“Missing link” fungus-like organisms still missing as paper is retracted

proteincellThe journal Protein & Cell has retracted a 2012 paper on fungi-like organisms that took a step in the direction of proper citation — but didn’t quite get there.

The article, “Cryptomycota: the missing link,” came from Krishna Bolla and Elizabeth Jane Ashforth, who are affiliated with Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Bejing.

But as the retraction notice explains, Bolla wasn’t careful enough about good publishing hygiene:

This article has been retracted. Although the article “James, T.Y., and Berbee, M.L. (2011). No jacket required — new fungal lineage defies dress code. Bioassays. doi:10.1002/bies.201100110” was cited, Bolla K unintentionally copied smaller parts of the text. The authors apologize to the authors of the BioEssays paper and the readers of Protein & Cell.

The paper has yet to be cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

In case you’re wondering — we were — cryptomycota are called “hidden fungi” and, according to this Wikipedia entry, are either fungi or damn close.

4 thoughts on ““Missing link” fungus-like organisms still missing as paper is retracted”

  1. Retraction/withdrawal of an apparent duplication in Mycological Research, an Elsevier journal:
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23140407_WITHDRAWN_Reclassification_of_Fusarium_verticillioides_%28syn._F._moniliforme%29_strain_FC-10_as_F._phyllophilum

    However, I cannot find the retraction/withdrawal notice on Sciencedirect.com at the Mycological Research page:
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09537562

    The notice reads as follows:
    “WITHDRAWN: Reclassification of Fusarium verticillioides (syn. F. moniliforme) strain FC-10 as F. phyllophilum
    Lorenzo Mariotti a, Manuela Casasoli a, Quirico Migheli b, Virgilio Balmas b, Claudio Caprari c, Giulia De Lorenzo a
    a Dipartimento di Biologia Vegetale, Universita` di Roma La Sapienza, I-00185 Rome, Italy
    b Unita` di ricerca Istituto Nazionale Biostrutture e Biosistemi and Dipartimento di Protezione delle Piante, Universita` di Sassari, Via E. De Nicola 9, I-07100 Sassari, Italy
    c Dipartimento S.T.A.T. Universita` del Molise, I-86070 Pesche (Is), Italy
    The Publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published in Mycological Research doi:10.1016/j.mycres.2008.07.006. The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn.”

    I cannot even find the original publication. Kindly assist.

    1. Hurrah, Pubmed to the rescue! The original publication is a short article inside the Mycological Research News section, which does not seem to have been indexed by Science Direct, doi:10.1016/j.mycres.2008.07.006, though it is indexed in Pubmed. PMID: 18956483 However you can get there by tunneling down, if you have full text access . Mycol Res. 2008 Sep;112(Pt 9):1010-1.
      http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09537562/112/9
      The retraction/withdrawal notice is also indexed in Pubmed PMID: 18672060 but does not appear to have been assigned to a vol/issue. In Pubmed it appears with a link to SD as Mycol Res. 2008 Jul 11 [Epub ahead of print] the same as SD doi:10.1016/j.mycres.2008.07.004. That seems a little strange to me…

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