Jesús A. Lemus, he of the likely ghost author and questionable data, has earned his sixth retraction, this one in Biology Letters.
Here’s the notice for “Stress associated with group living in a long-lived bird:”
After careful examination, there is a need to question the validity of the results conducted by Jesús A. Lemus in the above paper, published in Biology Letters. Although the field and statistical procedures are correct, we have not been able to clarify in which external laboratories Dr Lemus conducted the hormonal and parasite analysis. Given the ephemeral nature of the material used (faeces), we are unable to repeat the analysis with the same samples employed in the original study. Therefore, we wish to retract the article. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to the readers of Biology Letters.
Like the August 2012 Expression of Concern about the same paper, the notice is signed by all seven of the paper’s authors except Lemus. The original paper has been cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Hat tip: Kevin Keenan, Tom Langen
Sounds like he just made up the parasite and hormonal data and pocketed the money he was paid to send the feces to external labs for analysis. N’cest pas? Perhaps a statistical analysis of that “data” would reveal some anomalies.
Poor Jesus Angel, I never knew the world of ornithological microflora was so cut-throat.
It is a shame that Adam Marcus wasn’t writing this one – I guess he would have avoided “Jesus can’t keep his shit together” as both too vulgar and possibly blasphemous. But I think he might have run with “Retraction #6 falls between two stools.”
Oh, Jesus!