Month: May 2013

Heart pulls sodium meta-analysis over duplicated, and now missing, data

heart cover may13The journal Heart has retracted a 2012 meta-analysis after learning that two of the six studies included in the review contained duplicated data.  Those studies, it so happens, were conducted by one of the co-authors.

The article, “Low sodium versus normal sodium diets in systolic heart failure: systematic review and meta-analysis,” came from an eclectic group of authors from the United States, Canada and Italy (the first author is listed as being at a Wegmans pharmacy in Ithaca, N.Y.). The paper, published online in August 2012, purported to find that: Continue reading Heart pulls sodium meta-analysis over duplicated, and now missing, data

Scientists doing the right thing: Malfunctioning lab equipment leads to retraction of neuroscience paper

cerebral cortexFor the second time inside of a week, we come to praise scientists who did the right thing when they realized their lab equipment or reagents weren’t performing as expected.

Here’s the retraction of a 2011 paper in Cerebral Cortex: Continue reading Scientists doing the right thing: Malfunctioning lab equipment leads to retraction of neuroscience paper

One-too-many authors scuttles paper on mouse metabolism

reg pepcoverRegulatory Peptides is retracting a 2010 paper by a group of five authors in China and one in Texas — and the presence of that last one was the problem.

The article, “Erythropoietin as a possible mechanism for the effects of intermittent hypoxia on bodyweight, serum glucose and leptin in mice,” had as its last (dare we say, senior) author Susan T. Howard, a mycobacterium expert at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Tyler. Trouble was, Howard disavowed any role in the paper.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading One-too-many authors scuttles paper on mouse metabolism