PLOS One has retracted a 2011 paper first flagged for image issues 11 years ago. The retraction marks the fourth for the paper’s lead author, Gabriella Marfè of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli,” in Caserta, Italy.
“Involvement of FOXO Transcription Factors, TRAIL-FasL/Fas, and Sirtuin Proteins Family in Canine Coronavirus Type II-Induced Apoptosis,” has been cited 41 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
Elisabeth Bik flagged the article on PubPeer in 2014 for apparent image manipulation and duplication in six figures. In a 2019 email to PLOS staff, pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis drew attention to Bik’s findings. The journal retracted the paper on May 6 of this year.
In response to questions on why the retraction took so long, David Knutson, PLOS’s head of communications, told us:
Our Publication Ethics team became aware of this case in 2019; We initially contacted the authors in 2019 to request their input on the concerns, but due to resourcing issues and competing priorities the case was then inactive until November 2024.
Based on information we received from an external source, PLOS may have discussed the case with the authors several years prior, but if so that correspondence was purged, lost, or archived prior to 2018 when our Publication Ethics team formed and centralized all ethics case records.
The retraction notice called out issues with eight figures that include “discontinuities” and “similarities” in multiple images, as well as one figure “that appears similar” to work reported in Blood in 2006 by a different group of authors. “The authors’ responses did not resolve the concerns with this article,” the notice stated, and the authors did not respond to the decision to retract the article.
Marfè was a coauthor on a 2010 paper retracted in October for “several instances of duplications of western blot bands” and “splicing and deletion of bands.” That paper, in the journal Cancer Science, had also been flagged on Pubpeer in 2014.
Two additional retractions — a 2009 International Journal of Cancer paper retracted in 2019, and a 2010 article in BMC Physiology retracted in 2014 — included some of the same authors as the article in PLOS ONE. We wrote about the latter retraction at the time.
Marfè did not respond to a request for comment.
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Investigating these cases causes some significant costs for the publishers. I wonder why they don’t appear to seek damages from authors of retracted papers.
The cost can be taken out of the publishing fees
Really? You just have to look. How hard can that be? Then follow the local legal standard for a civil court, on the balance of probabilities in most jurisdictions, not beyond reasonable doubt, which is for criminal courts. There are all sorts of guidelines, e.g. COPE, but the journals have a duty to follow the local legal standard. If it should cross the journals’ mind that there has been criminal activity they should call the police without undue delay. That’s what the crown prosecution service states. Nobody is above the law. What do the journals think that means, what is their interpretation of that?