Category: by author

Expressions of Concern arrive in Milena Penkowa case

The scientific literature has started to hint at the fallout of a case of potential fraud in Denmark. As Nature reported in January:

A high-profile neuroscientist in Denmark has resigned after facing allegations that she committed research misconduct and misspent grant money. Meanwhile, the administration at the university where she worked has been accused of ignoring her alleged misdeeds for the better part of a decade.

Milena Penkowa, a 37-year-old researcher who was lauded in 2009 by the Danish science ministry, denies all the accusations against her and stands by her work, but left her post as a full professor at the University of Copenhagen in December.

Penkowa has published about 100 papers, many of them focused on neuroscience and a family of proteins known as metallothioneins. While the investigation into her lab continues, two journals have published Expressions of Concern about Penkowa’s work: Continue reading Expressions of Concern arrive in Milena Penkowa case

U. Luxembourg official offers more detail — or tries to — on Carsten Carlberg case

We’re continuing to try to find out more about the developing story surrounding Carsten Carlberg. Carlberg, as we have reported, was senior author on two papers retracted last year because one of the authors, a graduate student in Carlberg’s lab at the University of Eastern Finland  (formerly Kuopio), fabricated data.

Carlberg holds a dual appointment with the University of Luxembourg, which recently announced the results of a months-long investigation into his behavior.

We have been relying on unofficial translations of a May 20th statement by university officials such as this one, by a generous Retraction Watch reader: Continue reading U. Luxembourg official offers more detail — or tries to — on Carsten Carlberg case

Four genetics papers retracted for duplication

Petter Portin, of the University of Turku, Finland, has been forced to retract four papers because they were duplicates of work he had already published.

Two of those retractions appear in the February 2011 issue of Hereditas. Here’s one retraction notice (link added):

The following article from Hereditas: Portin, P. ‘The effect of the mus309 mutation, defective in DNA double-strand break repair, on crossing over in Drosophila melanogaster suggests a mechanism for interference’, published online in Wiley Online Library (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/) on 1 September 2009, Hereditas, volume 146, pp. 162–176, has been retracted by agreement between the author, the Editor-in-Chief, Anssi Saura, and John Wiley & Sons A/S. The retraction has been agreed due to prior publication of a similar article in Genetica.

And the other (link added): Continue reading Four genetics papers retracted for duplication

*Grad student’s misdeeds may cost prof Carsten Carlberg a job

In November, we reported on two retractions in Cell and the Journal of Molecular Biology involving misconduct in the lab of biochemist Carsten Carlberg, of the University of Eastern Finland, in Kuopio.

Carlberg also holds an appointment in computational biology at the University of Luxembourg, which last year launched an investigation — at his behest, he says — into the case. Well, the officials in Luxembourg finally have spoken, and Carlberg, it seems, may soon be out of his job there, the Tageblatt newspaper reports.

Carlberg, to our knowledge, has never been accused of ethical violations in the case, and the inquiry didn’t change that. Rather, the bad actor appears to be his former post-doc graduate student in Finland, Tatjana Degenhardt. But the University of Luxembourg may seek to dismiss Carlberg after concluding that, as the senior author of the two retracted articles, he bore responsibility for the validity of the results and, by implication, the deception.

Ironically, Carlberg says he asked the school to undertake the investigation even though none of Degenhardt’s research had been conducted using that school’s resources. In an email today to Retraction Watch, he writes: Continue reading *Grad student’s misdeeds may cost prof Carsten Carlberg a job

Bulfone-Paus saga continues: Her supporters and home institution exchange sharp letters

Silvia Bulfone-Paus

Retraction Watch readers may have been following the case of Silvia Bulfone-Paus, whose lab has been forced to retract 12 papers amid allegations of scientific misconduct. As is often true in such cases, the story doesn’t end with those retractions. We’ve just become aware of a fascinating exchange in March and April between Bulfone-Paus’s supporters and her home institution, Germany’s Research Center Borstel.

First, some background: Karin Wiebauer, a former post-doc in Bulfone-Paus’s lab, flagged the potential misconduct, in great detail, for Bulfone-Paus in a November 2009 email. (In fact, she had brought it to her attention years earlier.) But Bulfone-Paus did not tell Borstel officials about the allegations until late February 2010. Borstel’s investigation into Bulfone-Paus’s lab began in July 2010.

Once that began, a person referring to himself as “Marco Berns” began emailing officials, journalists, and others about the situation. Nature called that move a “smear campaign,” and the emails “libellous,” but in retrospect they — and Wiebauer’s analysis — appear to have been spot-on, based on the eventual report of the Borstel committee. That report — which found data manipulation by two of Bulfone-Paus’s post-docs — led the institute’s Scientific Advisory Board to ask for Bulfone-Paus’s resignation. She only tendered that a month later, after more pressure.

