Two weeks after we reported on the unsuccessful efforts of a researcher at The Ohio State University to have one of his papers retracted for data manipulation, the journal that had been delaying the move has acted.
As we wrote earlier this month based on a request for public records, Philip Tsichlis had been urging Nature Communications since November of last year to retract a 2021 article from his group which contained fabricated findings. But although a second journal had reacted promptly to the request, retracting the paper in December, the Nature Communications editors didn’t – resulting in a series of emails in which the researcher negotiated the wording of the retraction notice and expressed increasing frustration with the delay. (Both journals are owned by Springer Nature.)
Now, two weeks after our story, the journal has retracted the article, “AKT3-mediated IWS1 phosphorylation promotes the proliferation of EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinomas through cell cycle-regulated U2AF2 RNA splicing.”
According to the notice:
The authors are retracting this Article as irregularities were found in the data that indicate the splicing of the U2AF2 exon 2 does not occur as reported in the Article. The irregularities call into question the conclusions and undermine their confidence in the integrity of the study. The authors therefore wish to retract the article.
All authors agree with the retraction.
That language is similar but not identical to what Tsichlis had requested:
The authors are retracting this Article as an independent researcher brought to their attention the fact that his bioinformatic analyses of multiple data sets could not confirm the alternative splicing of the U2AF2 exon 2. On further investigation, the authors observed that the proposed splicing mechanism could not give rise to a functional U2AF2 protein. In addition, the authors confirmed that the electropherogram in Figure 1g, was generated by artificial splicing of two separate electropherograms. In light of this information, the authors have no confidence in the key findings of the paper, and therefore, wish to retract it.
The paper has been cited four times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. Three of those citations came after Tsichlis requested its retraction last November.
Hat tip: Cheshire
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Thank you for the hat tip. The same in return: after your post, someone flagged about 10 more papers co-authored by Dr. Tsichlis with varying levels of concerns on PubPeer. As always, these may not be valid concerns and are certainly not an accusation of misconduct.
On one thread (https://pubpeer.com/publications/E5030DCCB8ABB36662C1C3077C616C) Dr. Tsichlis seemingly explains that perhaps re-using an image between two papers without a citation is just peachy (although his explanation is a bit vague): “The two papers describe analyses performed at different times for different audiences, and focused on different overlapping sets of patients. This particular figure is only meant to be illustrative, and representative of the broader data set provided in the paper, which is different between the two papers.”
Why didn’t the journal retract the paper on reading the request for retraction?
What was the journal doing for 7 months?
It is unclear whether the agent of the fabrication is or is not one of the authors who agreed to the retraction. What happened to the fabricator(s) after the discovery?