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admitted to falsifying data in some of his papers

, 35 of his papers have been retracted in 2012.

Peer review is a process in which scientific peers in the same field judge the merit of a submitted journal paper

editors at the Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry grew suspicious when four of his glowing reviews came back within 24 hours. Anyone who has ever submitted a paper for peer review knows that reviewers take weeks or months to reply

Math paper a big, fat zero

"In this study, a computer application was used to solve a mathematical problem"

Neither the one-sentence abstract

nor the co-author's e-mail address, ohm@budweiser.com

publishing this one-page gem entitled "A computer application in mathematics"

published in January 2010 but not retracted until April 2012, despite silly sentences such as "Computer magnification is a Universal computer phenomenon" and "This is a problematic problem."

retracted the paper because it "contains no scientific content." The editors chalked it up to "an administrative error

Maybe his failure doesn't feel better than success

The Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel

has found that,

failure sometimes feels better than success

The only problem is that his research appears to be either mostly or completely fabricated

work has appeared in top journals

his good looks and clever research topics made him a media darling

So far, 31 papers have been retracted

meat eaters are absolved: One of Stapel's studies, now suspected to be fabricated, found that meat eaters are more selfish and less social than vegetarians

Studies proposing a link between cellphone use and cancer often rely on weak statistics. This one just used fudged data

in 2008, scientists published a paper

stating that cellphones in standby mode lowered the sperm count and caused other adverse changes in the testicles of rabbits

although small and published in a rather obscure journal, made the news rounds.

In March 2012, the authors retracted the paper

the lead author didn't get permission from his two co-authors and, according to the retraction notice, there was a "lack of evidence to justify the accuracy of the data presented in the article."

Stem-cell cure for heart disease likely faked

biologist Shinya Yamanaka had just won the 2012 Nobel Prize for his discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which are adult cells that can be reprogrammed to their "embryonic" stage

claimed at a New York Stem Cell Foundation meeting in early October to have advanced this technology to cure a person with terminal heart failure

Two institutions listed as collaborating on Moriguchi's related papers

denied that any of Moriguchi's procedures took place there

origuchi has admitted only to making some "procedural" mistakes

He is sticking to his story, however, that one patient was cured … at a Boston hospital not yet named

SMART LANDING PADS

Scoring the exact length of a long or triple jump can be imprecise and time-consuming

land in a sand pit

Researchers at Arizona State University have developed a 2,016-pressure-sensor array to map where an athlete hits the ground

underneath the sand in the landing pit, a dozen or so of the mats could record the exact point of touchdown

computer could automatically calculate the length of the jump

HEAD-UP GOGGLES

Swimmers

with an integrated head-up display could broadcast a live view of the competition and help racers to better pace themselves

AUTOMATIC GOAL KEEPER

German research

has developed an automated goal-tracking system

Actuators around the net generate a magnetic field across the face of the goal. When the ball passes through that field, a chip embedded in the ball sends a signal to the ref’s watch within one tenth of a second.

RETRACTABLE DIVING BOARD

On a good day, a diver’s head misses the board by a couple of inches

famously, Greg Louganis in the 1988 Olympics.

In the one second a typical diver is airborne above the plane of the board, it could retract as much as three feet

astronaut working in a bulky, pressurized spacesuit might only need to use 10 pounds of force rather than 20 pounds to hold a tool in his or her hand.

e robot gloves could also help factory workers on Earth do their job for longer periods with less risk of repetitive stress injury,

Such gloves rely upon a robotic sense of touch — pressure sensors in the fingertips — to detect when a human user is grabbing an object

wearer grasps a tool, synthetic tendons automatically retract for a firm, mechanical grip until the sensor is released

most recent prototypes weigh just two pounds and use an off-the-shelf lithium-ion power tool battery attached to the human user's belt

e K-Glove (Robo-Glove) is the first of what we expect to be many spinoffs derived from Robonaut 2