Dear journal: Here’s the information you left out of your retraction notice. You’re welcome.

A biology researcher in Sweden has lost a 2019 article for reasons the journal doesn’t reveal, but which we’ve learned stemmed from misconduct. 

The article, “Real time large scale in vivo observations reveal intrinsic synchrony, plasticity and growth cone dynamics of midline crossing axons at the ventral floor plate of the zebrafish spinal cord,” was written by Soren Andersen, then of Uppsala University, and published in the Journal of Integrative Neuroscience. 

Here’s the notice:

The above-mentioned article (Andersen,2019), published online on December 30, 2019 has been withdrawn by Dr. Andersen. The retraction has been issued following additional information received by IMR Press and reviewed by the Chief Editor.

We emailed the journal’s editor, Roman R. Poznanski, multiple times but received no response. 

However, Stefan Eriksson, the director of the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics at Uppsala and the university’s vice chancellor for good research practice, told us that the article appears to be a facsimile of a 2017 paper in the Journal of Comparative Neurology by Andersen that also was retracted: 

This research by Andersen, a post-doc, was reported for misconduct and investigated by Uppsala university in 2018. Andersen was found guilty of misconduct, more specifically plagiarism in the paper of another scholar’s ideas and methodology. By that time he had left the university. 

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