Category: uk retractions

The British Medical Journal has retracted an article that found UK households bought 10% less sugar in the form of soft drinks after the government started taxing the manufacturers on the sugar in their products. 

The authors of the paper found an error in their analysis when following up on the work, and republished a corrected version – with less flashy results – in BMJ Open. 

The original article, “Changes in soft drinks purchased by British households associated with the UK soft drinks industry levy: controlled interrupted time series analysis,” appeared in March 2021. It has been cited 84 times in the scientific literature, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, as well as by media outlets and by policy documents for the UK government and World Health Organization. 

Continue reading BMJ retracts article about effect of UK sugar tax after authors find error

A former lecturer in the modern languages department of the University of St Andrews in Scotland committed plagiarism in seven papers published between 2014 and 2022, according to the results of an institutional investigation. 

The university posted a statement on its website about the outcome of the investigation that did not name the researcher, who Retraction Watch has learned is Ros Holmes. 

Holmes has two retractions in our database, both for plagiarism. 

Continue reading University finds former lecturer with two retractions plagiarized in seven publications

A new report from a UK Parliament committee calls for scientific publishers to correct and retract papers much quicker than they currently do, for the sake of research integrity and reproducibility. 

The Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee of the House of Commons issued its report today, following an inquiry to which Retraction Watch and one of our cofounders, Ivan Oransky, provided evidence. Many others also gave evidence, including sleuth Dorothy Bishop. 

The report is an extensive look at current issues of reproducibility and research integrity, and includes many recommendations. About the role of scientific publishers, the report says: 

Continue reading Retractions should not take longer than two months, says UK Parliament committee

A Lancet journal has issued an expression of concern for a 2019 paper by a group in the United Kingdom whose work was found to have included fabricated data and other misconduct.  

The article, “Serotonergic pathology and disease burden in the premotor and motor phase of A53T α-synuclein parkinsonism: a cross-sectional study,” came from a team at King’s College London led by researchers at the school’s Neurodegeneration Imaging Group. The senior author on the paper, which appeared in Lancet Neurology, was Marios Politis, who has since left KCL for the University of Exeter. 

The study earned press coverage in The Guardian – “Parkinson’s disease ‘could be detected early on by brain changes‘” – and the BBC: “Early brain ‘signs of Parkinson’s’ found.” 

Here’s the expression of concern: 

Continue reading KCL investigation finds misconduct in Lancet Neurology paper

Eric Lam, a highly-published cancer specialist, has been fired from his post at Imperial College London following a university investigation that found misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned.

Lam’s work has been the subject of scrutiny on PubPeer for some three years, dating back to a 2018 post pointing out suspicious images in a 2003 paper by him and his colleagues in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. In 2019, his group corrected a 2011 paper in Oncogene, a Springer Nature title, for image problems.

However, the new retraction marks the first such retraction for the researcher, whose LinkedIn page states that he is now affiliated with Sun Yat-Sen University, in China. According to an Imperial College London spokesperson:

Continue reading Imperial College London researcher fired for research misconduct

The authors of an October 2020 paper on the genetics of thyroid cancer are getting praise from the journal for retracting their article after learning that it contained a critical error. 

The paper, “Mendelian randomization supports a causative effect of TSH on thyroid carcinoma,” had appeared in Endocrine-Related Cancer, a bioscientifica property. 

Jonathan Fussey, a surgeon at Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, and the first author of the study, told us: 

Continue reading Authors earn praise — but a “poorly worded” retraction notice — for flagging their errors

Nearly two years after a University of Liverpool investigation determined that a former researcher there fabricated his data, the journal Molecular Medicine has issued expressions of concern about four papers by that researcher.

As we reported in 2018, Daniel J. Antoine — once a promising young liver specialist — was found to have made up much of his spectroscopic findings. According to the university: 

Continue reading Journal flags papers two years after university investigation finds researcher faked data