A mistake in structure identification has sunk a paper by researchers at the NIH, MIT, and Seoul National University in the Cell Press journal Chemistry and Biology.
Here’s the notice for “Peptide-Based Inhibitors of Plk1 Polo-box Domain Containing Mono-anionic Phosphothreonine Esters and Their Pivaloyloxymethyl Prodrugs”: Continue reading Structure error sinks NIH-MIT-SNU peptide paper
A math paper in the Journal of Inequalities and Applications has been retracted after it was discovered the authors had included a student’s work without acknowledging her.
One of the authors, however, told us it was an honest mistake, and that the editor pushed for retraction instead of correction “to protect this journal and its impact factor.”
Here’s the notice for “On the Kirchhoff matrix, a new Kirchhoff index and the Kirchhoff energy”: Continue reading Student denied credit, math article retracted
File this one under strange excuses.
A cancer paper was retracted on September 17 for a double publication. According to the notice in which the authors admit to duplicating the “opening to the readers,” which we assume is the introduction, there was no need to cite the article “because it had not yet been printed at that time.”
Here’s the notice for “The effect of HER-2 polymorphism according to age on the risk and pathologic feature of endometrial cancer”: Continue reading Authors retract HER-2 endometrial cancer paper for 2x publication
PLoS One has retracted a 2013 article on atherosclerosis in mice over concerns about the integrity of the data.
The paper, “The Effect of Soluble RAGE on Inhibition of Angiotensin II-Mediated Atherosclerosis in Apolipoprotein E Deficient Mice,” came from a group of researchers in South Korea.
It purported to show that: Continue reading Data questions prompt retraction of PLOS ONE cardiovascular paper
Proof that organic chemistry is hard for everyone, not just pre-meds: A paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society was retracted after the structures of compounds being studied were “misassigned.”
Another study by author Doo Ok Jang, also in JACS, was retracted in 2013 for the same reason; you can read our coverage here. Jang and Sang Yoon Kim published that one in 2008; the paper we’re talking about today was published in 2010 by Jang and Sung Jun Kim.
Here’s the notice for “Indium-Mediated Catalytic Enantioselective Allylation of N-Benzoylhydrazones Using a Protonated Chiral Amine:” Continue reading Structure fumble sinks second of author’s JACS papers
It’s always amusing to see how far a journal will bend over backward to avoid coming out and calling something “plagiarism.”
We’ve got two notices for you that exemplify the phenomenon, which we discussed in our Lab Times column last year.
The first, an article about apartheid, was presented at a student conference and published in the Polyvocia: The SOAS Journal of Graduate Research. It was later retracted because the author “should have used quotation marks around material written verbatim from that source.”
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Mistaken punctuation, misreferencing, and other euphemisms for plagiarism
Almost two years ago, we brought you — with the help of Trevor Stokes — the story of a stem cell researcher in Korea whose publication record, and career, unraveled after evidence of image manipulation surfaced in her work.
We’ve reported on four retractions, all in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, by Soo-Kyung Kang, formerly of Seoul National University resulting from the efforts of a whistleblower. There has been another in Human Gene Therapy: Continue reading Stem cell researcher in Korea up to half a dozen retractions
A group of authors in South Korea has lost their 2012 paper in Clinical Cardiology because, well, they weren’t a group after all.
The paper, “Correlation of Electrocardiographic Changes and Myocardial Fibrosis in Patients With Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Detected by Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging,” came from corresponding author Hyun Suk Yang, of Konkuk University School of Medicine in Seoul, and a half-dozen colleagues. At least, that’s what the manuscript said.
But according to the retraction notice, Yang had nothing to do with the paper — nor did five other co-authors. Continue reading Heart study retracted because it was submitted without permission of most of the authors
A group of authors in Korea has lost their 2013 paper on treating vision loss after one of the two cases they’d reported turned out to have been fatally flawed.
The paper, “Isolated central retinal artery occlusion as an initial presentation of paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria and successful long-term prevention of systemic thrombosis with eculizumab,” had appeared in the Japanese Journal of Ophthalmology.
According to the abstract: Continue reading “Critical data” errors force retraction of vision paper
A group of bird researchers in Korea has lost their 2006 paper on DNA barcoding of that country’s avian species because they feathered the article with material from others.
The paper, “DNA barcoding Korean birds,” appeared in Molecules and Cells, published by Springer for the Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology and has been cited 88 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the abstract: Continue reading Clone call for bird gene bar-coding paper