The Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition — the official publication of the Society for Free Radical Research Japan — has retracted a 2012 paper by a group of Turkish authors for some form of misconduct better left unstated. At least, that’s what the notice seems to suggest.
The paper, “Effects of coenzyme Q10 and α-lipoic acid supplementation in fructose fed rats,” was written by Özdoğan Serhat, Kaman Dilara, Bengü Şimşek Çobanoğlu, of Firat University and published in February of this year. According to the notice:
This article was withdrawn by the Editorial Committee on July 5, 2012, because it was constituted a breach of journal’s ethical policy.
Of course, retraction notices like these are barely useful. After all, a journal “ethical policy” could include all sorts of things.
JCBN might have paid closer attention to the following notice from 2010 in a different journal. It names them, after all:
Endoplasmic reticulum stress is involved in myocardial apoptosis of streptozocin-induced diabetic rats
Zhenhua Li, Tao Zhang, Hongyan Dai, Guanghui Liu, Haibin Wang, Yingying Sun, Yun Zhang
and Zhiming GeJournal of Endocrinology hereby retracts the above article, published in 2008, vol 196, on pages 565–572, as it contains sections of text and data very similar or identical to a paper the authors had previously published in Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition ( Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition 2007 41 58–67). Dr Zhenhua Li has claimed full responsibility for this infringement, as the other authors were unaware of the submission to Journal of Endocrinology. We apologise to the editors of Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition and to our readers.
We tried to reach Çobanoğlu by email to find out more about the retraction but haven’t heard back yet.