Ivan Oransky

Former University of Maryland cancer researcher up to 21 retractions

Anil Jaiswal, who until a year ago was a cancer researcher at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, has had four more papers retracted.

That makes 21 for Jaiswal, who joins our leaderboard of the 30 researchers with the most retractions. All four new retractions appear in journals published by the American Association for Cancer Research, and are for image or data manipulation.

For example, here’s the retraction notice for “Aromatase Inhibitor–mediated Downregulation of INrf2 (Keap1) Leads to Increased Nrf2 and Resistance in Breast Cancer,” in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics: Continue reading Former University of Maryland cancer researcher up to 21 retractions

The “regression to the mean project:” What researchers should know about a mistake many make

The work of David Allison and his colleagues may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers. Allison was the researcher — then at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, now at Indiana University — who led an effort to correct the nutrition literature a few years ago. He and his colleagues are back, this time with what might be called the “Regression to the Mean Project,” an attempt to fix a problem that seems to vex many clinical trials. You may have noticed some items in Weekend Reads about letters to the editor that mention the issue. Here, Allison explains.

Retraction Watch (RW): First, what is “regression to the mean,” and what does it mean for clinical studies? Continue reading The “regression to the mean project:” What researchers should know about a mistake many make

Weekend reads: Our database of 18,000-plus retractions is launched; inside a trial gone wrong; scholarly publishers bow to censorship

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured the official launch of our database of more than 18,000 retractions, along with a six-page package in Science about some preliminary findings. Have a look. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Our database of 18,000-plus retractions is launched; inside a trial gone wrong; scholarly publishers bow to censorship

Three more retractions brings diabetes researcher who once sued publishers to 18

FEBS Letters has retracted three papers by the Brazilian diabetologist Mario Saad, bringing his total to 18.

The now-retracted articles, published between 2005 and 2010, contain doctored images, according to the notices, which read similarly.

Here’s one, for the 2005 paper “Aspirin inhibits serine phosphorylation of insulin receptor substrate 1 in growth hormone treated animals”: Continue reading Three more retractions brings diabetes researcher who once sued publishers to 18

We’re officially launching our database today. Here’s what you need to know.

Readers, this is a big day for us.

We’re officially launching the Retraction Watch Database of more than 18,000 retractions, along with a six-page package of stories and infographics based on it that we developed with our partners at Science Magazine. In that package, you’ll learn about trends — some surprising, some perhaps not — and other tidbits such as which countries have the highest retraction rates. Thanks as always to our partners at Science, particularly Jeffrey Brainard and Jia You, who crunched the numbers and developed the package.

As readers no doubt know, we’ve been working on the database for some years. Some have asked us why it has taken so long — can’t we just pull retractions from existing databases like PubMed, or publishers’ sites? The answer is resoundingly no. All of those databases are missing retractions, whether by design or because notices aren’t transmitted well. That’s why we found more than 18,000, far more than you’ll find elsewhere. And we also went through each one and assigned it a reason, based on a detailed taxonomy we developed over eight years of reporting on retractions. Continue reading We’re officially launching our database today. Here’s what you need to know.

Weekend reads: A whistleblower speaks; a new most-cited retracted paper; criminalizing scientific fraud?

The week at Retraction Watch featured a call for more than 30 retractions by former Harvard stem cell scientists, a settlement in a sexual harassment suit by UCSF and a high-profile researcher, and the retraction of a paper based on the long-discredited vaccine-autism paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: A whistleblower speaks; a new most-cited retracted paper; criminalizing scientific fraud?

Journal retracts 16-year-old paper based on debunked autism-vaccine study

Better late than never? Or too little too late?

Those are two different ways to look at a recent retraction.

Eight years after one of the most infamous retractions in science — that of the 1998 paper in The Lancet in which Andrew Wakefield and colleagues in the UK claimed a link between vaccines and autism — the journal Lab Medicine is retracting a paper that relied heavily on the now-discredited work. The paper, by Bernard Rimland and Woody McGinnis, of the Autism Research Institute, in San Diego, California, begins: Continue reading Journal retracts 16-year-old paper based on debunked autism-vaccine study

Harvard and the Brigham recommend 31 retractions for cardiac stem cell work

Retraction Watch readers may be familiar with the name Piero Anversa. Until several years ago, Anversa, a scientist at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was a powerful figure in cardiac stem cell research.

“For ten years, he ran everything,” says Jeffery Molkentin, a researcher at Cincinnati Children’s whose lab was among the first to question the basis of Anversa’s results in a 2014 paper in Nature. Continue reading Harvard and the Brigham recommend 31 retractions for cardiac stem cell work

Weekend reads: Fired for challenging authorship?; homeopathy paper earns a flag; sentenced to playing piano — for embezzling research funds

The week at Retraction Watch featured more than a dozen corrections at Sloan Kettering, three retractions from the principal investigator of a multi-million dollar Federal grant; and a rift at an international medical association over plagiarism. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Fired for challenging authorship?; homeopathy paper earns a flag; sentenced to playing piano — for embezzling research funds

More than a dozen papers by Sloan Kettering researchers have now been updated with financial disclosures

On Wednesday, we reported that a month after media reports of undisclosed conflicts of interest by top brass at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a researcher there had corrected two papers to include financial conflicts of interest.

Today, The New York Times and ProPublica — which had broken the original story about former chief medical officer Jose Baselga — reported on at least 13 corrections made by Sloan Kettering scientists so far, including the two by Michelle Bradbury that we reported on Wednesday. And we have learned of another correction by Bradbury, bringing the total to at least 14 — and counting.

In addition to the two October 8 corrections in Chemistry of Materials, a correction appeared yesterday in Applied Materials & Interfaces for a paper in which Bradbury was one of three corresponding authors. The correction to “Melanocortin-1 Receptor-Targeting Ultrasmall Silica Nanoparticles for Dual-Modality Human Melanoma Imaging” reads: Continue reading More than a dozen papers by Sloan Kettering researchers have now been updated with financial disclosures

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