“Carelessness” forces Science to correct paper about immune booster

As soon as we learned of the irregularities in the figures, we contacted the authors. The authors provided an explanation of their mistakes, which amounted to carelessness on their part. Figure panels had been generated from cropped Western blots, and in the original published version incorrect cropped sections were used. They sent original Western blots and corrected figure panels assembled from cropped Western blots. Our editor who originally handled the paper did look at the all of the new images sent quite carefully, and the results matched the original conclusions of the paper.

The time required to clear up this matter did take longer than usual for a figure mix-up. Some of this was a workload issue for our editor who handles errata and other investigations.

The journal didn’t have cause to investigate for any wrongdoing, she noted:

Science does not have sufficient evidence at this time to request that an investigation into scientific misconduct be launched, as the corrections to the figures did not change the conclusions of the paper. In any case such an investigation would need to be undertaken by the authors’ institutions.

The erratum specifies the nature of the problems. Here it is, in full:

The paper has been cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

When the paper was published, Science highlighted it with a Perspective by other researchers, noting the importance of the finding. Since then, the paper has generated some substantial discussion on PubPeer.

We’ve reached out to Ashton-Rickardt.