Category: united states

IRB mishap costs MD Anderson team a paper on prostate cancer

bjuifeb14A group of researchers from MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has lost a 2013 paper in BJU International for running afoul of their institution’s ethics review board, and of military reviewers, as well.

The paper, “Many young men with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screen-detected prostate cancers may be candidates for active surveillance,” looked at prostate cancer screening in men 55 and under — considered young for the older-man’s disease. According to the abstract: Continue reading IRB mishap costs MD Anderson team a paper on prostate cancer

Failure to reproduce leads to retraction of Nature Chemical Biology herbicide paper

nat chem bioA group of researchers at Emory has retracted a highly regarded paper after being unable to reproduce its key results.

Here’s the notice from Nature Chemical Biology: Continue reading Failure to reproduce leads to retraction of Nature Chemical Biology herbicide paper

Psychiatric Times retracts essay on “satanic ritual abuse”

psych timesSome Retraction Watch readers may recall this episode, recounted in a recent op-ed by Lew Powell:

During the 1980s and early ’90s a wave of nonexistent “satanic ritual abuse” claims shut down scores of day cares such as Little Rascals, McMartin in California and Fells Acres in Massachusetts. In virtually every instance the charges lacked any basis in fact. Today no reputable psychologist or other social scientist will argue otherwise. The defendants were innocent victims of a “moral panic” that bore striking similarities to the Salem witch hunts 300 years earlier.

Psychologist Richard Noll found the charges troubling too, so he wrote a piece last year for Psychiatric Times because: Continue reading Psychiatric Times retracts essay on “satanic ritual abuse”

Blood retracts two red cell illustrations that “could have misled” readers

blood cover214Blood has retracted two 2013 illustrations of red cells by researchers from South Africa and the United States because, somewhat confusingly, they didn’t conform to the journal’s criteria for publishing such material.

Here’s the notice for one of the images, “Red blood cell and platelet interactions in healthy females during early and late pregnancy, as well as postpartum”: Continue reading Blood retracts two red cell illustrations that “could have misled” readers

Leadership journal to retract five papers from FIU scholar

fred-walumbwa
Fred O. Walumbwa, via FIU

Retraction Watch has learned that The Leadership Quarterly, a management journal published by Elsevier, plans to retract five papers by a Florida researcher poised to “rock” the field — but probably not quite in the way a press release intended — whose findings in the articles were questioned by readers.

The scholar, Fred O. Walumbwa, had a “stellar history of excellence and achievement,” according to this August 2013 press release from Florida International University announcing his move from Arizona State: Continue reading Leadership journal to retract five papers from FIU scholar

Faked HIV vaccine research presentation retracted

retrovirologyIn December, we reported on the case of Dong-Pyou Han, who was found by the Office of Research Integrity to have spiked rabbit blood samples to make it look as though a vaccine for HIV was working.

At the time, Han’s former institution, Iowa State, told us that “one oral presentation and some abstracts will be removed from the web.”

One of those retractions has occurred, in Retrovirology, of “Eliciting broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV-1 that target gp41 MPER.” Here’s the notice: Continue reading Faked HIV vaccine research presentation retracted

Former Hopkins and Pitt cancer researcher notches sixth retraction

GetzenbergRobert Getzenberg, a former researcher at Hopkins and Pitt, has retracted a sixth paper, this one in Cancer Research.

Here’s the notice for “Mechanistic Analysis of the Role of BLCA-4 in Bladder Cancer Pathobiology:” Continue reading Former Hopkins and Pitt cancer researcher notches sixth retraction

Citation manipulation: Journal retracts paper because author boosted references to a journal he edits

jpdcA group of researchers have lost a paper in a computer science journal because they were apparently using its references to help the impact factor of a different journal that one of them edits.

Here’s the notice for “Impacts of sensor node distributions on coverage in sensor networks,” a paper first published in 2011 and cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Citation manipulation: Journal retracts paper because author boosted references to a journal he edits

Biotech company retracts Parkinson’s treatment study after “possible deviation from protocol”

LCTLiving Cell Technologies (LCT), a biotech company headquartered in Australia, has retracted a 2011 paper purporting to show that their product reversed Parkinson’s symptoms in rats after “being unable to reconfirm their reported results and a possible deviation from the protocol.”

LCT is developing NTCELL, which, according to their site: Continue reading Biotech company retracts Parkinson’s treatment study after “possible deviation from protocol”

Science hasn’t retracted paper that university, NSF investigators wanted withdrawn

Stefan Franzen, via NCSU
Stefan Franzen, via NCSU

On Saturday, we highlighted a great two-part series by Joseph Neff of the News & Observer diving into the story of “Stefan Franzen, a chemistry professor at North Carolina State University who has been trying unsuccessfully to correct the scientific record.” Today, that series became a three-part series, with a new story revealing that an investigation by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) had found “reckless” falsification in the work in question.

One of the key papers in the controversy was published by Lina A. Gugliotti, Daniel L. Feldheim, and Bruce E. Eaton in Science in 2004 and cited 125 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. (Eaton is now at the University of Colorado at Boulder.) In 2011, Nature reported on the situation: Continue reading Science hasn’t retracted paper that university, NSF investigators wanted withdrawn