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List of retractions, corrections grows for Duke researchers
Duke researcher Michael Foster and his former co-author Erin Potts-Kant are adding to their notice count with a major correction from late last year to a paper on how certain cells in mice respond to a pneumonia infection, citing “potential discrepancies in the data.”
The correction is actually a partial retraction: The note explains that parts of three figures should be discounted.
We’ve also recently unearthed multiple corrections and two retractions from the pair that we missed from earlier in 2015.
After questions about the data in the corrected paper arose, the authors were able to replicate most of the experiments in the paper, according to the note. But since the paper was published, the senior author passed away, closing her lab, so they couldn’t repeat all of the work.
Here’s the correction notice for “Mast cell TNF receptors regulate responses to Mycoplasma pneumoniae in surfactant protein A (SP-A)−/− mice,” published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology:
Duke researcher with 7 retractions earns two Expressions of Concern
Data issues continue to plague pulmonary papers co-authored by Duke University professor William Foster and former Duke researcher Erin Potts-Kant. Yesterday, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine posted an Expression of Concern for two articles from the pair while the findings are “under review.”
The notice was published after the paper’s corresponding author, John Hollingsworth (also at Duke), told the journal that “some of the data published in these articles may be unreliable,” a term that we’ve gotten used to seeing from previous retractions.
Another Expression of Concern from the journal published earlier this year for another paper co-authored by Foster and Potts-Kant turned into a retraction months later. Hollingsworth was a co-author on that paper and another paper retracted from Environmental Health Perspectives in July.
Duke lung researcher up to seven retractions
More journals have pulled papers co-authored by researchers Erin Potts-Kant and Michael Foster, at Duke University, bringing the total up to seven for Potts-Kant and six for Foster.
Authors were unable to replicate the experiments after “concerns about the initial data from the animal physiology laboratory” led them to reanalyze source data, according to the note in Environmental Health Perspectives. The comparison showed “potential inconsistencies in the data,” which “significantly impact the overall conclusions of the manuscript.” Similar issues appear to have felled the pair’s other papers, including the other two recent retractions in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and the American Journal of Physiology – Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology — but in the latter case, the discrepancies don’t affect the conclusion.
Potts-Kant was arrested on embezzlement charges in 2013. Authorities alleged that she stole almost $15,000 from Duke University.
Environmental Health Perspectives posted a retraction in July, for a 2012 paper that looked at the molecular underpinnings in airways that react to ozone.
Here’s the full notice:
Duke University lung researchers cough up fourth retraction, due to “inconsistent” data
The Journal of Applied Physiology has retracted a 2012 respiratory study after the authors found “inconsistent” data that “could not be traced to their source.” It’s the fourth retraction for two of the researchers, including Erin Potts-Kant, who was arrested in 2013 for embezzling more than $14,000 from Duke University.
The study, “Effects of corticosteroid treatment on airway inflammation, mechanics, and hyperpolarized 3He magnetic resonance imaging in an allergic mouse model,” looked at how corticosteroid therapy, a steroid treatment used for asthma, worked on mice. It’s been cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, and was one of the products of the environmental lung health research conducted by Potts-Kant and Duke professor William Foster, the other co-author on the retracted studies.
Here’s the complete retraction notice: Read the rest of this entry »
The Retraction Watch Leaderboard
Who has the most retractions? Here’s our unofficial list (see notes on methodology), which we’ll update as more information comes to light:
- Yoshitaka Fujii (total retractions: 183) Sources: Final report of investigating committee, our reporting
- Joachim Boldt (96) Sources: Editors in chief statement, additional coverage
- Diederik Stapel (58) Source: Our cataloging
- Adrian Maxim (48) Source: IEEE database
- Peter Chen (Chen-Yuan Chen) (43) Source: SAGE, our cataloging
- Hua Zhong (41) Source: Journal
- Shigeaki Kato (39) Source: Our cataloging
- James Hunton (37) Source: Our cataloging
- Hendrik Schön (36) Sources: PubMed and Thomson Scientific
- Hyung-In Moon (35) Source: Our cataloging
- Naoki Mori (32) Source: PubMed, our cataloging
- Tao Liu: (29) Source: Journal
- Cheng-Wu Chen (28) Source: our cataloging
- Gideon Goldstein (26)
- Scott Reuben (25)
- Gilson Khang (22) Sources: WebCitation.org, WebCitation.org, journal
- Friedhelm Herrmann (21)
- Noel Chia (21)
- Dipak Das (20) Click here for a full list of retracted papers
- Khalid Zaman (20)
- Jin Cheng (19)
- Bharat Aggarwal (18)
- Fazlul Sarkar (18)
- John Darsee (17)
- Wataru Matsuyama (17)
- Alirio Melendez (17)
- Robert Slutsky (17)
- Ulrich Lichtenthaler (16)
- Erin Potts-Kant (16)
- Stanley Rapoport (16)
We note that all but one of the top 30 are men, which agrees with the general findings of a 2013 paper suggesting that men are more likely to commit fraud.
Notes:
Many accounts of the John Darsee story cite 80-plus retractions, which would place him third on the list, but Web of Science only lists 17, three of which are categorized as corrections. That’s not the only discrepancy. For example, Fujii has 138 retractions listed in Web of Science, compared to 183 as recommended by a university committee, while Reuben has 25, compared to the 22 named in this paper. We know that not everything ends up in Web of Science — Chen, for example, isn’t there at all — so we’ve used our judgment based on covering these cases to arrive at the highest numbers we could verify.
Shigeaki Kato is likely to end up with 43 retractions, based on the results of a university investigation.
All of this is a good reminder why the database we’re building with the generous support of the MacArthur Foundation and Arnold Foundation will be useful.
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“Unreliable” data suffocates third paper for Duke pulmonary team
Once again, a team of Duke University scientists has retracted a paper, this time due to “unreliable” figure data.
With co-authors at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Duke team has withdrawn a paper from the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology after concern about data in three figures led them to repeat one of their main experiments. They subsequently found “no evidence” supporting their previous conclusion.
By our count, it is the third retraction from a team that includes William Foster, a pulmonary researcher at the Duke Medical Center. The Duke team retracted a paper in 2013 on a related topic—the effect of early life ozone exposure on airways—from the Journal of Applied Physiology when it was discovered that, familiarly, data in a figure were “unreliable”. Recently, they also retracted a PNAS paper on asthma treatment earlier this month, due to missing primary data and mismatched data from two sources.
Second paper for Duke lung researchers expires in a retraction
Scientists at Duke and the National Institutes of Health have retracted a PNAS paper on asthma treatment after realizing the data from two sources didn’t match, and “most primary data” from several experiments were missing.
The mix up seems to have come from the pulmonary function laboratory that tested how well asthmatic patients’ lungs were functioning on an experimental anti-inflammatory therapy. As the authors say in the retraction note: Read the rest of this entry »
Former Duke researcher charged with embezzlement has a paper retracted
A new retraction notice in the Journal of Applied Physiology gives only a hint at the problems in the paper, but what it does say has led us to a story about one of its co-authors.
Here’s the notice, from a team at Duke: Read the rest of this entry »
