Category: united states

Data fabrication by ex-Harvard researcher takes down paper on Huntington’s disease

A researcher at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital is retracting a paper due to “inappropriate manipulation and fabrication of data” by the first author.

According to the retraction notice, published Aug. 22, corresponding author Marian DiFiglia is retracting the paper because the alleged misconduct by the first author, Antonio Valencia:

led to an incorrect conclusion in the paper that NADPH activity is elevated in Huntington’s disease (HD). Some original data were missing and efforts to replicate findings using the reported method or an alternative approach were unsuccessful. An institutional faculty panel supports the decision and the reasons for the retraction.

The notice added that the alleged data manipulation and fabrication affected bar graphs in two of the paper’s figures.

Terri Ogan, a spokesperson for Mass General, told Retraction Watch that Valencia no longer works at the institution, but declined to say whether there has been an investigation into the alleged misconduct: Continue reading Data fabrication by ex-Harvard researcher takes down paper on Huntington’s disease

Amid legal battle, psych journal issuing caution about torture paper

A psychology journal plans to issue an editor’s note about a controversial paper exploring what the author called “the biggest scandal to hit” the American Psychological Association (APA) in years.

The note cautions readers that the subject of the paper, published in the SAGE journal Teaching of Psychology, is part of a pending lawsuit, and that “teachers considering using the article in their classrooms” should watch for developments in the case.   Continue reading Amid legal battle, psych journal issuing caution about torture paper

PNAS retracts paper linked to ex-Ohio State researcher who had chemistry PhD revoked

Researchers from The Ohio State University and The Scripps Research Institute are retracting a 2013 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences after they uncovered data irregularities.

The retraction notice for “Somatic hypermutation maintains antibody thermodynamic stability during affinity maturation,” will appear online on Sept. 5. The paper purported to find clues about what makes antibodies stable at different temperatures. In a press release issued at the time of publication, corresponding author Thomas Magliery, of The Ohio State University, said the paper might help pharmaceutical companies make better antibody-based drugs. It has been cited 36 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

At some point — we’re not exactly sure when — the authors discovered that the antibody stability data was suspect. According to the notice: Continue reading PNAS retracts paper linked to ex-Ohio State researcher who had chemistry PhD revoked

Carlo Croce, OSU cancer researcher under investigation, retracts paper

Carlo Croce

A researcher whose work has come under repeated scrutiny has retracted a 2008 paper for “errors that occurred in the construction” of various figures.

Carlo Croce, the corresponding author of the newly retracted paper, has been dogged by misconduct accusations for years — as recently described in the New York Times. His employer, The Ohio State University, has recently re-opened an investigation into his work. Seven of his papers have now been retracted, and fourteen have been corrected for image and text issues such as manipulation, duplication, and errors, as well as two others earning expressions of concern.

Here’s the retraction notice for “Fhit Interaction with Ferredoxin Reductase Triggers Generation of Reactive Oxygen Species and Apoptosis of Cancer Cells,” in the Journal of Biological Chemistry: Continue reading Carlo Croce, OSU cancer researcher under investigation, retracts paper

When is a citation not enough?

Last year, Boris Ratnikov was reading a paper and saw a familiar image.

He quickly realized: The image was from a 2012 paper he’d written, but wasn’t cited. The 2016 Cell Metabolism paper he was reading had copied a figure from his 2012 PLOS ONE paper without referencing it. 

In September 2016, Ratnikov, who is based at Sanford-Burnham-Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, in La Jolla, California, emailed an editor at Cell Metabolism to express his concern about the duplication and omitted citation.  

Although the journal told us it “carefully investigated Dr Ratnikov’s concerns,” the editors ultimately did not think the literature needs correcting.

Does failing to cite a paper constitute plagiarism? Continue reading When is a citation not enough?

Ketamine-depression paper retracted following investigation at Yale

A psychiatry journal has retracted a 2011 paper exploring the use of ketamine to treat patients with severe depression following an investigation at Yale University.

