We have an update on the case of a University of Utah lab that retracted two Cell Metabolism papers last month after a fired lab technician disposed of two lab notebooks without permission. The team has now corrected two other papers, one in Blood and the other in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Here’s the notice from Blood: Continue reading Two new corrections for Utah group that retracted two Cell Metabolism papers for missing notebooks
The other day we brought you the story (well, not quite a STORY) of a group of researchers who had to retract a paper in the Journal of Computational Chemistry because of a “computation error.” We still don’t know what that means.
That was fresh in our minds when we came across the following retraction notice in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research: Continue reading Premature delivery? Paper on rapid assay for ruptured placenta pulled for “mishandling” of tests
If you’re going to publish in the Journal of Computational Chemistry, it probably makes sense to have one’s computer tuned up for the task.
Or else you might wind up like a group of researchers in China who had to endure this misfortune: Continue reading Computational chem journal retracts article for, um, computation error
One of the biggest stories so far out of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting that just ended in Chicago was that of T-DM1, which, according to Ivan’s Reuters colleagues, “extended the length of time breast cancer patients lived without their disease getting worse.” (The news was even the subject of an embargo break.)
The widely-hailed study of Roche’s drug was led by Duke’s Kimberly Blackwell, who told The New York Times: Continue reading Lead author of major breast cancer study announced at ASCO co-authored two corrected papers with Anil Potti
Dipak Das, the UConn researcher whom the university earlier ths year found to have fabricated or falsified data more than 100 times, has four more retractions to his name.
The notices appear in the June 1, 2012 issue of the American Journal of Physiology: Heart and Circulatory Physiology, and suggest that Das was not all that cooperative: Continue reading Retraction count for resveratrol researcher Dipak Das rises to 12
When the first sentence of a science paper reads like this, you might think you’re in for quite a ride:
Jumping out of an airplane may seem like a crazy and scary thing to do, but for a skydiver it is a fun and exciting experience.
Unfortunately for the authors of an earlier version of that paper comparing gamblers and skydivers, published in 2011 in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, the ride was short-lived, according to a retraction notice just published: Continue reading Psychologists take a gamble on using data about risky behavior, and are forced to retract a paper
The European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry has published a curious retraction notice for a paper in its February 2012 issue from a group of Indian scientists.
The abstract of the article,”Proton-pumping-ATPase-targeted antifungal activity of cinnamaldehyde based sulfonyl tetrazoles,” is still available on Medline:
Here’s what the abstract of the paper said about the study: Continue reading ‘Molecular characterization’ errors lead to retraction from medicinal chemistry journal
A senior member of a high-profile foreign aid research team has left the project on the heels of a Lancet correction of a heavily criticized paper the team published earlier this month.
Paul Pronyk, who until last week was director of monitoring and evaluation at Columbia University’s Center for Global Health and Economic Development, which runs the Millennium Villages Project, wrote a letter to the Lancet acknowledging errors in the paper, “The effect of an integrated multisector model for achieving the Millennium Development Goals and improving child survival in rural sub-Saharan Africa: a non-randomised controlled assessment,” originally published May 8. That admission came after Jesse Bump, Michael Clemens, Gabriel Demombynes, and Lawrence Haddad wrote a letter criticizing the work, which was published this week accompanied by corrections to the paper: Continue reading Millennium Villages Project forced to correct Lancet paper on foreign aid as leader leaves team
For some journals, thorough retraction notices are the rule — and, when misconduct is involved, the price authors pay for abusing the trust of the editors and the readers. Others seem to take a more casual approach. Guess which we think is best.
Consider the case of a group of researchers in China led by Tan Jinquan, an immune system expert at Wuhan University. Over the past two years or so, Jinquan and colleagues have lost no fewer than a half-dozen papers containing evidence of image manipulation. But, depending on the journal pulling the articles, you might not know it.
Earlier this month, we reported on a correction by Luk van Parijs, the biologist the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) fired in 2005 after he admitted to making up data.
Immunity has now run a retraction involving van Parijs, dated May 25, 2012, for 2003’s “Autoimmunity as the Consequence of a Spontaneous Mutation in Rasgrp1”: Continue reading An Immunity retraction for Luk van Parijs, three years after the ORI found evidence of fabrication in the paper