Author: Ivan Oransky

70 papers by Alirio Melendez under investigation: report

Alirio Melendez

The National University of Singapore (NUS) is reviewing about 70 papers by Alirio Melendez, a once-promising researcher whom, as we’ve reported, has been forced to retract a paper in Nature Immunology and has another paper in Science subject to an Expression of Concern.

The Straits Times, which reported the NUS investigation this weekend, says Melendez’ former team is cooperating:

In Singapore, the eight researchers involved include scientists, academics, research fellows and students from NUS and DSO National Laboratories. DSO and the personnel involved are assisting the university in its investigation.

The story continues: Continue reading 70 papers by Alirio Melendez under investigation: report

Does a new retraction suggest a glimmer of hope for transparency at the Journal of Neuroscience?

Believe it or not, we look for policies to praise here at Retraction Watch HQ, especially if they mark a change from approaches that we and others have criticized. So we were heartened to read this retraction notice in The Journal of Neuroscience for “Lmx1b-Controlled Isthmic Organizer Is Essential for Development of Midbrain Dopaminergic Neurons:”

The Journal of Neuroscience has received a report describing an investigation by the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which found major data misrepresentation in the article by Guo et al. Because the results cannot be considered reliable, The Journal is retracting the paper.

The study has been cited five times since it was published in 2008, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s some background on why we thought we’d have something to praise, from a Nature feature this week on retractions: Continue reading Does a new retraction suggest a glimmer of hope for transparency at the Journal of Neuroscience?

Do editors like talking about journals’ mistakes? Nature takes on retractions

courtesy Nature

One of the themes we’ve hit hard here at Retraction Watch is that there is tremendous variation in how journals deal with retractions. Some make notices crystal clear, while others seem to want to make them as opaque as possible. Some editors go out of their way to publicize withdrawals, while others bury them and won’t talk about them when they appear. 

In a Nature feature out today on retractions, Richard van Noorden highlights those disparities. He also highlights the fact that there are more retractions to talk about: As a graphic accompanying the piece makes clear, retractions have risen 10-fold in the last decade, even as the number of papers published has grown by less than fifty percent.

But even with that growth, the number of retractions — we’re on track for 400 this year, according to Thomson Reuters — is a vanishingly small percentage of the 700,000 papers published annually. Still, science prides itself on transparency — or should, anyway. van Noorden gives Ivan the chance to offer some advice to those scientists and editors who are reluctant to acknowledge there’s ever any dirty laundry in science: Continue reading Do editors like talking about journals’ mistakes? Nature takes on retractions

Mistaken notice as Ben Gurion researchers retract vitamin D paper for duplication

“Clare Francis,” a prolific pseudonymous Retraction Watch tipster, emailed us recently to flag a retraction in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (JSBMB) of “The anti-inflammatory activity of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 in macrophages,” a paper by Amos Douvdevani and colleagues at Ben Gurion University in Israel.

Here’s what we found when we clicked on the notice for the 2007 paper, which has been cited 32 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge:

This article has been retracted at the request of the authors, in response to concerns raised by the research committee at the authors’ institution. The authors stated the committee had given approval but the committee states no approval was given. The research committee has asked the authors to retract the paper and the authors have agreed.

That sounded odd to us, since it was unclear what approval was needed, or hadn’t been given. Continue reading Mistaken notice as Ben Gurion researchers retract vitamin D paper for duplication

New in PNAS: Potti retraction number seven, and a Potti correction

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has published the seventh retraction for former Duke researcher Anil Potti, who now faces a lawsuit in the midst of an ongoing investigation into his work:

Retraction for “A genomic approach to colon cancer risk stratification yields biologic insights into therapeutic opportunities,” by Katherine S. Garman, Chaitanya R. Acharya, Elena Edelman, Marian Grade, Jochen Gaedcke, Shivani Sud, William Barry, Anna Mae Diehl, Dawn Provenzale, Geoffrey S. Ginsburg, B. Michael Ghadimi, Thomas Ried, Joseph R. Nevins, Sayan Mukherjee, David Hsu, and Anil Potti, which appeared in issue 49, December 9, 2008, of Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (105:19432–19437; first published December 2, 2008; 10.1073/pnas.0806674105).

