Last week, we noted a Nature editorial in which the journal came clean about its higher-than-average number of retractions this year — four. What we missed was the fact that the fourth retraction of the year also appeared in last week’s issue.
The retraction, of a paper called “The large-conductance Ca2+-activated K+ channel is essential for innate immunity,” reads (link to the author’s homepage added): Continue reading Previously questioned Nature paper on innate immunity retracted
This week’s Nature includes a refreshing and soul-searching editorial about retractions. Excerpt (we added links and corrected a misspelling and wrong country in the editorial after a reader noted the errors below):
This year, Nature has published four retractions, an unusually large number. In 2009 we published one. Throughout the past decade, we have averaged about two per year, compared with about one per year in the 1990s, excluding the pulse of retractions of papers co-authored by [
AustrianGerman physicist JanHendrickHendrik Schön].Given that Nature publishes about 800 papers a year, the total is not particularly alarming, especially because only some of the retractions are due to proven misconduct. A few of the Nature research journals have also had to retract papers in recent years, but the combined data do no more than hint at a trend. A broader survey revealed even smaller proportions: in 2009, Times Higher Education commissioned a survey by Thomson Reuters that counted 95 retractions among 1.4 million papers published in 2008. But the same survey showed that, since 1990 — during which time the number of published papers doubled — the proportion of retractions increased tenfold (see http://go.nature.com/vphd17).
The editorial highlights Continue reading Nature comes clean about retractions and why they’re on the rise
In our very first post, we noted the case of Anil Potti,
a Duke researcher who posed as a Rhodes Scholar and appears to have invented key statistical analyses in a study of how breast cancer responds to chemotherapy[.The case] has sent ripples of angst through the cancer community. Potti’s antics prompted editors of The Lancet Oncology to issue an “expression of concern” — a Britishism that might be better expressed as “Holy Shit!” — about the validity of a 2007 paper in their journal by Potti and others.
There hasn’t been any further movement on The Lancet Oncology study, as far as we know, but on Friday the Raleigh News & Observer reported that one of Potti’s co-authors on a 2007 Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) paper had requested a retraction: Continue reading A retraction in the Potti case?
The UK’s Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) has just published “Guidance for researchers on retractions in academic journals.” The document is an adaptation of existing guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), a UK charity.
Nothing has changed, COPE chair Liz Wager told Retraction Watch. UKRIO just decided to convert COPE’s existing guidelines, targeted to journal editors, so that they were useful to researchers.
Two of the bullets in particular caught our eye: Continue reading UK government research watchdog publishes new retraction guidelines
Yesterday, we noted that Axel Ullrich, a decorated cancer researcher, had retracted two papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The journal gave no explanation for the retractions, and our conversation with the publication director for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, which puts out the journal, was less than illuminating. This morning, Ullrich responded to all of the questions we sent him by email, and our follow-ups. The picture is now a lot more clear.
Ullrich tells Retraction Watch that he found out from a “private investigator” several months ago that the papers’ lead author, Naohito Aoki, had manipulated their figures. Aoki was a postdoc in Ullrich’s lab in the early 1990s: Continue reading Update on Axel Ullrich retractions: Lead author manipulated figures, says Ullrich
Amy Wagers, a Harvard stem cell researcher, retracted a Nature study last week and has another published paper under scrutiny at Blood. Retraction Watch has now learned that a 2008 Cell paper she co-authored drew significant criticism from a stem cell researcher at Children’s National Medical Center.
In the paper, Wagers and her team said they were able to prepare a set of muscle cells that reversed some of the effects of muscular dystrophy in a mouse model of the disease. In a 2008 letter to the editor of Cell, however, Terence Partridge wrote Continue reading Scientist raised serious questions about 2008 Cell study by Amy Wagers
Yesterday, we noted that Amy Wagers and Shane Mayack have published five papers together. One of those, published earlier this year in Nature, was retracted Wednesday, and another is now the subject of a “notice of concern” from Blood.
We wanted to find out about some of the other papers published by Wagers and Mayack, so we contacted the editor of Developmental Biology, which published one of them. They have not heard from Wagers or Harvard, but are monitoring developments, according to editor in chief Robb Krumlauf: Continue reading Editor of another journal where Wagers and Mayack published an abstract is monitoring the situation
A day after an up and coming Harvard stem cell scientist retracted a Nature paper, Blood has issued a notice of concern about another paper by the same group, published in August 2008, the Boston Globe reports. Such notices often, but not always, precede retractions.
According to the notice for “Osteolineage niche cells initiate hematopoietic stem cell mobilization”: Continue reading Blood posts “notice of concern” over second Wagers-Mayack paper
Amy Wagers, an up and coming stem cell researcher at Harvard who made a name for herself as a postdoc early by questioning the work of others, has retracted a January 2010 paper she co-authored in Nature. According to the retraction:
Three of the authors (J.L.S., F.S.K. and A.J.W.) wish to retract this Article after a re-examination of the publication raised serious concerns with some of the reported data. These concerns have undermined the authors’ confidence in the support for the scientific conclusions reported, specifically the role of osteopontin-positive niche cells in the rejuvenation of haematopoietic stem cells in aged mice. Although this matter is under further review, these authors wish to retract the paper in its entirety, and regret any adverse consequences that may have resulted from the paper’s publication. The retraction has not been signed by Shane R. Mayack, who maintains that the results are still valid.
As Technology Review reported when the study was first published: Continue reading Highly cited Harvard stem cell scientist retracts Nature paper
Sometimes, studies are so nice, you want to print them twice. But when that happens three times within a year, well, maybe it’s not so nice. Consider the following three retractions, which appeared on a single page of Haematologica last month.
One:
The Haematologica Production Office erroneously double-published the article entitled “P39/Tsugane cells are a false cell line contaminated with HL-60 cells and are not suitable for mechanistic studies in myelodysplastic syndromes” by David P. Steensma. Haematologica. 2010 Feb 23. [Epub ahead of print] with doi:10.3324/haematol.2009.022988 . This article must therefore be considered as retracted, as the correct version of the same article has been correctly published on July 1, 2010, as doi:10.3324/haematol.2010.022988. Haematologica sincerely apologizes to the authors and the readers for this mistake.
Two: Continue reading What’s going on at Haematologica? Journal double-publishes three different studies