Pfizer has retracted another study involving an experimental cancer drug that later failed later-stage trials.
The study, published in Clinical Cancer Research in 2010, looked at which patients might respond to the drug, called figitumumab. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Pfizer retracts another experimental cancer drug study
It’s time to review the reviews.
That’s the central message of a new paper in Trends in Ecology & Evolution , “Errors in science: The role of reviewers,” by Tamás Székely, Oliver Krüger, and E. Tobias Krause. The authors
propose that the process of manuscript reviewing needs to be evaluated and improved by the scientific publishing community.
We certainly agree in principle, and have suggested a Transparency Index that has some of the same goals. We asked Adam Etkin, who founded Peer Review Evaluation (PRE) “to assist members of the scholarly publishing community who are committed to preserving an ethical, rigorous peer review process,” what he thought. PRE has created PRE-val and PRE-score to “validate what level of peer review was conducted prior to the publication of scholarly works.” Etkin told us: Continue reading Is it time for a journal Review Quality Index?
Ulrich Lichtenthaler, of the University of Mannheim, has notched retractions 14 and 15, both in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.
Here’s the notice for “Technological Turbulence and the Impact of Exploration and Exploitation Within and Across Organizations on Product Development Performance:” Continue reading Management prof Lichtenthaler up to 15 retractions
The authors of a Current Biology paper published online in February of this year have retracted it after voluminous criticism on post-publication review site PubPeer and a university committee found evidence of figure manipulation.
The paper, “Agonist-Induced GPCR Shedding from the Ciliary Surface Is Dependent on ESCRT-III and VPS4,” was co-authored by Hua Jin and Livana Soetedjo, a graduate student in Jin’s lab. Soetedjo was first author, and Jin was corresponding author.
The comments at PubPeer began on March 24: Continue reading Authors retract Current Biology study following criticism on PubPeer and university investigation
A group of researchers at Istanbul University has swiftly retracted a paper they published in March in the British Journal of Cancer once it became clear that they were using the wrong antibody.
Here’s the notice for “Clinical significance of p95HER2 overexpression, PTEN loss and PI3K expression in p185HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer patients treated with trastuzumab-based therapies:” Continue reading Researchers retract breast cancer study after realizing they were using the wrong antibody
We recently came across a paper in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, an Elsevier title, that had been temporarily removed without explanation. While we see a fair number of such opaque notices from Elsevier — and have written about why we think they’re a bad idea — we took interest in this one because the last author, Toren Finkel of the NIH, was the corresponding author of a Nature paper retracted earlier this year. (He also had two corrections on one Science paper, both of which are paywalled.)
What we learned suggests the withdrawal was completely unrelated to the Nature retraction, but also reveals a journal editor’s exasperation.
Last month, we published a guest post by Jean Hazel Mendoza about the retraction of a Molecular Cell paper for sampling errors, flawed analysis, and and miscalculation.
Mendoza heard back from Jean-François Allemand, the head of one of the labs involved. Allemand tells Retraction Watch by email that when his group tried to repeat the experiment, they suspected of “missing” or “averaging” of data points in the retracted paper: Continue reading Update: Lab head shares “painful” process that led to Molecular Cell retraction
A group at the University of Texas Southwestern led by Adi F. Gazdar that found evidence of inappropriate image manipulation in a number of their papers has retracted its seventh and eighth studies.
Here’s the notice for 2005’s “Aberrant methylation profile of human malignant mesotheliomas and its relationship to SV40 infection,” in Oncogene: Continue reading UT-Southwestern cancer researchers up to 8 retractions
In March, we asked Retraction Watch readers for some financial support. A number of you contributed and continue to, for which we’re very grateful.
One of the things we wanted to do with those funds was hire other writers, specifically an intern. So we’re pleased to introduce the first-ever Retraction Watch intern, Cat Ferguson.
Ferguson, whose first post will go live later today and who will join us in earnest next week, just graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Science Communication Program. She has already written for the New Yorker online, and for New Scientist, among other outlets.
Here’s what she had to say about writing that New Yorker piece: Continue reading Meet the first-ever Retraction Watch intern. And: Thanks, readers
Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: “The best scientist in jail story since Galileo,” replication is “charming and naive”