Author: Adam Marcus

ME-Coli: Germ paper retracted after mentor accuses authors of idea theft

Plagiarism can involve the theft of words, and we’ve covered plenty of such cases (like this one). But here’s a case of what appears to be more wholesale lifting of everything from ideas to assays.

The Journal of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology (JMMB), a Karger title, has retracted an October 2010 paper, “Characterization of Methyltransferase Properties of Escherichia coli YabC Protein with an Enzyme-Coupled Colorimetric Assay,” by Jingsong Gu and Chunjiang Ye. Both of those scientists are in the department of biotechnology at the University of Jinan in China.

Gu had trained as a postdoctoral research in the laboratory of biologist Elaine Newman, of Concordia University in Montreal who describes herself as a “long time friend” of E. coli. (As they say, with friends like that, who needs enemas?)

The retraction notice — a trio of remarkably revealing letters — begins with an apologia from the authors: Continue reading ME-Coli: Germ paper retracted after mentor accuses authors of idea theft

Why was that paper retracted? Editor to Retraction Watch: “It’s none of your damn business”

L. Henry Edmunds, photo by University of Pennsylvania

Yesterday, we reported on the retraction of a 2004 study in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. As we noted, the notice’s language was, um, fuzzy, referring vaguely to

an investigation by the University of Florida, which uncovered instances of repetitious, tabulated data from previously published studies.

Today, we are slightly more clear, although what we really got was an earful of other language.

We had the pleasure of speaking this morning with L. Henry Edmunds, Jr., the long-time editor of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery, who gave us a better sense of why his retraction notice was so delicately worded. Edmunds, responding to question of why the letter didn’t say more about the matter:

It’s none of your damn business.

Ranting against “journalists and bloggists,” Edmunds, a cardiac surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania, said the purpose of the retraction notice was merely Continue reading Why was that paper retracted? Editor to Retraction Watch: “It’s none of your damn business”

Thoracic surgery journal retracts hypertension study marred by troubled data

The Annals of Thoracic Surgery has retracted a 2004 article by a group of Florida researchers who were found by their university to have misrepresented the provenance of their data.

If that construction sounds a trifle precious (er, weasel-y), that’s because the retraction notice does, too: Continue reading Thoracic surgery journal retracts hypertension study marred by troubled data

Irony alert: Shades of plagiarism undo med ethics paper on terminal care

With some conservatives fulminating over President Obama’s eternal lust for “death panels,” we have our own case of end-of-life outrage to report.

BMC Medical Ethics has retracted a November 2010 paper by two authors from Mayo Clinic whose manuscript — “End-of-life discontinuation of destination therapy with cardiac and ventilatory support medical devices: physician-assisted death or allowing the patient to die?” — contained passages that closely echoed those in another article, “Moral fictions and medical ethics,” published online in July 2009 in the journal Bioethics.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Irony alert: Shades of plagiarism undo med ethics paper on terminal care

Update on Small retraction: Co-author says failed follow-up led to detection of tech’s fraud

We have a little more information on the lab-tech case out of the University of Chicago that we reported on last week. A brief summary: The journal Small retracted a 2007 paper on a method of producing insulin-secreting cells after one of the co-authors, a technician named Matthew Connors, was found to have fabricated a key figure. Connors has had a long career as a lab tech and his name has appeared on several published articles.

Reached by e-mail, Milan Mrksich, a chemistry professor at Chicago and a co-author of the retracted paper– as well as an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute — told us that the fraud surfaced during follow-up research: Continue reading Update on Small retraction: Co-author says failed follow-up led to detection of tech’s fraud

Japanese virologist hit with publishing ban after widespread data manipulation

A leading Japanese virologist has received a 10-year publishing ban from the American Society of Microbiology after many of his published articles were found to have evidence of data manipulation.

In its January 2011 issue, Infection and Immunity, an ASM title, is retracting five articles by the researcher, Naoki Mori, of the University of Ryukyus in Okinawa. The articles, published between 2000 and 2009, involve work on Helicobacter pylori which Nori conducted with co-authors from the United States and elsewhere. Some of the studies listed co-authors from drug companies, including Merck and Boehringer Ingelheim, although it’s not clear whether the companies helped support any of the research.

Despite the impending holidays, Ferric Fang, editor of Infection and Immunity, graciously and quickly replied to our request for comment yesterday (as he has before, about another paper in Nature involving fraud): Continue reading Japanese virologist hit with publishing ban after widespread data manipulation

Small problem: Nano-micro journal pulls diabetes paper with phony figure

Readers of this blog are aware that many of the retractions we’ve covered involve the misadventures of post-docs. That makes some superficial sense: post-docs, after all, are trainees, and therefore might be more likely to make mistakes. They’re also hungry to break into their chosen specialty, and how better to do that than by producing spectacular results? (None of this is to say that post-docs are by nature incompetent or venal — only that the raw ingredients exist for typecast villainy.)

But one figure about whom we haven’t written (to the best of our knowledge) is the career lab tech — until today.

Matthew Connors was working as a tech at the University of Chicago (Chief Research Technologist, on his online resume) when he became a co-author on a 2007 study, published in the journal Small, purporting to show a technique for encapsulating pancreatic islet cells in a coating that’s opaque to the immune system. As the researchers explained: Continue reading Small problem: Nano-micro journal pulls diabetes paper with phony figure

Obfuscation watch: Self-plagiarism (we think) leads to retraction of nanorod paper in Applied Physics Letters

C. P. Snow famously bemoaned the gulf between science and the humanities. The following retraction might be the sort of thing that would have given the physicist-cum-author fits for its estrangement from the English language.

Writing in the latest issue of Applied Physics Letters, a team from China Singapore and MIT appear to be confessing a case of self-plagiarism in their 2005 paper, “Growth of single crystal ZnO nanorods on GaN using an aqueous solution method: (we added a link to the earlier paper)” Continue reading Obfuscation watch: Self-plagiarism (we think) leads to retraction of nanorod paper in Applied Physics Letters

Boldt under investigation for drug trial death

As we’ve previously reported, German anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt has been under investigation for apparent misdeeds — including lack of proper informed consent and possible data fabrication — that led to the retraction earlier this year of an article in Anesthesia & Analgesia. We’ve just learned that Boldt also has drawn scrutiny from German prosecutors for his role in a clinical trial earlier in the decade that led to the death of one patient and the near-death of another.

According to an article in the Weinheimer Nachrichten, that incident occurred when Boldt was at the University Hospital Giessen. Officials there told us there was an investigation into the matter but declined to comment further.

Here’s Google’s translation of the Weinheimer Nachrichten piece: Continue reading Boldt under investigation for drug trial death

Penalties for early withdrawal: irked CONSORT Group authors

Premature withdrawal can lead to frustration and hurt feelings — especially when it comes to publications (please, this is a family-friendly site).

Two cases in point: We recently learned that the International Journal of Surgery, an Elsevier title, had withdrawn two papers from the CONSORT group — an acronym for Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials — an international team of scientists who have been working on ways to improve the reporting of studies.

In 2008, they published a paper titled “Methods and processes of the CONSORT Group: example of an extension for trials assessing nonpharmacologic treatments” in the Annals of Internal Medicine. They followed up in March 2010 with the publication of “CONSORT 2010 Statement: Updated guidelines for reporting parallel group randomized trials.”

As they wrote in the statement: Continue reading Penalties for early withdrawal: irked CONSORT Group authors