Retraction Watch Staff

Weekend reads: Second gene editing death in China reported; Jason Arday’s resignation from Cambridge; Retraction Watch’s sweet 16

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Celebrating Retraction Watch’s 16th birthday, how sweet it is
High-profile anesthesiologists earning retractions for data, image problems
Meet the inaugural winners of our Ctrl-Z Award, honoring the courage it takes to retract published work
A composer published a paper on theoretical physics. His lack of credentials drew criticism
RFK Jr. questions another publisher on expression of concern for a vaccine paper
Decade-long fraud by market survey firm a ‘gut punch’ for researchers
Clarivate removes hold on mega-journal Heliyon after internal audit, 650+ retractions

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 450 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 66,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

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Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Celebrating Retraction Watch’s 16th birthday, how sweet it is

Suddenly, we’re 16. And what a year it has been.

Our birthday (and annual birthday post) comes on the heels of one of the biggest stories we’ve told this year: The unreported death of a 6-year-old girl whose parents paid more than $850,000 to a lab in China to develop a therapy for her rare genetic disorder. Seven days after getting the treatment, the young girl died.

Retraction Watch contributing writer Brendan Borrell spent countless hours seeking out experts in the field, chasing down documents and translations, and talking to the girl’s parents, who, after all they have been through, have one simple request: the retraction of a paper in Nature, in which the lab reports its preclinical results of the very therapy that caused their daughter’s death.

It’s an utterly heartbreaking and important story brought to light in collaboration with Science, which published the story on July 23. Just a few days later, the researchers’ university announced it would launch an investigation into the girl’s death. And a few days after that, Nature placed an editor’s note on the lab’s paper, saying it would be launching an investigation as well. The story has attracted international coverage by news outlets including the New York Post, Bloomberg, Times Higher Education, Southern Weekly and the South China Morning Post.

The story is one of more than 250 our team — Alicia Gallegos, Avery Orrall and Kate Travis, plus a small team of regular contributors — has reported in the last year. Some more highlights:

Weekend reads: University and journal investigating gene-editing death; ADA ‘must take accountability’; psychedelic therapy paper faces retraction

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Journal, university investigations launched into gene-editing death following Science-Retraction Watch reporting
Journal investigating apparent data mismatch in climate study
Exclusive: News outlet killed story on plagiarism allegations after Cambridge prof hired law firm
Kaggle removes problematic stroke dataset for copyright infringement
Just over 400 U.S. patents contain citations to retracted scientific papers
Retraction Watch story exposing research factory fuels investigations, preprint withdrawals, termination
Federal lawsuit accuses four major publishers of extorting article processing charges

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Journal, university investigations launched into gene-editing death following Science-Retraction Watch reporting

Nature is investigating concerns surrounding a paper at the heart of a news story published last week on the death of a 6-year-old girl following a gene therapy treatment in China.

The paper, published in February by a team led by neuroscientist Zilong Qiu of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in China, described preclinical work for a gene-editing treatment for Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder.

As we reported in collaboration with Science, the work was funded in part by the family of a 6-year-old girl with the condition. The family had approached Qiu based on work he had done with gene therapy for Rett syndrome, a disorder that also causes developmental delay. The parents ended up paying $860,000 to fund preclinical work for a gene-editing treatment for their daughter, who died of a severe immune reaction to the therapy seven days after receiving it.

Weekend reads: Young girl’s death after gene therapy never made public; FDA retracts lettuce test result; ADA delays editorial publication after controversy

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Exclusive: A couple’s daughter died after they paid more than $800,000 for a gene-editing therapy — and it wasn’t made public: in collaboration with Science.
Publisher investigating peer reviewer for alleged bribery scheme
Exclusive: Medical student in Nepal behind busy research factory
Journal retracts breast cancer paper 10 years after sleuth flagged issues
Editors of economics journal resign after association renews Taylor & Francis contract

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Exclusive: A couple paid more than $800,000 for a gene-editing therapy for their daughter. She died, and it wasn’t made public

An investigation by Science and Retraction Watch has uncovered details about a clinical trial that resulted in the death of its sole patient: a 6-year-old girl with a rare genetic mutation affecting her cognitive development. Her death has never been reported publicly, even though the medical team published its preclinical work in Nature earlier this year. Also omitted from the paper and trial records: The family paid more than $800,000 to fund the therapy’s development. The family has asked the authors to withdraw the paper, and experts we spoke to raised issues they say may warrant a retraction. The beginning of the story, by Retraction Watch contributing writer Brendan Borrell, is below, lightly edited for brevity. Read the full story at Science.

The 6-year-old girl tugged on her mother’s hand as they pressed through the doors of the hospital in Shanghai. Behind them, her father rolled a large suitcase with everything the child needed for the weeklong stay. She told her parents it felt like they were going on vacation. In fact, they brought her here for an experimental gene therapy.

The girl was slipping behind her peers in kindergarten. She still spoke in simple sentences and ate with training chopsticks. Underneath it all was a single mutated DNA base, a T that should have been a C.

“Your ‘book’ has a small mistake, which has caused you to have a disease that affects your growth,” read the children’s version of the informed consent form from the hospital. “Over time, it can get more serious.”

Doctors hoped to repair that mistake while her brain was still building itself. It would be a clinical trial of one, funded in part by $860,000 the parents had scraped together from their own savings and from relatives.

Weekend reads: Private info in ‘most’ arXiv preprints; why did George Church decline authorship; 28 misconduct cases in China

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

‘Disappointed’: Cochrane journal asked researchers to publish article, then retracted it for conflicts
A student claimed to have a Ph.D. in at least eight letters to journals. Two have been retracted
ORI sanction and news coverage prompts sleuthing, retraction
Sage retracts eight papers by former Radboud ‘rising star’ for compromised peer-review process
Now, 240: More than a decade later, journals are still retracting Joachim Boldt’s papers
Harvard cancer researchers earn retraction for image duplication

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 450 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 65,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

I Support Retraction Watch

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: Neuroscientist found not guilty of misconduct; when editors revolt; a Waffle House study walkback

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Ethics journal retracts paper by high school student for AI, peer review manipulation
Former acting director of national lab in India up to nine retractions
Springer Nature has restored two papers by Max Planck, reversing a 2011 decision to retract the articles
Judge dismisses Splenda lawsuit, says courts wrong place for research debate
Exclusive: Sage to retract multiple articles by dismissed rising star for “compromised” peer-review process
‘The exploitation still remains’: Stats journal associate editors resign over $3,000 publishing charge

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Springer Nature un-retracts Planck papers, citing “human error”

Today the Retraction Watch list of Nobelists who have retracted papers bids Verabschiedung to Max Planck.

After days of scrutiny, Springer Nature has restored two papers by Planck, who won the Nobel for Physics in 1918, reversing a 2011 decision to retract the articles for “copyright violations.”

Both articles are back, and now carry the following statement:

Weekend reads: Taylor Swift teaches botany; NEJM retracts key study in Amgen drug; hidden prompts at conference ‘snare AI peer reviews’

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Physicist in Iraq fired over publishing scam claims fake Columbia affiliation in new paper
Sex pay ban paper earns a retraction after a long and winding road for an unhappy author
Editors of Courant math journal to leave Wiley, establish new roots with independent publisher
Computer science society creates new research integrity role to address case backlog

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Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

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