Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Peer review abuse, a journal that will print anything for $1,200, PubPeer faces legal threats
Author: Ivan Oransky
Second study of widely touted cancer and HIV “cure” retracted
Last month, we brought you the story of the retraction of a paper by Nobutu Yamamoto and colleagues about “a protein being used — unapproved by health agencies — to treat diseases including cancer and autism.”
A second paper by the group, about using the protein to treat HIV, has been retracted. Here’s the notice for “Immunotherapy of HIV-infected patients with Gc protein-derived macrophage activating factor (GcMAF),” from the Journal of Medical Virology:
Continue reading Second study of widely touted cancer and HIV “cure” retracted
Elephant femur paper subject to expression of concern retracted following investigation
Last month, we reported on a 2012 paper in Interface whose authors had the journal issue an expression of concern about it because of “some of the data and methods.” At the time, The Royal Veterinary College at the University of London was conducting an investigation into the research.
Today, that expression of concern was upgraded to a retraction. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Elephant femur paper subject to expression of concern retracted following investigation
Hmm: Authors retract paper rather than allow discussion of politics of organ donation in China
Organ donation in China, particularly the practice of using organs from executed prisoners, which the government pledged to stop by the middle of this year, has been a controversial subject. For a group of authors in that country and the U.S, a letter criticizing their work that introduced “the political situation of organ donation in China” was cause to retract their own paper.
Here’s the notice in question from Transplantation, for a study published three months ago: Continue reading Hmm: Authors retract paper rather than allow discussion of politics of organ donation in China
Weekend reads: Publish a paper, get $10,000!; Lancet editor Horton under fire
Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- Publish a paper, get $10,000!
- “Following the publication in The Lancet last month of an open letter to the people of Gaza, a number of doctors have begun a petition to force editor-in-chief Richard Horton to resign. Should medical journals get political?
Continue reading Weekend reads: Publish a paper, get $10,000!; Lancet editor Horton under fire
“Research misconduct accounts for a small percentage of total funding”: Study
How much money does scientific fraud waste?
That’s an important question, with an answer that may help determine how much attention some people pay to research misconduct. But it’s one that hasn’t been rigorously addressed.
Seeking some clarity, Andrew Stern, Arturo Casadevall, Grant Steen, and Ferric Fang looked at cases in which the Office of Research Integrity had determined there was misconduct in particular papers. In their study, published today in eLife: Continue reading “Research misconduct accounts for a small percentage of total funding”: Study
University of Maryland duo notches third retraction
A pair of researchers at the University of Maryland have retracted a third paper.
Here’s the unhelpful Journal of Biological Chemistry notice for “Inhibitor of Nrf2 (INrf2 or Keap1) protein degrades Bcl-xL via phosphoglycerate mutase 5 and controls cellular apoptosis,” by Suryakant Niture and Anil Jaiswal: Continue reading University of Maryland duo notches third retraction
Cell retraction of Alzheimer’s study is second for Tufts neuroscientist
A researcher at Tufts University has retracted a paper in Cell, a year after retracting a study on a similar subject from the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Here’s the notice for “SIRT1 Suppresses β-Amyloid Production by Activating the α-Secretase Gene ADAM10,” a 2010 paper by Tufts’ Gizem Donmez, MIT’s Leonard Guarante — of longevity research fame — and colleagues: Continue reading Cell retraction of Alzheimer’s study is second for Tufts neuroscientist
“Is Imitation the Sincerest Form of Flattery? Not Without Proper Attribution.”
We’re going to get a little meta here, so be warned.
Take a look at the headline of this post. For those of you unfamiliar with the symbols to the left and right of the words, those are quotation marks. What that means is that we’ve taken those two sentences from another source. And here is that other source, a blog post from Tahseen Consulting titled — yes, you guessed it, “Is Imitation the Sincerest Form of Flattery? Not Without Proper Attribution.”
Apparently, the last group of authors who liked Tahseen’s words enough to use them did so without that whole attribution thing. Here, let us demonstrate attribution again, this time using the WordPress block-quote function. From the post: Continue reading “Is Imitation the Sincerest Form of Flattery? Not Without Proper Attribution.”
Authors retract highly cited XMRV-prostate cancer link paper from PNAS
Retraction Watch readers may recall that nearly two years ago, an editor at PLOS declared the scientific story of a link between XMRV, aka xenotropic murine leukemia-related virus, and prostate cancer over, saying that a retraction from PLOS Pathogens was the “final chapter.” (That retraction led to an apology from the journal about how it was handled.)
Perhaps, however, there is an epilogue. This week, a group of authors who published a highly cited 2009 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) making the same link retracted it. Here’s the notice, signed by all five authors: Continue reading Authors retract highly cited XMRV-prostate cancer link paper from PNAS