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When should a paper be retracted? A tale from the obesity literature

obesity factsIn our line of work, we see it all — mega-corrections that don’t quite rise to the level of retraction, letters to the editor that point out seemingly fatal flaws in papers that remain untouched, and studies retracted for what seem like minor reasons. It can make you wonder what makes a paper worthy of a retraction. A recent case in an obesity journal may not provide a definitive answer, but it gives us a lot to chew on.

Here’s the story: In September 2013, Rosely Sichieri and a colleague from the State University of Rio de Janeiro submitted an article to Obesity Facts, “Unbalanced Baseline in School-Based Interventions to Prevent Obesity: Adjustment Can Lead to Bias?” The article examined statistical issues in randomized controlled trials of school-based weight loss programs. Peer reviewers said the paper needed major revisions before it could be accepted; the authors revised the paper enough in a second draft, submitted in November 2013, that the original reviewers accepted it. The paper was published in June 2014.

Then, in September 2014, a group of authors including David Allison of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and colleagues from Clemson, Thomas Jefferson, and the University of Minnesota, wrote a critical letter that was published in the journal in April. The letter, according to a just-published editorial: Continue reading When should a paper be retracted? A tale from the obesity literature

Does peer review ferret out the best science? New study tries to answer

scienceGrant reviewers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health are doing a pretty good job of spotting the best proposals and ranking them appropriately, according to a new study in Science out today.

Danielle Li at Harvard and Leila Agha at Boston University found that grant proposals that earn good scores lead to research that is more cited, more published, and published in high-impact journals. These findings were upheld even when they controlled for notoriously confounding factors, such as the applicant’s institutional quality, gender, history of funding and experience, and field.

Taking all those factors into consideration, grant scores that were 1 standard deviation lower (10.17 points, in the analysis) led to research that earned 15% fewer citations and 7% fewer papers, along with 19% fewer papers in top journals.

Li tells Retraction Watch that, while some scientists may not be surprised by these findings, previous research has suggested there isn’t much of a correlation between grant scores and outcomes:

Continue reading Does peer review ferret out the best science? New study tries to answer

Bielawski and Wiggins retraction count grows to six

chemical scienceA group of chemists whose work was investigated by the University of Texas-Austin has had another paper retracted, this one of a Chemical Science study previously subjected to an Expression of Concern.

That makes six retractions for Christopher Bielawski and Kelly Wiggins.

Here’s the notice for “Homonuclear bond activation using a stable N,N′-diamidocarbene”, signed by all three authors of the paper: Continue reading Bielawski and Wiggins retraction count grows to six

Teflon toxicity paper fails to stick

toxicological sciencesAn advanced online paper on prenatal toxicity of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), an industrial chemical used to make waterproof coatings and Teflon, is being retracted due to “some minor errors.”

High blood levels of PFOA have been tied to kidney disease in humans, as well as several cancers in animal models. The majority of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific advisory board deemed PFOA “likely to be carcinogenic in humans” in 2006, though a decade later the EPA has yet to make a decision on regulations. The retracted paper found that exposing pregnant mice to PFOA altered hormone pathways in mammary glands.

According to the notice in Toxicological Sciences, there was a duplicated image in one of the figures, as well as “some minor errors.” Here’s figure 5B: Continue reading Teflon toxicity paper fails to stick

Nature retracts epigenetics paper by author who lost two Science papers last year

cover_natureFrank Sauer, formerly of the University of California, Riverside, has had a 2002 letter on epigenetics retracted from Nature due to “inappropriate image manipulation.”

Sauer had two papers retracted from Science last year following a university investigation. Here’s the Nature notice for “Histone methylation by the Drosophila epigenetic transcriptional regulator Ash1:” Continue reading Nature retracts epigenetics paper by author who lost two Science papers last year

Expression of concern opens floodgates of controversy over lead in water supply

journal-awwa-cover-feb-2015An expression of concern has been published on a paper that taps into a decades-long fight over how to remove lead from the water supply.

The paper in question, published in the Journal American Water Works Association, supports the safety of a common but frequently criticized way of incrementally removing lead pipes. The expression of concern came after years of back-and-forth  letters to the editor between other scientists and the authors.

Lead water pipes have been causing lead poisoning for generations; some people have even theorized that the ancient Romans’ use of the metal facilitated the empire’s downfall. The dangers of childhood exposure to lead — delayed development, irreversible damage to the brain and nervous system and behavioral problems — have been documented in the U.S. since the 1940s, but the Environmental Protection Agency didn’t start regulating lead levels in drinking water until 1991, when the “lead and copper rule” went into effect. That set the standard for utility companies’ lead testing: if 10 percent or more of samples from homes had lead levels above 15 parts per billion, the companies were required to replace 7% of their lead pipes a year until they met the requirements.

Continue reading Expression of concern opens floodgates of controversy over lead in water supply

Lawsuit involving PubPeer unmasks commenter as pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis

pubpeerAn attorney for Fazlul Sarkar, the Wayne State University researcher who claims he lost a job offer because of comments about his research on PubPeer, has asked a judge to reconsider last month’s decision not to release information about the site’s anonymous commenters. As a consequence, the brief in support of that motion identifies a key commenter as the pseudonymous Clare Francis.

On March 19, a Michigan court ruled that PubPeer had to disclose identifying information about a single commenter, who left the second of these comments: Continue reading Lawsuit involving PubPeer unmasks commenter as pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis

Unhappy medium: Penn State website retracts article touting student psychic

onward stateOnward State, an alternative student news website for Penn State University, has pulled an article about a student psychic for promoting “one of the most fraudulent, predatory practices around.”

The psychic has been given her own reality TV show on ABC Family (an oxymoron if ever there was one). The newspaper had reported the news of the show with, shall we say, something of a credulous eye. Per the item: Continue reading Unhappy medium: Penn State website retracts article touting student psychic

Study by deceased award-winning cancer researcher retracted because some patients were “invented”

cancerA 2002 paper has been retracted by Cancer after some of the authors notified the journal that they hadn’t agreed to submit it — and an investigation found that a number of the patients described had been made up.

Here’s the notice for “Radioimmunotherapy of small-volume disease of metastatic colorectal cancer: results of a phase II trial with the iodine-131–labeled humanized anti–carcinoembryonic antigen antibody hMN-14:” Continue reading Study by deceased award-winning cancer researcher retracted because some patients were “invented”

Stats error has chilling effect on global warming paper

global change biologyIt turns out a 2014 paper that found a surprising pattern of plant migration in response to global warming was not so surprising after all — it’s been retracted by the authors due to a mistake in the statistical analysis.

Most studies on migrating populations have found that species around the globe move north to escape the rising temperatures. But the authors of the 2014 paper in Global Change Biology found the opposite — according to their analysis, many plant species in Western North America had been migrating south, toward warmer climates.

The lead author Melanie Harsch told Science in 2014 that the team had been suspicious of the analysis, and so ran it twice: Continue reading Stats error has chilling effect on global warming paper