Category: israel retractions

Biologists delete paper from literature after realizing they’d deleted too many genes

Researchers deleted more genes than they bargained for in a Drosophila strain, a mistake that resulted in a retraction of a paper from 2007.

Ron Wides, a biologist specializing in pattern development at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and colleagues have retracted a paper published in Mechanisms of Development after his lab found that their technique to delete the Ten-a gene ended up deleting other nearby genes, too.

It was deletions of other genes, and not Ten-a, that killed the fruit flies, Wides concluded. His group had also concluded, erroneously, that Ten-a is what’s known as a “pair-rule” gene. Fruit fly embryos develop in stacked segments, like tubes of Pringles; pair-rule genes guide the development of alternating segments. Those other loci, and not Ten-a, caused lethality and caused the flies to develop improperly early,  Wides concluded.

The retraction reads in full: Continue reading Biologists delete paper from literature after realizing they’d deleted too many genes

Anesthesia journal editor says “if you blow us off, it will be retracted,” and sticks to his word

The Journal of Clinical Anesthesia has retracted a paper by a group of Israeli authors whose study may not have had appropriate ethical approval — or even collected the reported data.

The article, “Accidental venous and dural puncture during epidural analgesia in obese parturients (BMI > 40 kg/m2): three different body positions during insertion,” was published in 2010 by a team from Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, in Zerifin, one of the country’s largest hospitals and an affiliate of Tel Aviv University. Dural puncture is an infrequent but potentially serious complication of labor anesthesia, causing severe headaches and, in rare cases, death if untreated.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Anesthesia journal editor says “if you blow us off, it will be retracted,” and sticks to his word

Mistaken notice as Ben Gurion researchers retract vitamin D paper for duplication

“Clare Francis,” a prolific pseudonymous Retraction Watch tipster, emailed us recently to flag a retraction in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (JSBMB) of “The anti-inflammatory activity of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 in macrophages,” a paper by Amos Douvdevani and colleagues at Ben Gurion University in Israel.

Here’s what we found when we clicked on the notice for the 2007 paper, which has been cited 32 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge:

This article has been retracted at the request of the authors, in response to concerns raised by the research committee at the authors’ institution. The authors stated the committee had given approval but the committee states no approval was given. The research committee has asked the authors to retract the paper and the authors have agreed.

That sounded odd to us, since it was unclear what approval was needed, or hadn’t been given. Continue reading Mistaken notice as Ben Gurion researchers retract vitamin D paper for duplication

“Representative” image in liver paper leads to retraction

The journal International Immunology has retracted a 2007 article, “Amelioration of hepatic fibrosis via beta-glucosylceramide-mediated immune modulation is associated with altered CD8 and NKT lymphocyte distribution,” by a group of Israeli liver researchers whose manuscript included a composite image that didn’t quite call itself such.

The study, by scientists at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, purported to show that a soy-derived compound could reduce liver disease in mice. It has been cited 17 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The journal is published by Oxford and the Japanese Society for Immunology.

From the notice: Continue reading “Representative” image in liver paper leads to retraction

Another retraction of Spirocor research

Remember Spirocor, the Israeli company that closed down a clinical trial involving its “respiratory stress” test for coronary artery disease because the data underpinning the validity of the method proved unreliable? The problem led to the retraction of two articles, about which we’ve previously reported. But we also found a study by some of the same researchers, who include scientists in Israel and the United States, that had been presented at the 2010 meeting of the American Heart Association and published in the journal Circulation.

That abstract, No. 14426 “Accuracy and Usefulness of Finger Pulse Wave Analysis during Brief Deep Breathing Exercise (Respiratory Stress Response) as a Marker of Significant Coronary Artery Disease,” has now been retracted — making, to our knowledge, the entire body of published research on the Spirocor product an editorial memory.

Here’s the notice, which appears within the text of the abstract: Continue reading Another retraction of Spirocor research

More on SPIROCOR noninvasive heart disease test: Second retraction (in fact the first) says little

Since we first wrote about the travails of Spirocor’s bedside, noninvasive test for coronary artery disease, we’ve been trying, without much success, to find out more information.

But as they say about every dog, our day has come.

As we initially reported, Ron Waksman, a prominent Washington, D.C. cardiologist and editor-in-chief of Cardiovascular and Revascularization Medicine, was first author of one of two papers about the Spirocor technology that were published in 2010. The other, by Shiyovich, et al, was retracted earlier this month by the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, which triggered our interest in this case.

At the time, we couldn’t find any evidence that Waksman’s article had been retracted, and Waksman has not responded to multiple requests for comment. Today we spoke with Kate Coons, the journal’s managing editor, who told us that the authors had sought a retraction for the article, “An innovative noninvasive respiratory stress test indicates significant coronary artery disease,” in December, and that it had posted one on its website on Jan. 6 of this year. It will be in print in an upcoming issue.

The notice is not available on Medline, but it can be found on ScienceDirect: Continue reading More on SPIROCOR noninvasive heart disease test: Second retraction (in fact the first) says little

Tangled leads: Cardiac study retraction reveals a company’s stopped trials, and lots of questions

A retraction in an obscure journal. An equally obscure retraction notice. An Israeli company with no web presence. Conflicts of interest involving authors and editors.

That’s what we’ve uncovered so far after noticing the other day that the American Journal of the Medical Sciences (AJMS) had retracted a May 2010 article by a group of Israeli heart doctors led by Arthur Shiyovich, of Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

The paper described promising results in a study of a new test for diagnosing coronary artery disease at the bedside by measuring aspects of a patient’s pulse at the fingertip.

As AJMS editor David Ploth told us, the approach had seemed “kind of innovative” to him, so he’d accepted the manuscript: “It seemed like it might have some applicability.”

Ploth was therefore surprised sometime later to receive a letter from the authors requesting that the journal retract their paper. According to the journal: Continue reading Tangled leads: Cardiac study retraction reveals a company’s stopped trials, and lots of questions