Authors from Xinxiang Medical University in Weihui, China, are retracting a 2014 paper in Molecular Biology Reports because… well, because lots of things.
The researchers exposed nine rats to acute levels of alcohol then compared them to unexposed mice rats, noting differences in gene expression and molecular pathways.
But no one is toasting these findings anymore. Here are the details behind the retraction, courtesy of the notice:
The article “Identification of gene expression profile in the rat brain resulting from acute alcohol intoxication”, published in Mol Biol Rep, (2014, 41:8303–8317, DOI 10.1007/s11033-014-3731-3), is retracted by agreement between the authors and the Editor in Chief. Consent for publication was not provided by all of the participants in the main research group; in addition the original experimental data was matched to incorrect rat samples, and significant statistical errors were found in the Results section.
The article has not been cited.
We’ve contacted the journal’s editor-in-chief and the paper’s corresponding author for more details but have not yet received a reply.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
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I’m puzzled as to why a paper compared rats to mice. “The researchers exposed nine rats to acute levels of alcohol then compared them to unexposed mice, noting differences in gene expression and molecular pathways.”
Thanks! Fixed