A paper in Food Chemistry suggesting cranberry extract has healing properties was retracted after some of the authors complained they had no idea the paper was being published.
Here’s the notice for “Phenolic composition, antioxidant properties, and endothelial cell function of red and white cranberry fruits:” Continue reading Paper on cranberries’ health benefits retracted after researcher forges authors’ names
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have retracted a paper on using thalidomide, which led to an estimated 10,000 birth defects by the time the drug was pulled from the market in 1961, to prevent chemo-induced sterility.
Alkylating agents, which prevent DNA replication in cells, are a commonly-used cancer treatment. Unfortunately they also damage the ovaries and testes, sometimes causing infertility. The University of Pittsburgh scientists published a paper in Elsevier journal Fertility and Sterility in 2011 that suggested thalidomide, which causes severe birth defects when used during pregnancy, might help protect ovaries during chemo.
However, according to the notice, the authors tried and failed to replicate their results. They had two separate scientists who were not authors take a look at the results; everyone agreed that the original study incorrectly reported the number of primordial follicles, the precursor to mature eggs.
Here’s the notice for “Thalidomide treatment attenuates chemotherapy-induced gonadal toxicity”: Continue reading Thalidomide paper retracted for lab error
In December, we reported that economist Khalid Zaman was losing 16 papers over faked peer reviews.
Now, Retraction Watch has learned that he left his job at COMSATS Information Technology Center in Abbottabad, Pakistan on December 26, seven days after our post. He’s now looking for a new job, including at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore, Pakistan.
We’ve gotten ahold of his application, and it’s a real treat. Here’s an excerpt: Continue reading Anyone want to hire an economist who retracted 16 papers for fake peer reviews?
A major scandal in Japan over the Novartis hypertension drug valsartan has resulted in a retraction from the Journal of Human Hypertension.
Frequent Retraction Watch subject Hiroaki Matsubara resigned his post at Kyoto Prefectural University in 2013, after his work on valsartan was shown to be riddled with data errors and undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Also that year, suspicions about Chiba University hypertension researcher Issei Komuro’s work were first raised by an anonymous blog, which detailed numerous image manipulations in the researcher’s published works. Komuro, who frequently collaborated with Matsubara, has been a senior author on a number of valsartan papers, including the now-retracted one, which reported the results of Novartis-sponsored Valsartan Amlodipine Randomized Trial in 2011 without reporting the Novartis funding.
The paper, which has been cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, had already been subject to a correction in 2013: Continue reading Can’t spell Novartis without VART: Drug study retracted for conflict of interest, data issues
Retired Dutch anthropologist Mart Bax made a career out of making up papers, many of them on the Bosnian genocide.
He retired from the Free University in Amsterdam in 2002. It wasn’t until 2013 that the university published a report indicating that Bax never published 61 of the papers he listed on his CV, and many of the real articles were based on fabricated data.
Publisher Taylor and Francis retracted one of Bax’s papers from Ethnic and Racial Studies in April. Now they’re retracting a second, from Ethnos, using almost identical language.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Second retraction appears for Mart Bax
We don’t have much to go on here, for a retraction from the International Journal of Stem Cells.
Here’s what we do know: Dental researchers at several universities in Egypt, including Cairo University, Future University, and Misr University published a paper together. According to the article, they gave dogs oral ulcers and then injected the ulcers with either fat-derived stem cells, bone marrow stem cells, or saline. The researchers conclude that the fat stem cells, also known as adipose derived stem cells, helped the dogs heal.
Unfortunately, we have no idea what went wrong, because the retraction notice is useless. Here in its entirety is the notice for “Adipose Stem Cells as Alternatives for Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Oral Ulcer Healing”: Continue reading Stem cell study retraction produces useless notice
A Nature Cell Biology article on insulin regulation has been retracted after scientists noted that the antibodies used in their research were not as specific as they had previously believed.
The notice is clear on the problems with the science, which together “call into question the main conclusions of the paper.” Three of the paper’s five authors were employed at Novartis at the time of publication.
Here’s the notice for “Wolfram syndrome 1 and adenylyl cyclase 8 interact at the plasma membrane to regulate insulin production and secretion”: Continue reading Nature Cell Biology insulin paper retracted over antibody problems
Frontiers in Pharmacology has retracted a paper on baicalin, an antioxidant sold in health food stores, because it had both “incorrect data and invalid statistical analyses.”
A comment on PubPeer notes that one of the figures (see image to the right) contains two similar-looking flow cytometry images labeled with different values, which could be what the retraction is hinting at.
Here’s the notice for “Baicalin induced dendritic cell apoptosis in vitro”: Continue reading “Incorrect data” kills apoptosis paper
A paper estimating the effects of limiting fast food meals with toys to under 550 calories has been retracted after concerns arose regarding the scientists’ use of an outdated model for estimating weight changes in kids.
The paper estimated that kids who eat fast food twice a week would avoid gaining two pounds a year if calorie limits are imposed on meals with toys. However, everyone we spoke to, and the notice, indicated that their estimate was inaccurate.
Here’s the notice for “Modeling Potential Effects of Reduced Calories in Kids’ Meals with Toy Giveaways”:
Continue reading Paper recommending calorie limits on Happy Meals retracted
Fake peer reviews: They’re all the rage.
Sixteen papers are being retracted across three Elsevier journals after the publisher discovered that one of the authors, Khalid Zaman, orchestrated fake peer reviews by submitting false contact information for his suggested reviewers.
This particular kind of scam has been haunting online peer review for a few years now, as loyal Retraction Watch readers know. This one is a classic of the genre: According to Elsevier’s director of publishing services, Catriona Fennell, an editor first became suspicious after noticing that Zaman’s suggested reviewers, all with non-institutional addresses, were unusually kind to the economist’s work.
Elsevier has actually hired a full-time staff member with a PhD in physics and history as a managing editor to do the grunt work on cases like this. Flags were first raised in August, at which point the ethics watchdog went to town digging through all of Zaman’s other publications looking for suspicious reviews coming from non-institutional addresses provided by the scientist, an economist at COMSATS Information Technology Center in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Here’s the main notice: Continue reading Elsevier retracting 16 papers for faked peer review