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What happens to postdocs sanctioned by the ORI?

AJOB primaryIn a finding that’s unlikely to surprise too many people, but which is interesting work nonetheless, researchers have found that trainees whom the U.S. Office of Research Integrity finds to have committed misconduct rarely publish much again. According to the paper, only 11% of trainees who committed misconduct published more than one article a year.

That’s not quite the case for more seasoned scientists who show up in ORI reports, as the researchers — Barbara Redman and Jon Merz — had discovered in previous work. Here’s the abstract of the new paper, “Effects of Findings of Scientific Misconduct on Postdoctoral Trainees,” which appeared in August in the American Journal of Bioethics — Primary Research (not the AJOB, as we’d first reported): Continue reading What happens to postdocs sanctioned by the ORI?

It’s an epidemic! Another group does the right thing, retracting neuroscience paper

jneurosciAs the bumper sticker says, “Regime change starts at home.” Seems to be the case with scientists these days.

This month we have seen commendable instances of researchers retracting papers after identifying flaws in their own data — an outbreak of integrity that has us here at Retraction Watch applauding. (We’ve even created a new category, “doing the right thing,” at the suggestion of a reader.)

Today’s feel-good story comes from the lab of Karl Svoboda, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus, in Ashburn, Va. Back in June, Svoboda and his colleagues published “Whisker Dynamics Underlying Tactile Exploration,” in the Journal of Neuroscience. Here’s what the abstract had to say about the study:

Continue reading It’s an epidemic! Another group does the right thing, retracting neuroscience paper

A Cancer Cell mega-correction for highly cited researcher who retracted paper earlier this year

cancer cell 9-13MIT’s Robert Weinberg, a leading cancer researcher who retracted a Cancer Cell paper earlier this year for “inappropriate presentation” of figures, has corrected a different paper in the same journal.

Here’s the correction for “Species- and Cell Type-Specific Requirements for Cellular Transformation:”

We were apprised recently of errors made in the assembly of Figures 2B, 3A, 4A, 4B, and 5G, resulting in the incorporation of incorrect representative images in these figures. These errors occurred during the electronic assembly and have no bearing on the conclusions of the study. The corrected figures are shown below. The authors apologize for any possible confusion this might have caused.

Here’s the original Figure 2 and caption, followed by the new version (read all the way to the end of the post for more details on how this came to light): Continue reading A Cancer Cell mega-correction for highly cited researcher who retracted paper earlier this year

Doing the right thing: Researchers retract quorum sensing paper after public process

Pamela Ronald, via UC Davis
Pamela Ronald, via UC Davis

We’ll say it again: We like being able to point out when researchers stand up and do the right thing, even at personal cost.

In December 2011, Pamela C. Ronald, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues published a paper in PLOS ONE,”Small Protein-Mediated Quorum Sensing in a Gram-Negative Bacterium.” Such quorum sensing research is a “hot topic” right now, so not surprisingly the paper caught the attention of other scientists, and the media, including the Western Farm Press. The study has been cited eight times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

One of those scientists who took notice was Ronald’s UC Davis colleague Jonathan Eisen, who posted about the paper on his blog. That was on January 9, 2012. But if you go to that post today, you’ll see that Eisen struck through most of it, and added this comment: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Researchers retract quorum sensing paper after public process

Papers on potential cancer drugs retracted for image manipulation

ccr 9-13A group of researchers at the Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York has retracted two papers for image manipulation.

The retraction notices for “PM02734 (Elisidepsin) Induces Caspase-Independent Cell Death Associated with Features of Autophagy, Inhibition of the Akt/mTOR Signaling Pathway, and Activation of Death-Associated Protein Kinase” and “The Phosphatase Inhibitor Menadione (Vitamin K3) Protects Cells from EGFR Inhibition by Erlotinib and Cetuximab” say the same thing: Continue reading Papers on potential cancer drugs retracted for image manipulation

Ask Retraction Watch: Should these papers be retracted?

protein scienceLast week, we reported on a new paper by Scripps Research Institute researchers in which they described how two of their previous papers had been based on mistaken interpretations. The authors wrote in their new paper that they were retracting the earlier works, but the journal had told them the papers would be corrected instead.

We had asked Protein Science editor Brian Matthews for clarification, and he emailed us late last week:
Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: Should these papers be retracted?

Frontiers papers on GMO debate, diabetes retracted for improperly cited text

frontiers plantThe author of a review article on diabetes has been forced to retract the paper after it emerged that he failed to properly credit some of the text — an omission we generally associate with the word plagiarism.

The article, “Colonic flora, probiotics, obesity and diabetes,” was written by Paul Marik, of Eastern Virginia Medical School, and appeared in July 2012 in Frontiers in Endocrinology. It has been cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the retraction notice:

Continue reading Frontiers papers on GMO debate, diabetes retracted for improperly cited text

Doing the right thing: Researchers retract two studies when they realize they misinterpreted data

protein scienceWhat do you do when new experiments show that you interpreted the data from your old experiments the wrong way?

Some scientists might just shrug and sweep those errors — and their previous papers — under the rug. But when it happened to Jeffery Kelly, of the Scripps Research Institute, and his colleagues, they decided to retract their earlier work.

Here’s the abstract of their new paper (we bolded a few sentences for emphasis): Continue reading Doing the right thing: Researchers retract two studies when they realize they misinterpreted data

Author with six recent corrections retracts JBC paper questioned on PubPeer

jbc 8-23-13Rakesh Kumar, a professor at the George Washington University, has retracted a paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) that was recently questioned on PubPeer.

Here are Peer1’s comments from PubPeer about the paper, “Mechanism of MTA1 Protein Overexpression-linked Invasion:” Continue reading Author with six recent corrections retracts JBC paper questioned on PubPeer

Paper on “better-than-average effect” retracted for being, well, worse than average

pers soc psych bullPerhaps what Garrison Keillor says about people is also true of scientific papers:

Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

There’s been another retraction in social psychology, but before you lump it together with the field’s problem children — read: Diederik Stapel — it seems to be an example of researchers coming forward about an honest error.

Here’s the notice for “The Motivated Self: Self-Affirmation and the Better-Than-Average Effect,” originally published last year in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin: Continue reading Paper on “better-than-average effect” retracted for being, well, worse than average