Update: After unexplained delay, Cell Cycle retracts paper related to work that formed the basis of anti-cancer company

In December, we reported on the retraction of a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on a potential treatment for breast cancer. We later found out that the retracted research was part of the basis of a company that had an initial public offering a few weeks later. How the company dealt with the news of the retraction made for an interesting follow-up, and speaks well of the principles of the principals.

Here’s another follow-up. The retraction notice has now appeared of a related review in Cell Cycle that we reported would be withdrawn. Here’s the text: Continue reading Update: After unexplained delay, Cell Cycle retracts paper related to work that formed the basis of anti-cancer company

Physics Letters A paper gets retracted twice, but the issues remain “unsettled”

A retraction with a complex and yet unclear narrative appears in the April 25, 2011 issue of Physics Letters A. According to the notice, for “Nuclear spin magnetic resonance force microscopy using slice modulation:”

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editors of Physics Letters A because there are unsettled issues on how the research was carried out, how the data were acquired and analyzed. The article was removed from the journal issue before printing although it appeared online. In addition, the article was accidentally published online twice in the same journal.

As the notice suggests, this was actually the second retraction, of the same paper. Here was the first, in 2008, shortly after the paper was published. And here is a removal notice, from later that year. We haven’t come across such an occurrence before, although we’ve been writing Retraction Watch for less than a year.

There are six editors of Physics Letters A, and we tried them all for comment on the “unsettled issues.” A few pointed to Burkhard Fricke, the communicating editor for the paper, who is no longer with the journal. He didn’t respond to requests for more information.

A few referred us to Karine van Wetering, a publisher at Elsevier: Continue reading Physics Letters A paper gets retracted twice, but the issues remain “unsettled”

Remember William Hamman, the pilot who claimed to be a cardiologist? A retraction appears

In December, we reported on the case of William Hamman:

It’s a mind-boggling story: A United Airlines pilot claims to be a cardiologist and was eagerly sought after for medical conferences at which he taught doctors teamwork. He shared millions in grants, according to the Associated Press. But as the AP reports, William Hamman wasn’t a cardiologist at all, having never even finished medical school.

Hamman had published at least six papers using false credentials, including an MD and a PhD. In December, Jean Gayton Carroll, editor in chief of Quality Management in Health Care, told us that the journal would be “reviewing and evaluating” a paper by Hamman it published last year, “Using in situ simulation to identify and resolve latent environmental threats to patients safety: case study involving operational changes in a labor and delivery ward.” That review, we learned today, has led to a retraction.

According to the notice, which is refreshingly detailed (we added a link): Continue reading Remember William Hamman, the pilot who claimed to be a cardiologist? A retraction appears

Stanford group retracts JACS paper, but revisits and validates findings

A prominent Stanford University chemistry lab has been forced to retract a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). According to the retraction notice:

Due to inconsistencies between some of the assigned structures and the experimental data that appear in the paper, the authors retract this publication. We regret very much this unfortunate occurrence.

The Retraction Watch tipster who alerted us to this retraction explained what the original paper reported: Continue reading Stanford group retracts JACS paper, but revisits and validates findings

Forget chocolate on Valentine’s Day, try semen, says Surgery News editor. Retraction, resignation follow

We have a bizarre tale to relate involving the journal Surgery News, which recently lost its editor-in-chief over a rather strange editorial he wrote in the February issue of the magazine.

The ill-fated — and, we’ll stipulate, ill-advised — commentary has led to a de facto retraction of the entire publication — meaning that although no retraction notice exists that we’re aware of, neither does the issue exist in the publication’s archives.

But first, some important background. Surgery News is a trade magazine with a complicated structure. The publication, which describes itself as “the official newspaper of the American College of Surgeons [ACS],” is published by Elsevier, which supplies medical news through its International Medical News Group division. The society provides its own news, as well as the lead editor, a surgeon, who until recently was Lazar Greenfield. Greenfield, of the University of Michigan, also happens to be the president-elect of the ACS, twin responsibilities that put him at the pinnacle of influence for his specialty.

Now back to the offending editorial, which we’ll bring you in its entirety since 1) we think given the events that you should read the whole thing, and 2) because the ACS has taken the entire February issue off its website we can’t link to it even if we wanted to (more on that later). Under the heading “Gut Feelings,” Greenfield wrote (we added links): Continue reading Forget chocolate on Valentine’s Day, try semen, says Surgery News editor. Retraction, resignation follow

Another Cell retraction, and more questions than answers

A new retraction has appeared in the journal Cell. The article, “DNA-PKcs-PIDDosome: A Nuclear Caspase-2-Activating Complex with Role in G2/M Checkpoint Maintenance,” had initially appeared in February 2009.

According to the notice: Continue reading Another Cell retraction, and more questions than answers

Where did I park my car? Psychological Science retracts working memory study

In what might be considered a model for how retraction notices should look, Psychological Science has retracted a 2008 paper, “Gaining control: Executive training and far transfer of the ability to resolve interference.” According to the notice — which includes two tables: Continue reading Where did I park my car? Psychological Science retracts working memory study

Elsevier weighs in on Brazilian fraud case

Yesterday, we reported on 11 retractions in various Elsevier chemistry journals of papers from a group of Brazilian scientists who are alleged to have fabricated nuclear magnetic resonance images used in their articles.

We’d spoken with the senior author on those papers, Claudio Airoldi, who defended himself and his colleagues and denied that the NMR images had been manipulated.

Today, we heard from Tom Reller, vice president for global corporate relations at Elsevier, who offered a different version of events.

Here’s what Reller had to say, straight from his email: Continue reading Elsevier weighs in on Brazilian fraud case

Hazardous materials: Elsevier retracts 11 chemistry papers from Brazilian group, citing fraud

The publisher Elsevier has announced that it is retracting 11 papers from a team of Brazilian researchers over concerns that the scientists committed fraud in the studies.

The notice is pegged to an October 2009 article in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science titled “Immobilization of 5-amino-1,3,4-thiadiazole-thiol onto kanemite for thorium(IV) removal: Thermodynamics and equilibrium study” by Denis L. Guerra, Marcos A. Carvalho, Victor L. Leidens, Alane A. Pinto, Rúbia R. Viana, and Claudio Airoldi.

According to the notice: Continue reading Hazardous materials: Elsevier retracts 11 chemistry papers from Brazilian group, citing fraud

Freedom from Information Act? Another JBC retraction untarnished by any facts

There’s helpful but uninformative:

Ivan: What’s the weather like today?

Adam: Sunny.

And then there’s uninformative as served up by the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

We’ve already recounted one teeth-grinding experience with the JBC, a publication of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The case involved two papers in JBC by Axel Ullrich, an esteemed cancer researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. According to Ullrich, one of his then-postdocs, Naohito Aoki, had manipulated figures that appeared in the papers, necessitating their retraction.

Round two involves another JBC retraction of a 2000 paper by Aoki and co-author Tsukasa Matsuda, titled ‘A cytosolic protein-tyrosine phosphatase PTP1B specifically dephosphorylates and deactivates prolactin-activated STAT5a and STAT5b.’ The paper has been cited more than 100 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

According to the notice: Continue reading Freedom from Information Act? Another JBC retraction untarnished by any facts