I regularly scan the Retraction Watch blog for the latest news in retractions, but most of the retractions are in the bio- and life sciences. It leaves me the impression that those fields are much more competitive than polymer science and rheology are, since people are willing to risk career-ending embarrassment to get a paper published.
But the blog is now reporting that two articles in the polymer science arena have been retracted. Both were in the Journal of Applied Polymer Science". One of the notices (the second one in the blog's entry) is straightforward, but the first discussed notice is a little bit strange. It mentions an article entitled "Microencapsulation of intumescent flame-retardant agent and application to epoxy resins" by Ming Gao, Yaqi Wo, and Weihong Wu, but the link given in the notice is to an entirely different article by entirely different authors: "Mechanical and thermal properties enhancement of polycarbonate nanocomposites prepared by melt compounding", by Sanjay K. Nayak*, Smita Mohanty, and Sushanta K. Samal. Does this mean that we are to anticipate a full retraction notice about this article as well, making for a total of three retractions?
In a perverted way, this is almost a badge of honor, since it shows that we too can be competitive and are not just a bunch of quiet lab rats. Keep it up guys and gals, we need the notoriety.
Everything flows, but only the macromolecules are worth the time.
1 comment:
This is Stefano Tonzani, the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Applied Polymer Science: the link in the retraction notice for http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/app.32930/abstract is wrong, as it points to another papaer (31222) which has also been retracted. The correct link should be the one I just posted.
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