The authors wish to note the following: “We wish to retract this article because we have been unable to reproduce certain key experiments described in the paper regarding validation and use of the colon cancer prognostic signature. This includes the validation performed with dataset E-MEXP-1224, as reported in Fig. 2A, as well as the generation of prognostic scores for colon cancer cell lines, as reported in Fig. 4. Because these results are fundamental to the conclusions of the paper, the authors formally retract the paper. We deeply regret the impact of this action on the work of other investigators.”

The 2008 paper, which has been cited 27 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, was already the subject of a minor 2009 correction: Continue reading New in PNAS: Potti retraction number seven, and a Potti correction

Why didn’t XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome researcher Mikovits — now fired — share data with Science?

The saga of XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) continues, with the news that Judy Mikovits, a main proponent of the link between the virus and CFS, has been fired from her post at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) in Reno. From a blog post yesterday on X Rx:

Breaking news. The entire WPI research program has been closed by the institute’s CEO, and the facility is now locked down. It’s former principle investigator, Dr. Judy Mikovits, is in active discussions concerning institutions to which she may move to continue her grant-funded research.

We spoke to Mikovits last week, apparently within a day of her being fired, according to the sequence of events reported today on the Wall Street Journal Health Blog. We were interested in her reaction to a comment to Retraction Watch by Science executive editor Monica Bradford about why the 2009 study Mikovits had co-authored had been partially retracted — a rare move, as we noted: Continue reading Why didn’t XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome researcher Mikovits — now fired — share data with Science?

Science issues Expression of Concern over already-corrected Melendez-Puneet paper

Two weeks ago, we posted on a Nature Immunology retraction by a group that had earlier published a correction to figures in a Science paper. At the time, many readers suggested there was more to this story — and we had the same hunch.

Turns out those hunches were right.

Today, Science issued an “Expression of Concern” about the paper they’ve already corrected: Continue reading Science issues Expression of Concern over already-corrected Melendez-Puneet paper

Authors retract chemistry paper after failing to get company’s permission to publish

Two chemists who published a paper earlier this year in Bioconjugate Chemistry have withdrawn it, after their company, Life Technologies, let them know they didn’t have permission to submit the work. The retraction notice reads:

Facile Synthesis of Symmetric, Monofunctional Cyanine Dyes for Imaging Applications, by Lai-Qiang Ying and Bruce P. Branchaud, Bioconjugate Chem., 2011, 22 (5), pp 865–869, DOI: 10.1021/bc2001006, has been retracted at the request of the authors and Life Technologies. The article was submitted for publication without the approval of Life Technologies.

Where the paper had appeared previously — it’s been completely removed from the journal’s site, as opposed to being marked as “withdrawn” or “retracted” — this is all that’s left: Continue reading Authors retract chemistry paper after failing to get company’s permission to publish

Physics paper in Science retracted after Vanderbilt facility closes

If the facility you need to reproduce your experiments closes after you’ve discovered questions about your original findings, what do you do?

If you’re a group of physicists that published a 2006 paper in Science, “Desorption of H from Si(111) by Resonant Excitation of the Si-H Vibrational Stretch Mode,” you retract your study. Here’s the notice, from today’s Science: Continue reading Physics paper in Science retracted after Vanderbilt facility closes

You can do that? A massive correction in Nature, but no retraction

courtesy Nature

This past April, Amparo Acker-Palmer and colleagues published a study in Nature, “Ephrin Bs are essential components of the Reelin pathway to regulate neuronal migration.” Within a day of its publication, Nature readers were raising questions about many of its figures. They started like this:

Andy Gu said:

Looks like Fig 1a, the two middle figures are actually the same with little move from desired regions. I don’t trust their data now…..

After several such comments, Nature senior editor Noah Gray weighed in: Continue reading You can do that? A massive correction in Nature, but no retraction