A cancer researcher in England says he will be retracting a 2011 paper after acknowledging “unacceptable” manipulation of some of the figures in the article.
Richard Hill, of the University of Portsmouth, this week agreed to retract the article, “DNA-PKcs binding to p53 on the p21WAF1/CIP1 promoter blocks transcription resulting in cell death,” which appeared in the journal Oncotarget.
The paper, which Hill wrote while he was at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, had drawn scrutiny on PubPeer four years ago, with one poster noting “many indications of blot image manipulation” in the figures. Additional comments appeared earlier this month.
In a comment on PubPeer posted this week, Hill wrote:
I have looked at detail regarding the comments and views expressed regarding this publication. I acknowledge the substantial concerns raised, I and all authors involved in this publication have agreed to retract this publication “DNA-PKcs binding to p53 on the p21WAF1/CIP1 promoter blocks transcription resulting in cell death”.
I do not take this decision lightly however acknowledge that there are unacceptable splicings and errors in this publication and consequently, as lead author, I have made this decision. I deeply regret the multiple issues throughout this manuscript.
I sincerely apologise to the readership of Oncotarget and the research community regarding these errors.
We emailed the journal to find out if the editors had received Hill’s retraction request but haven’t heard back yet. In an email, Hill told Retraction Watch that he hasn’t, either. (The journal was delisted from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science last year, a sign that Clarivate had concerns with its “quality and performance criteria.”)
Hille added that:
the decision to retract this publication came directly from me after the senior/corresponding author of this publication stated that I should deal with the concerns raised and that they would agree with whatever I decided. I did this and retracted the manuscript.
Another paper by Hill, “p53 Binding to the p21 promoter is dependent on the nature of DNA damage,” published in 2008 in Cell Cycle, was the subject of this 2016 correction for similar issues:
In the article above, we noted that there was the inadvertent duplication of two bands in our UV-treatment PUMA promoter chromatin-immunoprecipitation Input panel (see corrected version of Figure 5B below). This correction does not alter the conclusion of the original figure nor paper; however, we apologize to the readership of Cell Cycle any confusion that this may have caused.
Figure 5B. Binding of UV- and IR-activated p53 to the p21 promoter in vitro.
However, Hill told us that:
I do not think that there will be any more retractions for problematic images.
Meanwhile, the researcher received a nice plug from his institution this month about a new paper.
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“Meanwhile, the researcher received a nice plug from his institution this month about a new paper.”
New Paper: https://pubpeer.com/publications/A3CE30841D4D7057101381E55486A3
Seems to me he never saw the light, but rather maybe felt some heat…finally.
And may I suggest that the phrase “there are unacceptable splicings and errors” is disingenuous, since none of the unacceptable splicings and errors we unintentional; they were quite intentional, since they took a lot of effort to manufacture and place. In any case, a more genuine, and actually believable phrase might be constructed thus: “…we methodically and unacceptably spliced and manufactured errors.”
Just my own personal opinion.
Apologoes and retractions are a step forwards, but my deinition of sincerity is telling the truth. Agree with MarkF – but the incentives are way greater than the penalties at present. Employers and grant funders need to get wise and get tough with this sort of fraudulent behavior.
Oncotarget was on Beall’s list.
2021 retraction for:
Cancer Lett. 2019 Aug 28;458:29-38. doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2019.05.028. Epub 2019 May 23.
IP1867B suppresses the insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R) ablating epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitor resistance in adult high grade gliomas
K Mihajluk 1, C Simms 1, M Reay 1, P A Madureira 2, A Howarth 1, P Murray 1, S Nasser 1, C A Duckworth 3, D M Pritchard 3, G J Pilkington 1, R Hill 4
Affiliations collapse
Affiliations
1Brain Tumour Research Centre, Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Sciences, IBBS, University of Portsmouth, PO1 2DT, UK.
2Centre for Biomedical Research (CBMR), University of Algarve, Campus of Gambelas, Building 8, Room 3.4, 8005-139, Faro, Portugal.
3Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Institute of Translational Medicine, University of Liverpool, L69 3GE, UK.
4Brain Tumour Research Centre, Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Sciences, IBBS, University of Portsmouth, PO1 2DT, UK. Electronic address: [email protected].
PMID: 31129148 DOI: 10.1016/j.canlet.2019.05.028
Retraction.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304383521001130?via%3Dihub
Cancer Letters Volume 507, 1 June 2021, Page 39
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief due to concerns regarding the legitimacy of images and data presented in the paper. Though a corrigendum (Can. Lett. Vol. 469, 2020, pages 524–535) was previously published to address some of these concerns, this corrigendum has also been found to contain errors and therefore cannot stand. Specific concerns are listed below.
The Editor and Publisher received a letter from the University of Portsmouth alerting us to an investigation into alleged research misconduct. The University concluded their investigation with external experts and determined that misconduct did take place in relation to the research involved in this paper.
Upon our separate investigation, it has been determined that the paper headline relies on showing that there was considerable reduction of IGF1R, IL6R and EGFR post treatment in all cell lines. During review, it was determined that this cannot be concluded from the presented data. For example, in SEBTA-003 the EGFR levels go up and there is no difference in IGFR1. It is apparent from Fig. 4d that in the SEBTA-003 cell line the EGFR level does not go down, which is stated in the Results section on page 32, it is rather going up. The data for IGFR1 are inconclusive and there are concerns regarding the blot. The general implications would be that the effects of the drug IP1867B does not seem to be the same for all tested cell lines, and this should have been discussed in detail by the authors. Additionally, in subsequent experiments (Fig. 4g and h) the SEBTA-003 cell line (no reduction of EGFR, rather increased expression) and the other 3 cell lines (reduction of EGFR) show similar responses. This is particularly evident in Fig. 4g: Two cell lines are compared, SEBTA-003 (increased EGFR expression) and UP-029 (decreased EGFR expression), both behave similarly after exposure to drugs.
The corrigendum (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.canlet.2019.10.002) issue is with respect to the Supplemental Figure 6i EGFR, particularly panel IP1867B. The Corrigendum states that the left part is a cut out of the very right part. If so, the bands for IP1867B should show the same staining pattern – but they do not. Also, in the Corrigendum, there are incorrect mentions between day 14 in the Figure and day 19 in the Figure legend.
All authors were informed of the retraction in advance. Drs. Pritchard and Duckworth agreed to the retraction. The corresponding author, Dr Hill, did not agree to the retraction. No response had been received from Drs. Mihajluk, Simms, Reay, Madureira, Howarth, Murray, Nasser and Pilkinton at the time of the retraction being published.
http://eusa-riddled.blogspot.com/2019/08/halifax-explosion.html