoid weight gain of two pounds per year if meals that come with toys were kept under 550 calories.
The Smartest Baby In Cartoonland
Bet you didn't know that Maggie Simpson, the 2-year-old cartoon baby that won't even talk, is bright enough to have published a scientific paper!
Maggie Simpson, from the animated series "The Simpsons," collaborated with Edna Krabappel, her brother Bart's chain-smoking school teacher (who officially died a cartoon death in March) and a fictional co-author Kim Jong Fun, according to Live Science.
The math paper, "'Fuzzy', Homogeneous Configurations," was published by two journals: the Aperito Journal of Nanoscience Technology and the Journal of Computational Intelligence and Electronic Systems.
Alex Smolyanitsky of the National Institute of Standards and Technology reportedly authored the paper to highlight how easy it is to be published for a fee, without quality checks or peer reviews. The paper was written using a random-text generator.
I Told You To Get Me Off Your (Bleeping) Mailing List
The International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology accepted a paper this year by an Australian computer scientist. The paper was titled "Get Me Off Your [expletive] Mailing List," according to Live Science.
The paper's brilliant findings consisted of the title printed repeatedly for 10 pages and included a flowchart and graph with the same seven-word request.
Coffee Bean Jitters
Mehmet Oz, the TV doctor, toasted (not roasted) green coffee extract as the magic potion of weight loss on his show "The Dr. Oz Show" in 2012, but it turns out, the "hopelessly flawed" study made "baseless weight-loss claims."
In September, the Texas-based manufacturer of the green coffee extract, Applied Food Sciences, Inc., settled with the Federal Trade Commission for $3.5 million for falsifying data. A month later, the authors of the study (who were paid by Applied Food Sciences, Inc.) retracted the study from the journal "Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy."
Enough, Jenny McCarthy!
There was some confusion and the anti-vaccine crowd thought they had a winner, but it turns out that vaccines still don't cause autism, according to Live Science.
In August, the website Natural News reported a tip from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention whistleblower who said the CDC covered up the link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.
Almost concurrently, anti-vaccine researcher Brian Hooker published "Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young African American boys: a reanalysis of CDC data," that claimed black children were at increased risk of autism due to the MMR vaccine.
But by the end of August, "Translational Neurodegeneration" removed the paper citing "serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions," according to Live Science. By October, the paper was fully retracted with the journal citing "undeclared competing interests on the part of the author" and "concerns about the validity of the methods and statistical analysis."
