A retracted 2008 paper originally flagged by Clare Francis has been republished in Environmental Health Perspectives with updated figures and new data.
According to the editor’s note appended to the newly published paper, there was no evidence of intentional misconduct on the part of the authors. The new paper went through peer review as an entirely new submission, and comes to the same conclusion as the original:
On the basis of our data, atrazine should be included among the environmental contaminants that may elicit estrogenic activity through the GPER-mediated signaling.
Here’s the editor’s note:
Editor’s Note: In the February 2014 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, Albanito et al. retracted their article “G-Protein–Coupled Receptor 30 and Estrogen Receptor-α Are Involved in the Proliferative Effects Induced by Atrazine in Ovarian Cancer Cells” because they discovered that errors were introduced during the sorting of files related to the presentation of the Western blots in Figures 6 and 8 [Environ Health Perspect 122:A42 (2014); doi:10.1289/ehp.11297RET]. There was no evidence that the errors that led to the retraction were intentional, and the authors were forthcoming in acknowledging the errors. Thus, EHP agreed to consider a new manuscript on this topic.
This article contains corrected Western blots as well as new data. This manuscript was handled as a new submission and underwent EHP’s standard peer-review process.
Hat tip: Tony Tweedale