Category: japan retractions

More evidence scientists continue to cite retracted papers

Screen Shot 2015-02-17 at 2.38.46 PMA new paper in the MDPI journal Publications reports that the only controlled study on the effect of giving COPD patients Omega-3 has been cited 52 times since being retracted. Of those, only two mentioned the retraction.

In 2005, Chest published an article that found that COPD patients who took omega-3 supplements for 2 years experienced improvements in their condition, such as better walking tests and a decrease in sputum cytokines. But when an institutional investigation found the lead author had falsified the data, the journal retracted the paper in 2008.

That’s news to many researchers in the field. Among the 50 papers that cited the research after 2008 without stating it had been retracted, 20 included “specific data” from the paper, while the other 30 “cited the reference in passing.” Articles citing the retracted study have themselves been cited 947 times total, pointing to the ripple effect this kind of unwitting mention can have throughout the literature.

Continue reading More evidence scientists continue to cite retracted papers

Takeda group retracts paper after realizing “novel” compound had already been synthesized…by a colleague

BMC_CoverA group of scientists at Takeda Pharmaceutical, including vice president Yoshinori Ikeura, has lost a paper after realizing that their “novel” compound had been previously synthesized by another Takeda researcher.

The 2011 paper, published in Elsevier journal Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry, was the subject of a 2012 corrigendum adding two authors to the paper. The retraction appeared online in December of this year.

Seems like they didn’t add enough authors, though. Continue reading Takeda group retracts paper after realizing “novel” compound had already been synthesized…by a colleague

Can’t spell Novartis without VART: Drug study retracted for conflict of interest, data issues

JHH(Cover).inddA major scandal in Japan over the Novartis hypertension drug valsartan has resulted in a retraction from the Journal of Human Hypertension. 

Frequent Retraction Watch subject Hiroaki Matsubara resigned his post at Kyoto Prefectural University in 2013, after his work on valsartan was shown to be riddled with data errors and undisclosed conflicts of interest.

Also that year, suspicions about Chiba University hypertension researcher Issei Komuro’s work were first raised by an anonymous blog, which detailed numerous image manipulations in the researcher’s published works. Komuro, who frequently collaborated with Matsubara, has been a senior author on a number of valsartan papers, including the now-retracted one, which reported the results of Novartis-sponsored Valsartan Amlodipine Randomized Trial in 2011 without reporting the Novartis funding.

The paper, which has been cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, had already been subject to a correction in 2013:  Continue reading Can’t spell Novartis without VART: Drug study retracted for conflict of interest, data issues

Shigeaki Kato up to 33 retractions, with five papers cited a total of 450 times

Shigeaki Kato
Shigeaki Kato

Former University of Tokyo researcher Shigeaki Kato continues to put big numbers on the board.

Last month, we reported on his 26th, 27th, and 28th retractions, all in Nature Cell Biology and cited close to 700 times. Yesterday, EMBO Journal and EMBO Reports published a total of five more retractions for the endocrinology researcher, who resigned from the university in 2012 following investigations found he had faked images.

Here’s the notice for “A cell cycle-dependent co-repressor mediates photoreceptor cell-specific nuclear receptor function:” Continue reading Shigeaki Kato up to 33 retractions, with five papers cited a total of 450 times

Journal retracts paper when authors refuse to pay page charges

gm cropsTaylor & Francis has withdrawn a paper published online after a disagreement with the authors about page charges.

Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, Judit Dobránszki, Jean Carlos Cardoso, and Songjun Zeng had submitted the manuscript, “Genetic transformation of Dendrobium,” to GM Crops and Food: Biotechnology in Agriculture and the Food Chain earlier this year. It was accepted on July 29, and posted online on October 30.

Taylor and Francis — who recently took over the journal from Landes Biosciences — had requested $1,000 in page charges, and $340 in color charges. But Teixeira da Silva — who has been made persona non grata by an Elsevier journal following “personal attacks and threats,” and had a paper retracted by a Springer journal after he demanded the editors’ resignations — insisted in an email to the publisher that Continue reading Journal retracts paper when authors refuse to pay page charges

Yet another study of widely touted cancer “cure” retracted

cancer immunology immunotherapyA third study of GcMAF, a protein being used to treat a variety of conditions from AIDS to autism to cancer, all without the blessing of health agencies, has been retracted.

Here’s the notice in Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy for “Immunotherapy of metastatic colorectal cancer with vitamin D-binding protein-derived macrophage-activating factor, GcMAF:” Continue reading Yet another study of widely touted cancer “cure” retracted

Networking paper retracted for “overlap” with author’s prior publication

jmanagementstudiesHere at Retraction Watch, we have a lot of fun exploring all the different kinds of science that cross our paths.

Some, though, we’re just not qualified to understand, like this retracted paper in the Journal of Management Studies, which according to the abstract “demonstrates that the persistence of brokerage positions decreases broker performance.”

What is clear is the retraction: the author already published the conclusion in a Japanese management journal in 2011.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Networking paper retracted for “overlap” with author’s prior publication

Hayabusa Science retraction made official, but behind a paywall

science 62714Science has published the retraction of a 2006 paper about an asteroid, following a report in its news pages that the study’s authors had requested the move.

Here’s the paywalled — tsk, tsk — notice: Continue reading Hayabusa Science retraction made official, but behind a paywall

“Truly extraordinary,” “simply not credible,” “suspiciously sharp:” A STAP stem cell peer review report revealed

science 62714Retraction Watch readers are of course familiar with the STAP stem cell saga, which was punctuated by tragedy last month when one of the authors of the two now-retracted papers in Nature committed suicide.

In June, Science‘s news section reported:

Sources in the scientific community confirm that early versions of the STAP work were rejected by Science, Cell, and Nature.

Parts of those reviews reviews have surfaced, notably in a RIKEN report. Science‘s news section reported:

For the Cell submission, there were concerns about methodology and the lack of supporting evidence for the extraordinary claims, says [stem cell scientist Hans] Schöler, who reviewed the paper and, as is standard practice at Cell, saw the comments of other reviewers for the journal. At Science, according to the 8 May RIKEN investigative committee’s report, one reviewer spotted the problem with lanes being improperly spliced into gel images. “This figure has been reconstructed,” the RIKEN report quotes from the feedback provided by a Science reviewer. The committee writes that the “lane 3” mentioned by the Science reviewer is probably the lane 3 shown in Figure 1i in the Nature article. The investigative committee report says [co-author Haruko] Obokata told the committee that she did not carefully consider the comments of the Science reviewer.

The entire reports, however, have not been made available. Retraction Watch has obtained the full text of the editor’s cover letter and reviews of the rejected Science paper. The reviews are full of significant questions and doubts about the work, as would be expected in a rejection. We present them here, to fill in some of the gaps and help readers consider how the research eventually made it through peer review: Continue reading “Truly extraordinary,” “simply not credible,” “suspiciously sharp:” A STAP stem cell peer review report revealed

Authors ask Science to retract Hayabusa asteroid paper

jaxa_logoThe Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has requested that Science retract a 2006 paper about the makeup of asteroid Itokawa as observed from the spacecraft Hayabusa, the news section of Science reports.

Instead of calibrating their equipment on Earth, the scientists assumed they’d see both magnesium and silicon in the x-ray spectra, and used that assumption to assess the rest of the chemical composition of the asteroid.

The paper may be based on faulty assumptions, but the conclusions have been backed up by other published papers, according to the Science magazine report: Continue reading Authors ask Science to retract Hayabusa asteroid paper