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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?

Nature Medicine paper by former Montreal Heart Institute researcher Zhiguo Wang unlikely to be retracted

We’ve been reporting on the case of Zhiguo Wang, the Montreal Heart Institute researcher who was dismissed earlier this month for scientific misconduct. In the announcement about Wang’s dismissal, the institute said it had requested the retraction of three papers other than the two that Wang had himself retracted earlier this summer, making a total of five.

We’ve been following up with journals that published Wang’s work, with the help of eagle-eyed Retraction Watch readers, and last week reported on the first of those three additional retractions, in the Journal of Cell Science. Late last week, we heard from Juan Carlos Lopez, the chief editor of Nature Medicine, which had published a paper by the group. Lopez had earlier said he was waiting for a Montreal Heart Institute report on their findings. He tells us it’s unlikely the Nature Medicine paper will be among those retracted: Continue reading Nature Medicine paper by former Montreal Heart Institute researcher Zhiguo Wang unlikely to be retracted

Group retracts Nature Immunology paper for figure irregularities after posting a correction to Science

courtesy NPG

We’re following the case of a group that recently retracted a Nature Immunology paper for figure irregularities, soon after being forced to correct images in a Science paper for similar reasons.

The Nature Immunology paper, “The helminth product ES-62 protects against septic shock via Toll-like receptor 4–dependent autophagosomal degradation of the adaptor MyD88,” has been cited just twice since it appeared online in February 2011, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The retraction notice, which appeared online on July 19: Continue reading Group retracts Nature Immunology paper for figure irregularities after posting a correction to Science

Potti retraction tally grows to six with a withdrawal in PLoS ONE, and will likely end up near a dozen

Anil Potti and his former Duke colleagues have retracted a sixth paper, this one in PLoS ONE.

According to the retraction notice for “An Integrated Approach to the Prediction of Chemotherapeutic Response in Patients with Breast Cancer,” the withdrawal was prompted by the retraction of a Nature Medicine paper that formed the basis of the PLoS ONE study’s approach: Continue reading Potti retraction tally grows to six with a withdrawal in PLoS ONE, and will likely end up near a dozen

Publishing scandal costs nursing researcher his post at online university

Scott Weber

Scott Weber, the nursing researcher accused of manipulating references and other publishing misconduct in at least seven retracted articles, has lost his position at Walden University, Retraction Watch has learned.

We noticed the other day that Weber’s name had disappeared from the Walden website and put in a call to the institution. A source there told us that Weber — a part-time faculty member who had been hoping for a full-time appointment at the school — apologized when confronted about the fraud.

The source, who did not want to be identified, said Continue reading Publishing scandal costs nursing researcher his post at online university

Third retraction from dismissed Montreal cardiology researcher Zhiguo Wang appears

Ten days ago, we reported on the dismissal of Zhiguo Wang, a Montreal Heart Institute researcher who had already retracted two papers because of image manipulation. At the time, an official said the institute had requested three more retractions, but when we asked which three papers, we were told:

As written in the press release, the MHI has requested the retraction of three additional scientific articles. We will not be able to confirm the name of the scientific articles and/or publications until confirmation of the retractions.

The first of those three has now appeared, in the Journal of Cell Science, for the 2007 paper, “The muscle-specific microRNAs miR-1 and miR-133 produce opposing effects on apoptosis by targeting HSP60, HSP70 and caspase-9 in cardiomyocytes.” According to the retraction notice — which is unfortunately behind a paywall (see update at end): Continue reading Third retraction from dismissed Montreal cardiology researcher Zhiguo Wang appears

Did Diederik Stapel tip his pitches in a paper about a plagiarism scandal?

Do fraudsters, like bad pitchers or poker players, have “tells”?

Diederik Stapel might. Last week we reported that Stapel, an internationally recognized social psychologist from The Netherlands, had been accused of fabricating his data. An alert Retraction Watch reader has pointed us to a 1999 paper by Stapel with the impossibly ironic title: “Framed and misfortuned: identity salience and the whiff of scandal.”

In the article, which appeared in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Stapel and two colleagues reported the results of survey they’d conducted of Dutch psychologists in the wake of a major plagiarism scandal involving an unidentified Dutch clinical psychologist (“we decided to use neither the name of the person who was accused of plagiarism nor the university to which he was affiliated,” they wrote).

Put briefly, the researchers claimed to have found (rather unsurprisingly) that how psychologists identified themselves professionally dictated how strongly they were affected personally by the scandal. Money quote: Continue reading Did Diederik Stapel tip his pitches in a paper about a plagiarism scandal?

Group under investigation retracts second paper, claims errant figure was just a placeholder

The authors of a 2010 Journal of Immunology paper have retracted it, saying that part of one of the figures was actually a placeholder from another experiment.

According to the retraction notice for “Stimulation of FcgRI on Primary Sensory Neurons Increases Insulin-Like Growth Factor-I Production, Thereby Reducing Reperfusion-Induced Renal Injury in Mice” by Naoaki Harada, Juan Zhao, Hiroki Kurihara, Naomi Nakagata, and Kenji Okajima: Continue reading Group under investigation retracts second paper, claims errant figure was just a placeholder

Duke sued over Potti case

Anil Potti, courtesy Duke

From the “not terribly surprising” department: Eight patients — or their estates — who enrolled in clinical trials at Duke overseen by Anil Potti and colleagues have sued the university.

The 90-page lawsuit, which names Duke, Potti, Potti’s boss Joseph Nevins, CancerGuide Diagnostics (in which Potti and Nevins had an interest), among others, does a thorough job of documenting the case. In particular, it reviews the history of the trials, which were stopped in 2009, restarted, and then stopped for good as more and more issues came to light. It emphasizes, as you would expect, that Duke and the Potti team were warned repeatedly about problems in their work, notably by Keith Baggerly and a colleague.

Potti and colleagues have, as Retraction Watch readers will remember, now retracted five papers.

The plaintiff’s attorney, Thomas Henson, told Raleigh-Durham’s ABC11: Continue reading Duke sued over Potti case

Publisher error handling two eye papers leads to retractions, new policy on notices

We can only imagine how Joe Hollyfield felt to learn from us, of all people, that his journal, Experimental Eye Research, had retracted two manuscripts in a recent issue.

The papers, “Mechanisms of retinal ganglion cell injury and defense in glaucoma,” by Qu J, Wang D, and Grosskreutz CL, and “Mitochondria: Their role in ganglion cell death and survival in primary open angle glaucoma,” by Osborne, NN, carried the same retraction notices:

This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author(s) and/or editor. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy.

Because in our experience such unhelpful wording often masks interesting details — read, author misconduct — we called Hollyfield for comment. He graciously walked us through the retractions, explaining the case in detail, until we realized that we were talking about different papers entirely. Hollyfield, it turned out, thought we were asking about the travails of Sangiliyandi Gurunathan, an eye researcher from India whom we’d previously covered and whose work recently had been retracted by Experimental Eye Research and other journals for image manipulation.

But Hollyfield was unaware of the two retractions we’d intended to talk about with him and told us he’d look into them.

Here’s what he learned: Continue reading Publisher error handling two eye papers leads to retractions, new policy on notices