Category: by author

That’s a Mori! Seven more retractions brings latest count to 30

The other day we reported that Naoki Mori had lost his 23rd paper to retraction for image manipulation and duplication. Turns out we were wrong by a pretty wide margin.

The International Journal of Cancer has retracted seven more articles by the disgraced Japanese researcher, all for the same reasons:

The following article has been retracted through agreement between the first author and several coauthors, the journal Editor in-Chief, Peter Lichter, and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. … After an investigation the retraction has been agreed due to inappropriate duplication of images and overlap with other published work.

The papers are as follows: Continue reading That’s a Mori! Seven more retractions brings latest count to 30

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

Another retraction for Naoki Mori (make that 23?)

The retraction total for Naoki Mori continues to rise.

The October issue of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications has retracted a 2007 paper by Mori et al for the same issues — manipulated images — that  brought down the 20-odd other papers of his since the scandal broke in late December.

Here’s the notice for the pulled paper, titled “Downregulation of citrin, a mitochondrial AGC, is associated with apoptosis of hepatocytes:” Continue reading Another retraction for Naoki Mori (make that 23?)

Nursing researcher Scott Weber draws penalties from ORI in plagiarism, fraud scandal

Scott Weber, the nursing researcher whose publishing misconduct has cost him posts at the University of Pittsburgh and Walden University, has been sanctioned by the Office of Research Integrity for his misdeeds.

According to a link posted today on the ORI website: Continue reading Nursing researcher Scott Weber draws penalties from ORI in plagiarism, fraud scandal

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

Stapel inquiry widens to the University of Groningen, University of Amsterdam

The University of Groningen (UG) has launched an investigation the conduct of Diederik Stapel, the social psychologist accused of fabricating his research.

According to a Google translation of a UG press release: Continue reading Stapel inquiry widens to the University of Groningen, University of Amsterdam

More on Hattori case from co-author: Did grudge lead to scientist’s fall?

We have an update on the case of Yoshiyuki Hattori, the Japanese endocrinologist who has had a half-dozen papers retracted because of issues involving reused data. We’ve reported on some of those retractions, and report on three new ones here.

As a trainee, Hattori spent some time in England, where he met Steven Gross, a prominent pharmacology researcher at Cornell. Gross was impressed with the young physician-scientist, and invited him back to his New York City laboratory to do a postdoc.

Gross’ name appears on one of the retracted articles, “NO suppresses while peroxynitrite sustains NF-κB: a paradigm to rationalize cytoprotective and cytotoxic actions attributed to NO,” which appeared in 2004 in the journal Cardiovascular Research and has been cited 42 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

According to the notice: Continue reading More on Hattori case from co-author: Did grudge lead to scientist’s fall?

Why did Science partially retract the XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome paper?

If past experience is any indication, billions of pixels will be spilled in the coming days as scientists and advocates debate the latest twist in the story of XMRV, or xenotropic murine leukemia-related virus, and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Today’s news is that Science is partially retracting a 2009 paper by Judy Mikovits and colleagues, including Vincent Lombardi, purporting to show a link between the virus and the syndrome — a paper about which they issued an Expression of Concern in May. The retraction is of a table and a figure — more on that in a bit.

In an excellent blow-by-blow account in Science of the nearly 20-year-long saga, also out today, Jon Cohen and Martin Enserink review the unusual circumstances of that Expression of Concern. Science editor-in-chief Bruce

Alberts and Science Executive Editor Monica Bradford had first suggested that Mikovits and her co-authors retract the paper voluntarily. “Science feels it would be in the best interest of the scientific community,” they wrote in a 26 May letter. Mikovits was livid and questioned Alberts’s motives. “Who wrote that letter? I don’t think it was Science,” she says. The co-authors thought the retraction request was premature, too. “What if we walk away from this based on contamination and it’s not contamination?” Lombardi asked. “You’ve got to give us time to figure this out.”

Alberts stresses that they floated the retraction idea because Science already planned to publish the Expression of Concern. “It wasn’t a public call for retraction,” he notes, emphasizing that the recipients shared it with the media. He also does not think it would have been premature, although he says it’s often a tough call whether to retract a paper. “Ultimately, it requires expert judgment and a lot of sensitivity to the issues,” he says. “We had lost confidence in the results.”

As Science noted in May, two studies accompanied the May Expression of Concern Continue reading Why did Science partially retract the XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome paper?