A team of biologists that retracted two papers after being “unable to replicate some of the results obtained by the first author of the paper” has now issued a correction to fix references to the two sunk publications.
The corrected paper is a review in the Journal of Virology — known there as a Gem — which discusses how viruses use the membranes of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to replicate.
The two retractions were not signed by their first author, Riccardo Bernasconi, who won the STSBC-Roche Diagnostics award for one of the papers in 2012. The correction carries all three authors’ names, including Bernasconi’s (as second author).
Here’s more from the correction for “How Viruses Hijack the ERAD Tuning Machinery”:
Pages 10272–10273, column 2, paragraph 2: The paragraph beginning “Our group recently described” should be deleted. Two of the papers discussed there (references 3 and 4, i.e.,Bernasconi R, Galli C, Noack J, Bianchi S, de Haan CA, Reggiori F, Molinari M. Mol. Cell 46:809–819, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2012.04.017, and Bernasconi R, Galli C, Kokame K, Molinari M. Mol. Cell 52:783–793, 2013,http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2013.10.016) have been retracted. Western blot data showing that misfolded proteins expressed in the ER affect composition and stability of the ER-associated degradation (ERAD) machinery were not accurately reported in the retracted articles. While all other information in the Gem is correct, the specific example of the client-regulated ERAD tuning mechanism that we selected based on references 3 and 4 should not be considered unless further experimental evidence becomes available. For appropriate examples of ERAD tuning, please refer to reference 7 (Bernasconi R, Molinari M. Curr. Opin. Cell Biol. 23:176–183, 2011,http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ceb.2010.10.002).
Page 10273, Fig. 1: Figure 1 and its legend should be deleted.
Page 10275, column 1: References 3 and 4 should be deleted.
We sincerely apologize for any difficulties that may have been experienced by the scientific community.
Editor in chief Rozanne Sandri-Goldin gave us more details:
The corresponding author of the GEM contacted the editor who handled the GEM (which are three page review articles). As mentioned in the Authors’ Correction, the corresponding author revealed that two Molecular Cell publications from his lab that were cited in the GEM were being retracted due to inaccurate reporting of western blot data. JVI asked the corresponding author to submit an Authors’ Correction to the GEM indicating that those two references should be deleted as well as the text that referred to the two retracted papers.
We’ve contacted the paper’s corresponding author, and will update if we hear back.
Hat tip: Kerry Grens
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