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Voinnet retracts highly cited paper, bringing his total to 7

coverOlivier Voinnet, a well-known plant scientist at the ETH in Zurich, has notched his 7th retraction for a highly cited paper. The 2003 paper was pulled when “additional image manipulations” came to light after The Plant Journal issued a correction earlier this year.

The retraction follows an investigation into — and then retraction of — several other papers co-authored by Voinnet. The authors originally corrected the paper after they learned one image had been duplicated, and repeating the experiment found the “same interpretation and conclusions” held true. But when the corresponding author learned of additional “data manipulation,” they decided to retract the paper altogether.

Here’s the retraction notice for “An enhanced transient expression system in plants based on suppression of gene silencing by the p19 protein of tomato bushy stunt virus:”

Continue reading Voinnet retracts highly cited paper, bringing his total to 7

Correction changes results about genetics of neurological disorder

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A paper on the genetics underlying a common neurological disorder has issued a correction that influences the results of the paper.

“Genetic Diagnosis of Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease in a Population by Next-Generation Sequencing” was published in BioMed Research International, and looked at 81 families with the disease. The researchers identified mutations that might be connected to the disease. The problem, says the correction note, is that the authors classified a couple variants in one patient’s genes as “likely pathogenic,” when their true nature was less clear.

The correction explains the new numbers:

Continue reading Correction changes results about genetics of neurological disorder

NEJM pulls letter by heart researcher who faked patient records

Screen Shot 2015-11-30 at 10.08.23 AMA heart researcher who fabricated patient records has notched retraction number six — this time, for a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine. She has two more retractions forthcoming.

The retraction comes at the request of Anna Ahimastos’s co-authors, following an investigation into her work by her former workplace, the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute. The investigation was not able to verify the data referenced in the letter, which includes a citation for a recently retracted JAMA paper.

The retraction note is similar to others for Ahimastos’s papers:

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After lawsuit, university releases misconduct report about nutrition researcher Chandra

R K Chandra
R K Chandra, self-proclaimed father of nutritional immunology (from www.drrkchandra.com)

Memorial University in Canada has released a five-year-old report of an investigation, confirming a former nutrition professor had committed misconduct in a 2001 paper.

The 53-page report — about Ranjit Kumar Chandra, a prominent and once-lauded researcher — focuses on a Nutrition paper that examined the effectiveness of vitamins patented by Chandra. The report, authored by MUN professor emeritus William Pryse-Phillips, lists 41 problems with the paper, which it concludes:

…was not in full compliance with the scientific, ethical, and/or integrity standards of Memorial University at the time.

The paper was retracted in 2005; the report is dated 2009. We asked Pryse-Phillips why the university took so long to release it. He told us:

Continue reading After lawsuit, university releases misconduct report about nutrition researcher Chandra

Management researcher with 7 retractions issues “clarifications” to 2013 paper

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The authors of a paper on supportive supervisors just want readers to “better understand the reported findings,” and so have issued multiple “clarifications” in a corrigendum note.

Some of the issues addressed in the note have been raised on PubPeer.

The paper’s author list includes one Fred Walumbwa, formerly an Arizona State University management researcher, some of whose work has succumbed to scrutiny in the the past two years. His current list: seven retractions, a megacorrection, an expression of concern, and now this.

“Unraveling the relationship between family-supportive supervisor and employee performance,” published in Group & Organization Management, has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the note in full:

Continue reading Management researcher with 7 retractions issues “clarifications” to 2013 paper

Chemists pull non-reproducible paper on method to make opal films

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When two chemists based in China couldn’t reproduce experiments in their paper on opal films, they retracted it.

As the retraction note explains:

In this article we report a method to fabricate 2D TiO2–WO3 composite inverse opal films via a mechanical co-assembly route with a template of polystyrene spheres. Upon repeating the experiments described, we found that this was not an effective method for forming the films; often the film was broken or did not form at all.

The note also explains why the experiment didn’t work:

Continue reading Chemists pull non-reproducible paper on method to make opal films

Four JBC retractions add up to 8 in total for cancer research pair

47.coverThe Journal of Biological Chemistry is retracting four papers by a pair of cancer researchers at Tulane University, bringing their total to eight.

The retractions are all for reusing parts of figures, either within a paper or from other papers by the pair. Thanks to a new policy at the journal to publish informative notes, we know the figures that were problematic, and the papers that they borrow from. 

An investigation by Tong Wu and Chang Han’s former employer, the University of Pittsburgh, had already led to four retractions for the pair, including two issued this summer.

First up, “Activation of cytosolic phospholipase A2α through nitric oxide-induced S-nitrosylation. Involvement of inducible nitric-oxide synthase and cyclooxygenase-2,” which has been cited 50 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the note: Continue reading Four JBC retractions add up to 8 in total for cancer research pair

3-D printing paper accidentally includes secrets

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A paper on 3-D printing has been pulled because it “inadvertently” included some sensitive material.

We’re not sure which parts of the paper were the specific problem. But the sensitive material may have something with how to improve the surfaces of 3-D printed products, which is the subject of “Feasibility of using Copper(II)Oxide for additive manufacturing.”

Here’s what the paper, published in the International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing contains, according to the abstract:

Additive manufacturing, in spite of its ever wider application range, is still plagued by issues ranging from accuracy to surface finish. In this study, to address the latter issue, the feasibility of using Copper(II)Oxide powder with a polymer binder deposited through a Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printing technique is explored.

Here’s the retraction note:

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Duplication shatters two photonic crystal papers

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Two journals published by Elsevier are retracting a pair of material science papers that appear to share figures.

The papers  — in Materials Letters and Optics Communications — discuss photonic crystals, a kind of material used to manipulate light. They share the same first author, Zheng-qi Liu at Jiangxi Normal University and  Nanjing University in China, as well as six other authors. Each paper presents one of the duplicated figures as a slightly different material.

One of the duplicated figures is a a picture of a photonic crystal taken with a scanning electron microscope that gives detail at the level of a few micrometers (it looks like a honeycomb, but it’s composed of tiny spheres). It’s Figure 1a in both papers:

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Osteoporosis paper felled by concerns with “scientific integrity”

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A paper suggesting that exposure to sunlight might help prevent hip fractures in the elderly has been retracted, due to duplication and “concerns about the underlying data.”

An expression of concern that appeared last July flagged the 2005 paper as containing text that matched another paper with the same first author that was published in 2011. According to the publisher, that duplicated text sparked a closer look at the text, which raised concerns about the scientific integrity of the paper.

The retraction note, published by the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, says that the first author was responsible for the content of the paper: Continue reading Osteoporosis paper felled by concerns with “scientific integrity”