On reflection, that headline pretty much says it all. But for those readers who took the time to click on the link, here’s the rest of it.
The journal Heart, a title of the BMJ group, has retracted a paper that it published twice:
Sarkola T, Redington AN, Slorach C, et al. Assessment of vascular phenotype using a novel very high resolution ultrasound technique in adolescents after aortic coarctation repair and/or stent implantation: relationship to central haemodynamics and left ventricular mass. Heart2011;97:1870–5; Published Online First: 13 September 2011; doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2011-300740.
This paper has been withdrawn because it was published twice in error. The version of record is Sarkola T, Redington AN, Slorach C, et al. Assessment of vascular phenotype using a novel very high resolution ultrasound technique in adolescents after aortic coarctation repair and/or stent implantation: relationship to central haemodynamics and left ventricular mass. Heart 2011;97:1788–93; Published Online First: 27 July 2011; doi:10.1136/hrt.2011.226241.
We asked Adam Timmis, the journal’s editor, for an explanation. He told us the problem stemmed from:
A mixture of computer/production problem. Switch from old manuscript handling system (BenchPress) to new manuscript handling system (Scholar 1). The paper straddled this process. The final version of the paper emerged with 2 different manuscript numbers and it got published twice.
We’ve seen this sort of thing before. Haematologica retracted papers after publishing three different ones twice, and a psychiatry journal did the same after publishing a paper twice. Then there was Neurosurgery, which retracted a paper after they misclassified it, irritating an author.
Heart also featured the retraction of a conference abstract recently: Zampetaki A, Willeit P, Yin X, et al. “Prospective study on plasma microRNAs and risk of myocardial infarction.” Heart 2011;97:e7. All the notice says is:
This abstract has been withdrawn by request of the author.
The abstract has disappeared entirely. In a follow-up message, we asked the journal for more information, and will update with anything we find out.