A journal has issued an expression of concern (EOC) for a recently published study after a probe identified “problems with the figure presentation.”
According to the EOC notice in New Phytologist, two figures in the paper contained “some anomalies,” and the corresponding author has acknowledged that there are problems with the images.
Here’s the EOC notice:
This Expression of Concern relates to Liu et al. (2016) ‘The stripe rust fungal effector PEC6 suppresses pattern-triggered immunity in a host species-independent manner and interacts with adenosine kinases’ (doi: 10.1111/nph.14034).
Since publication of Liu et al. (2016) it has come to our attention that there are some anomalies in Fig. 5(a,b) and Fig. 7 of the paper. After investigation, the corresponding author was consulted, and he has acknowledged that there are problems with the figure presentation; however, this matter is still undergoing full investigation and a final outcome has not yet been reached. Therefore, with the agreement of the authors, the journal Editor-in-Chief, Alistair Hetherington, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd, we are issuing this Expression of Concern to alert readers of the ongoing investigation. We will update this notice when the investigation is complete.
The paper, “The stripe rust fungal effector PEC6 suppresses pattern-triggered immunity in a host species-independent manner and interacts with adenosine kinases,” was published in June, 2016.
Alistair Hetherington, editor-in-chief of New Phytologist from the University of Bristol, declined to comment, noting “the matter is ongoing.”
We’ve reached out to the study’s last and corresponding author, Hans Thordal-Christensen, who is based at the University of Copenhagen in København, Denmark.
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