The June 8 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience includes two retractions:
- One is of 2007’s “Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 Stimulates Hypothalamic Proopiomelanocortin Neurons,” by a group led by Frances Ashcroft of Oxford.
- The other: 1998’s “Activated Protein C Reduces the Severity of Compression-Induced Spinal Cord Injury in Rats by Inhibiting Activation of Leukocytes,” by Yuki Taoka and colleagues.
The notices are completely uninformative. They read:
At the request of the authors, the following manuscript has been retracted:
and then give the citation for each study.
The spinal cord paper has been cited 89 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, while the paper by Ashcroft’s group has been cited 26.
We’ve tried to contact the editor of the Journal of Neuroscience, as well as Ashcroft and one of the authors of the spinal cord paper, to find out more details. We’ll update with anything we hear back.
In the meantime, however, we should note that in 2009, Ashcroft’s group retracted what appears to be a related paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that was originally published in 2007. Only two of the three authors of that 2007 paper signed the retraction. The author who did not sign the retraction, Xiaosong Ma, appears on the Journal of Neuroscience paper too. The Journal of Neuroscience‘s retraction notice is “at the request of the authors,” which implies all of the authors, but we can’t be sure.
Please see an update on this post, with more information.
Hat tips: JuniorProfBlog, movingturtle, DrugMonkeyBlog, Johnny, Pablo
Fig 5 in Neuroscience paper is almost identical to Fig 3 in a paper from the same group (Journal of Neurotrauma 2001;18:533).
Even if that’s the case, the Journal of Neuroscience paper came out beforehand, so it would be the Neurotrauma one that would be questioned.
Is you reference right??
Kenji Okajima, who is the second of 1998’s JNS paper, and his group have been alleged for data fabrication and scientific misconduct in their 17 papers. Investigation by Nagoya City University and Kumamoto University is ongoing according to a press release made in March in Japan. So this retraction is likely just the beginning of mass retractions.
Actually, it seems like Fig.5B of the JNS paper was derived from an identical sample which was once used in Fig.4B of the other paper (Neuroscience. 1997 79(4):1177-82). But unfortunately we can’t be sure if that is the only reason for this retraction.