According to the retraction notice, Yale determined that the paper, published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, did not accurately describe the research. But the study’s lead author, Gregory Larkin, says he believes the retraction “is wholly unnecessary, serving neither patients nor science.”

Continue reading Ketamine-depression paper retracted following investigation at Yale

Case closed? Fired Pfizer researcher slated for seven retractions

Pfizer has discovered two additional papers that merit retraction from the lab of a former employee. One of the papers, published in Clinical Cancer Research, was retracted earlier this month.

Last year, Pfizer requested retractions of five papers from the lab of breast cancer researcher Min-Jean Yin, who was fired after an investigation revealed image duplication. The papers were first questioned on PubPeer. By April 2017, all five papers had been retracted.

After the initial probe, the pharmaceutical giant conducted a follow-up review of papers originating from Yin’s lab (which Leonid Schneider posted about on May 23). A spokesperson for the company told us that the review revealed two more articles that merited retraction “in light of data integrity issues relating to the figures therein.” The 2013 paper in Clinical Cancer Research was retracted earlier this month at Pfizer’s request. On May 1, 2017, Pfizer asked PLOS ONE to retract a 2013 paper. Continue reading Case closed? Fired Pfizer researcher slated for seven retractions

Publisher flags paper on same-sex parenting after neo-Nazi group cites it

A publisher has issued an expression of concern (EoC) about a study that claimed children with same-sex parents were at greater risk of depression and abuse, after posters using statistics from the paper to support a homophobic message appeared in Australia and the US.

On Aug. 21, several news websites reported that these posters were appearing in Melbourne, Australia, citing claims from a 2016 paper published in Depression Research and Treatment, which said that children with same-sex parents are more at risk for depression, abuse, and obesity than children with opposite-sex parents. The poster had also appeared previously in Minneapolis and has been traced to a neo-Nazi group, as reported by HuffPost Australia. Australia is preparing for a national, non-binding, mail-in vote on whether to provide marriage equality for same-sex couples.

The EoC mechanism, which was chosen by the journal’s publisher, Hindawi, is an unusual choice here. The paper’s author, D. Paul Sullins, a sociology professor at The Catholic University of America and the paper’s author, told Retraction Watch that Hindawi contacted him Aug. 21 about the decision. Initially, he told us he didn’t have any “particular objection to it,” but later told us he changed his mind after he read more about COPE’s guidelines for EoCs: Continue reading Publisher flags paper on same-sex parenting after neo-Nazi group cites it

Updated: Ohio State revokes PhD of co-author of now-retracted paper on shooter video games

Jodi Whitaker, via University of Arizona

[This post, which at 1200 UTC 8/25/17 originally reported on the then-upcoming vote, has been updated at 1800 UTC 8/25/17 to include the results of the vote.]

A researcher who co-authored a paper about video games that was retracted earlier this year has had her PhD from The Ohio State University revoked.

As WOSU reported this afternoon, the vote today of the university’s Board of Trustees was unanimous. The scheduled vote on whether to revoke Jodi Whitaker’s degree was first reported yesterday by The Columbus Dispatch.

While a graduate student at Ohio State, Whitaker was co-author of a paper that claimed to find that first-person shooter video games improved marksmanship. As we’ve reported, the paper, published online in 2012, was retracted earlier this year, two years after a university committee was alerted to irregularities in the data by two outside researchers.

The controversy over the paper became heated at times. Continue reading Updated: Ohio State revokes PhD of co-author of now-retracted paper on shooter video games

Former MD Anderson researcher objects to retraction of his paper

A cell biology journal has retracted a 2016 paper after an investigation revealed that the corresponding author failed to include two co-authors and acknowledge the funding source.

According to the retraction notice, the Journal of Cellular Physiology retracted the paper after the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center found that last author Jin Wang had omitted two researchers from the list of authors, and had also failed to acknowledge funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

But Wang tells a different story. Continue reading Former MD Anderson researcher objects to retraction of his paper