So, with that as a preamble: If we were to characterize the letter, which we’ve made available here, we’d call it a good example of “shoot the messenger.” It’s signed by 25 scientists, starting with Desmond Tobin of the University of Bradford in the UK and ending with Andrzej Slominski of the University of Tennessee. Continue reading Bulfone-Paus saga continues: Her supporters and home institution exchange sharp letters

How journal editors can detect and deter scientific misconduct, part 2, from COPE’s Liz Wager

Last week, we shared Ivan’s presentation on how journal editors can detect and deter misconduct from the annual Council of Science Editors meeting. This week, we’re pleased to share another presentation from that panel. This one is by Liz Wager, chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

Wager’s name will be familiar to Retraction Watch readers. She’s appeared here a number of times, and just last month published a study of retraction notices. Just today, she testified about peer review before the UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee.

In her CSE presentation, she discusses what editors can and can’t do to ferret out fraud. Make sure to read through to the end, where she discusses a study of how journal editors are much more likely to think that fraudulent results are appearing in other journals. (Hint: If you’re right that it’s happening in someone else’s journal, and the editor of that journal thinks it’s happening in yours, well…)

Scroll down a bit so that the entire first slide, and navigation, are visible: Continue reading How journal editors can detect and deter scientific misconduct, part 2, from COPE’s Liz Wager

The Importance of Being Reproducible: Keith Baggerly tells the Anil Potti story

For those Retraction Watch readers who have been following the case of Anil Potti — who has now retracted four papers — Keith Baggerly’s name will likely be familiar. Baggerly is the bioinformatician at M.D. Anderson in Houston who has been publicly questioning, in letters, papers, and The Cancer Letter, work by Potti et. al.

Yesterday, Baggerly gave a keynote at the Council of Science Editors meeting in Baltimore. It was a fascinating — and riveting — walk through how, after a group at M.D. Anderson asked him and his team to evaluate the Potti group’s tools for predicting whether given patients would respond to different chemotherapies, Baggerly’s group unraveled the Potti research.

In his talk, Baggerly demonstrated all of the mislabeling and other easily recognized errors his team found when they sifted through the raw data. And yet there were a number of wince-inducing moments in which Baggerly described the cool reception he had from several journals.

There have been a lot of calls recently that journals should require that authors deposit their data.  There’s none more powerful than when they come at the end of a talk showing how that could have stopped a faulty clinical trial from ever starting.

Baggerly told Retraction Watch he just wants this story to get the widest attention possible, so he was glad to allow us to post his slides. They get appropriately technical, given the crowd, but it’s worth it. You can follow a very unofficial and rough transcript at this Twitter search, since Ivan live-tweeted the talk. Or just click over to the slideshow here.

Science publishes replication of Marc Hauser study, says results hold up

There has been some news over the past few weeks about Marc Hauser, the Harvard psychologist found guilty of misconduct by the university last year. First, because Harvard had listed him in a course catalog, The Crimson said that he might be teaching again, following a ban. But that turned out not to be the case, as The Boston Globe reported.

Today, Science lifted the embargo on a paper by Hauser and Justin Wood, now of the University of Southern California, showing that results published in the journal in 2007 — and later questioned — have held up. The abstract: Continue reading Science publishes replication of Marc Hauser study, says results hold up

Update: After unexplained delay, Cell Cycle retracts paper related to work that formed the basis of anti-cancer company

In December, we reported on the retraction of a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on a potential treatment for breast cancer. We later found out that the retracted research was part of the basis of a company that had an initial public offering a few weeks later. How the company dealt with the news of the retraction made for an interesting follow-up, and speaks well of the principles of the principals.

Here’s another follow-up. The retraction notice has now appeared of a related review in Cell Cycle that we reported would be withdrawn. Here’s the text: Continue reading Update: After unexplained delay, Cell Cycle retracts paper related to work that formed the basis of anti-cancer company

Semen editorial costs Greenfield presidency of American College of Surgeons

courtesy University of Michigan

As we reported nearly two weeks ago, the eminent surgeon Lazar Greenfield recently lost his position as editor-in-chief of Surgery News over a Valentine’s Day editorial that some readers, particularly women, found offensive.  Surgery News is an in-house publication of the American College of Surgeons (although it’s published by Elsevier), and Greenfield was scheduled to take the gavel in October as the new president of the college.

No longer.

As two Retraction Watch readers have noted tonight, the surgery group has notified its members that Greenfield has stepped down from his official position with college. Here’s the letter that was sent today: Continue reading Semen editorial costs Greenfield presidency of American College of Surgeons