The debate over the retraction of a highly controversial paper on the effects of GMOs on rats continues unabated. This week, Adriane Fugh-Berman and Thomas Sherman wrote on the Hastings Center website that Continue reading Journal editor defends retraction of GMO-rats study while authors reveal some of paper’s history
Author: Ivan Oransky
Psychology researcher explains how retraction-causing errors led to change in her lab
Last month, we brought you the story of two retractions by Yale’s Laurie Santos because the team discovered errors in the way the first author had coded the data. That first author, Neha Mahajan, took full responsibility for the coding problems, according to the retraction notices, and a university investigation cleared her of any “intentional, knowing, reckless, or grossly negligent action.”
But a few of our readers noted that the papers refer to a second coder on some of the experiments, and have questioned whether that’s compatible with Mahajan being solely responsible for the errors.
We asked Santos earlier this week to explain the apparent discrepancy, which she did along with a description of how her lab has made changes to prevent such errors in the future: Continue reading Psychology researcher explains how retraction-causing errors led to change in her lab
Following up: Pamela Ronald publishes updated data following two retractions
Last year, we wrote about two retractions by Pamela Ronald and colleagues, after the group found that a bacterial strain they’d been using was contaminated.
The group has now published a paper in PeerJ following their investigation into what went wrong. Ronald tells us the new paper, titled “The Xanthomonas Ax21 protein is processed by the general secretory system and is secreted in association with outer membrane vesicles,” Continue reading Following up: Pamela Ronald publishes updated data following two retractions
The Guardian retracts hotly debated post on Lisa Adams’ tweets about her cancer
The Guardian has removed a post about Lisa Bonchek Adams, a woman who has been tweeting her experiences with stage 4 breast cancer, after it and a related piece in The New York Times ignited a firestorm of online criticism.
The Atlantic’s Megan Garber describes the two pieces — one, by Emma Keller, and the other by her husband Bill Keller, former executive editor of The New York Times — this way: Continue reading The Guardian retracts hotly debated post on Lisa Adams’ tweets about her cancer
“Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction
More than two years ago, we wrote about a retraction for duplication in Biophysical Journal prompted by an email from pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis. That post generated a robust discussion, including one comment from someone calling himself or herself “Double Dutch.”
This past weekend, the last author of that paper, Rienk van Grondelle, left a lengthy response to that comment in which he explained how the duplication happened. We’ve confirmed that it was van Grondelle who left the comment, which we reproduce here in full (we’ve added paragraph breaks for readability): Continue reading “Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction
Weekend reads: Waste in research, a praise-worthy swift correction in NEJM, and more
The first full week of 2014 featured a slew of stories and commentary about scientific publishing and related issues. Here’s a sampling: Continue reading Weekend reads: Waste in research, a praise-worthy swift correction in NEJM, and more
Doing the right thing: Authors retract protein paper after finding experimental errors
A group of researchers in the Netherlands has retracted a paper once they realized that the findings weren’t reproducible and that there had been an error in the experiments.
Here’s the notice for “Ubiquitin‐specific protease 4 is inhibited by its ubiquitin‐like domain,” by MP Luna‐Vargas, AC Faesen, WJ van Dijk, M Rape, A Fish, and TK Sixma: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Authors retract protein paper after finding experimental errors
A retracted retraction: Backsies for an anti-terrorism paper
The other day, we wrote about a puzzling situation that appeared to involve the ninth retraction for an anti-terrorism researcher. A book chapter by Nasrullah Memon, of the University of Southern Denmark, was marked “Retracted,” both in the abstract’s title and on the PDF. But Memon forwarded us an email from Springer, the book’s publisher, saying that they had decided to publish an erratum rather than retract.
And indeed, sometime after we published our post, the retraction was changed to an erratum, with the following notice: Continue reading A retracted retraction: Backsies for an anti-terrorism paper
Karel Bezouška, who broke into lab to tamper with investigation, has JACS paper retracted
Karel Bezouška, who, as we noted last year “broke into a lab refrigerator so he could tamper with samples being used to try to replicate the experiments during the investigation,” has had his fourth paper retracted.
Here’s the notice, for “Synthesis of Multivalent Glycoconjugates Containing the Immunoactive LELTE Peptide: Effect of Glycosylation on Cellular Activation and Natural Killing by Human Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells,” in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS): Continue reading Karel Bezouška, who broke into lab to tamper with investigation, has JACS paper retracted
Anti-terrorism researcher notches ninth retraction — or does he?
A year ago, we wrote about eight retractions by Nasrullah Memon, an anti-terrorism researcher at the University of Southern Denmark, for plagiarism.
He seems to has another retraction, although that may be in dispute. As Debora Weber-Wulff reports, Memon’s chapter in Advanced Data Mining and Applications, which “constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications, ADMA 2007, held in Harbin, China in August 2007,” is now marked “retracted.” Continue reading Anti-terrorism researcher notches ninth retraction — or does he?