Category: arturo casadevall

Why retraction shouldn’t always be the end of the story

rsc-logoWhen researchers raised concerns about a 2009 Science paper regarding a new way to screen for enzymatic activity, the lead author’s institution launched an investigation. The paper was ultimately retracted in 2010, citing “errors and omissions.”

It would seem from this example that the publishing process worked, and science’s ability to self-correct cleaned up the record. But not so to researchers Ferric Fang and Arturo Casadevall.

Fang, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and Casadevall, of Johns Hopkins — who have made names for themselves by studying retractions — note today in an article for Chemistry World that

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Pressure to publish not to blame for misconduct, says new study

plosoneA new study suggests that much of what we think about misconduct — including the idea that it is linked to the unrelenting pressure on scientists to publish high-profile papers — is incorrect.

In a new paper out today in PLOS ONE [see update at end of post], Daniele Fanelli, Rodrigo Costas, and Vincent Larivière performed a retrospective analysis of retractions and corrections, looking at the influence of supposed risk factors, such as the “publish or perish” paradigm. The findings appeared to debunk the influence of that paradigm, among others:

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mBio retracts anthrax paper whose authors say they misinterpreted findings

journal_logomBio, whose editor, Arturo Casadevall, has contributed greatly to our knowledge about why articles are retracted, has an interesting retraction of its own.

The journal — a publication of the American Society for Microbiology and the American Academy of Microbiology — is pulling a 2011 paper by a trio of researchers from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, Li Tan, Mei Li and Charles L. Turnbough Jr. The article was titled “An Unusual Mechanism of Isopeptide Bond Formation Attaches the Collagenlike Glycoprotein BclA to the Exosporium of Bacillus anthracis.” The paper, which has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web Knowledge, purported to show that:

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