Category: australia retractions

“Our manuscript unintentionally failed to meet academic and publication standards”

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Authors of a 2014 review paper about the use of “as needed” medications by people with mental health diagnoses are retracting it, but we’re scratching our heads as to why.

The retraction appears in “The experiences of mental health professionals’ and patients’ use of pro re nata (PRN) medication in acute adult mental health care settings: a systematic review protocol of qualitative evidence,” published by The JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports.

From the abstract of the paper:

Pro re nata is a Latin phrase meaning “for an unforseen need or contingency”…The authors of the systematic review found that although the practice of using “as required” medication is common there is no good evidence of whether this is the best way of helping people to be less agitated when compared to being given a regular dose of medication.

We’re not entirely sure what went wrong here. This is the full contents of the note:

Continue reading “Our manuscript unintentionally failed to meet academic and publication standards”

“Gap in the proof” deletes math paper

BAZThe author of a paper on the properties of a vector space is retracting it from The Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society after a “false application” of a theorem led to a “gap in the proof.”

Here’s the abstract of “On a Weakly Uniformly Rotund Dual of a Banach Space,” in full:

Every Banach space with separable second dual can be equivalently renormed to have weakly uniformly rotund dual. Under certain embedding conditions a Banach space with weakly uniformly rotund dual is reflexive.

And the retraction note, published in the August issue of the journal:

Continue reading “Gap in the proof” deletes math paper

Sheep study pulled for issues with “the validity of data” and “attribution of authorship”

vetjournalThe Veterinary Journal has retracted a 2014 paper that found that sheep eat more when their food is supplemented with urea (yes, the same compound found in urine).

The notice was published after a “complaint which raised serious concerns.”

Here’s more from the notice:

Continue reading Sheep study pulled for issues with “the validity of data” and “attribution of authorship”

Data “mismatch” and author’s illness pluck bird sex-ratio study from literature

coverInaccessible data and an author’s illness are to blame for the retraction of a paper on sex ratios of baby finches, according to the authors.

The paper, “Experimental evidence that maternal corticosterone controls adaptive offspring sex ratios,” published in Functional Ecology, outlined how a hormone in mother finches can “skew” the number of males vs females that hatch from the eggs in her nest.

But after questions about the data were raised, the authors were unable to address the “mismatch” between the experimental data and those that were published. Compounding the situation is the fact that, while working on the paper, first author Sarah Pryke at the Australian National University “was suffering from a medical condition that likely impaired her cognitive abilities,” according to a statement from Pryke’s co-authors.

An email to Pryke was met with an out-of-office reply:

Continue reading Data “mismatch” and author’s illness pluck bird sex-ratio study from literature

JCI issues mega-correction for multiple myeloma paper

125-7-coverThe Journal of Clinical Investigation has issued a lengthy correction to a paper about the role of the immune system in the progression and treatment response of multiple myeloma.

The correction changes details from the name of an author to figure legends, and adds entire supplemental figures.

Shortly after the paper’s publication on April 20th, commenters on PubPeer pointed out duplications in multiple figure panels.

Last month, the journal issued an extensive correction note for “Immunosurveillance and therapy of multiple myeloma are CD226 dependent,” which, in part, tries to explain the multiple duplications.

It starts out noting a typo:

Continue reading JCI issues mega-correction for multiple myeloma paper

Another author withdrawal from JBC earns another opaque notice

Journal of Biological Chemistry1The authors of a 2014 study on the biochemical changes that can encourage the progression of cancer have withdrawn the paper from the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The post from the JBC – which we’ve noted are rarely helpful – doesn’t provide any details or reason for the withdrawal. As usual, this is all we got:

Continue reading Another author withdrawal from JBC earns another opaque notice

Two more retractions make four for bone researcher

JAnatBone anatomists have retracted two papers on primate jawbone structure from the Journal of Anatomy due to “errors in the validation protocol and data,” marking the fourth retraction for one of the authors.

Olga Panagiotopoulou retracted two other papers over the past year, all of which were due to a common methodological problem. As Panagiotopoulou — who completed the work in the UK, before joining the University of Queensland in Australia in 2013 —  explained to us in April,

Continue reading Two more retractions make four for bone researcher

“The first author assumes all responsibility:” Malaria vaccine article retracted for image manipulation

InfectAndImmunAuthors of a 2012 article in Infection and Immunity investigating a malaria vaccine strategy are retracting it because it “contains several images that do not accurately reflect the experimental data.”

The paper, “Fine Specificity of Plasmodium vivax Duffy Binding Protein Binding Engagement of the Duffy Antigen on Human Erythrocytes,” has been cited 9 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

The retraction notice places the blame for the image shenanigans squarely on the first author, Asim Siddiqui, who is currently listed on LinkedIn as a faculty member at the College of Applied Medicine at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading “The first author assumes all responsibility:” Malaria vaccine article retracted for image manipulation

Editor of Medical Journal of Australia fired after criticizing decision to outsource to Elsevier

Stephen Leeder
Stephen Leeder

Public health expert Stephen Leeder has been ousted as editor of Australia’s top medical journal after he questioned the decision to outsource the journal’s production and other tasks to publishing giant Elsevier.

Leeder, emeritus professor at the University of Sydney, told the Medical Observer he was asked to leave when he and the journal’s publisher, AMPCo, couldn’t see eye to eye on the decision:

Continue reading Editor of Medical Journal of Australia fired after criticizing decision to outsource to Elsevier

Skeleton crew’s second paper broken over methodology issues; more retractions to appear

Olga Panagiotopoulou, via University of Queensland

Bone researcher Olga Panagiotopoulou of the University of Queensland has lost a second paper over “errors in the validation protocol and data.”

The retracted paper in the Journal of Biomechanics, about primate jaws, was subject to an expression of concern in May 2014 November 2013, one of two Panagiotopoulou’s group issued last year over methodological problems. The other paper was later retracted. According to Panagiotopoulou, there will be two more retractions forthcoming, both in the Journal of Anatomy. 

According John Hutchinson, last author of the other retracted paper, that withdrawal was the result of an investigation at his school, the Royal Veterinary College.

Panagiotopoulou emailed us with an explanation:

Continue reading Skeleton crew’s second paper broken over methodology issues; more retractions to appear