A research team at the University of Texas-Southwestern that has retracted eight papers for image manipulation has retracted another, this one in Lung Cancer.
Here’s the notice for “Aberrant methylation of Reprimo in lung cancer,” published by Adi Gazdar’s group:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the first author, who accepts responsibility. Following an internal review committee at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, evidence has been found of improper duplication in Fig. 1 of this article.
The paper has been cited 23 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. It’s worth reading what Gazdar said in 2012 about how the problems were discovered.
“improper duplication in Fig. 1 of this article” What does this mean? Another useless retraction notice by Elsevier. Surely, it would be important to indicate to the scientific public exactly what other figure this figure 1 duplicates. The term “improper duplication” itself sounds oxymoronic. Reading back on the 2012 story at RW, two facts struck me: a) Gazdar indicated that several of the figure errors emanated from the Japanese partners in Japan (even though Gazdar took full responsibility), but did they and other co-authors assume responsibilty or suffer any fall-out? b) Gazdar indicated that he had informed ORI of the case, but that ORI had not responded. Why not?