Category: by country

The way science should work: A swift, clearly worded retraction in G&D, after legitimate questions by another group

A retraction appeared online last week in Genes & Development (G&D) that neatly brings together a few recent Retraction Watch threads: Whether retraction is appropriate for a failure to replicate, and whether retraction notices should give enough detail for readers to know what actually happened.

The retraction notice, for “Alternative splicing produces high levels of noncoding isoforms of bHLH transcription factors during development,” by Rahul N. Kanadia and Constance L. Cepko, reads: Continue reading The way science should work: A swift, clearly worded retraction in G&D, after legitimate questions by another group

The new math: How to up your citations (hint: duplication). Plus a correction for Naoki Mori

Here’s a good way to increase the number of times your work is cited: Publish studies three times.

On second (or third) thought, maybe not: The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry & Molecular Biology has retracted a pair of articles by three Japanese researchers who apparently liked their own work so much they decided to submit it, and submit it—and submit it again.

Here’s the notice for the first paper, a 2004 publication titled “Vitamin D receptor (VDR) promoter targeting through a novel chromatin remodeling complex,” by Shigeaki Kato, Ryoji Fujiki and Hirochika Kitagawa, fairly well-known molecular endocrinologists at the University of Tokyo: Continue reading The new math: How to up your citations (hint: duplication). Plus a correction for Naoki Mori

Anil Potti resurfaces at South Carolina cancer center

courtesy Duke

Anil Potti, the oncologist who has been forced to retract four papers because of results that could not be reproduced, and resigned last fall from Duke, has a new job. He’s joined the Coastal Cancer Center, an oncology practice with four offices in South Carolina and one in North Carolina.

The Duke Fact Checker was apparently the first to report the news. The Cancer Letter, which has been out front on the Potti story for a year, first reported the news.*

It’s not surprising that Potti’s Coastal Center bio leaves out any mention of his troubled research and the fact that he faked a Rhodes scholarship on a grant application. Investigations into what happened at Duke are ongoing. Continue reading Anil Potti resurfaces at South Carolina cancer center

Geology retraction unearths a dead co-author and plagiarized image of “Himalayan” rock actually from Norway

The journal Geology has retracted a paper that, when it was published in May 2010, was hailed as a major step forward in understanding what happened when the Indian and Asian land masses collided millions of years ago. As The Hindu reported when the paper was first published:

Dr. [Anju] Pandey and her colleagues used sophisticated analytical techniques to demonstrate the occurrence of relict majorite, a variety of mineral garnet, in rocks collected from the Himalayas. Majorite is stable only under ultra-high pressure conditions, meaning that it must have been formed very deep down in the Earth’s crust, before surfacing millions of years later.

“Our findings are significant because researchers have disagreed about the depth of subduction of the Indian plate beneath Asia,” said Dr. Pandey.

In fact, the previous depth estimates conflicted with estimates based on computer models. The new results suggest that the leading edge of the Indian plate sank to a depth around double that of previous estimates.

“Our results are backed up by computer modelling and will radically improve our understanding of the subduction of the Indian continental crust beneath the Himalayas,” said Pandey, according to an NOC release.

It turns out, however, that as best as anyone can tell, the key data are from Norway, not the Himalayas, and were published in 1998 by another group. According to the retraction notice, which appears in the May 2011 issue (link to 1998 paper added): Continue reading Geology retraction unearths a dead co-author and plagiarized image of “Himalayan” rock actually from Norway

Update on Journal of Neuroscience retractions: Authors being investigated. Plus, editor explains why notices say nothing

We have updates on the two mysterious Journal of Neuroscience retractions we reported on yesterday. One is that we have learned that there is a university investigation into the work of one of the teams that retracted one of the studies. More on that in a bit.

Two, the journal’s editor, John Maunsell, responded to our request for comment, and we’re quoting his entire email (with annotation) because we think it raises important issues: Continue reading Update on Journal of Neuroscience retractions: Authors being investigated. Plus, editor explains why notices say nothing

Journal of Neuroscience retracts two, one 13 years old

The June 8 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience includes two retractions:

The notices are completely uninformative. They read: Continue reading Journal of Neuroscience retracts two, one 13 years old

Elsevier apologizes for Applied Mathematics Letters retraction, pays author’s legal fees

Elsevier, the publisher of Applied Mathematics Letters, which retracted a paper questioning the second law of thermodynamics earlier this year, will issue an apology and pay $10,000 in legal fees.

According to John West at the Discovery Institute’s blog, which broke the story: Continue reading Elsevier apologizes for Applied Mathematics Letters retraction, pays author’s legal fees

Three more withdrawals for Naoki Mori, and a hint of the mother of retractions

Lest readers of Retraction Watch had forgotten about Naoki Mori, the cancer researcher who liked his Western blots so much he decided to reuse them — and reuse them some more — he’s back.

The British Journal of Haematology (BJH) has retracted two papers Mori published in that journal, and BMC Microbiology has retracted another, bringing the total of retractions involving his work to at least 19 by our count. [See update at end.]

The BJH issued both retractions online in the end of February, and they’ve since come out in print. Here’s the retraction notice for the first paper, in the BJH (first only because it was published first): Continue reading Three more withdrawals for Naoki Mori, and a hint of the mother of retractions

So when is a retraction warranted? The long and winding road to publishing a failure to replicate

Sometime in 2009, the University of Nottingham’s Uwe Vinkemeier thought something was wrong with two papers he read in Genes & Development, one from 2006 and one from 2009. The papers claimed to show how changes to a protein called STAT1 affect programmed cell death. So he did what scientists are supposed to do: He tried to repeat the experiments, to replicate the results.

He couldn’t.

So he submitted the results to G&D, which was initially willing to publish the data along with a rebuttal by the original authors. But everyone seemed to be dragging their feet. Continue reading So when is a retraction warranted? The long and winding road to publishing a failure to replicate

On second thought: PNAS retracts two papers after results fail replication

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) ran two retractions this week.

One of those papers was “Properdin homeostasis requires turnover of the alternative complement pathway,” which first appeared online in October of last year. The researchers were looking at the interaction between complement — a sort of primitive immune system — and a protein called properdin.

From the notice: Continue reading On second thought: PNAS retracts two papers after results fail replication