The recent retraction of a paper in Science Translational Medicine reporting “one of the biggest things to happen” in narcolepsy research has claimed a bystander: A letter that commented on the no-longer-landmark article.
The authors of the letter are with GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine division. Here’s the new notice: Continue reading Downstream effects: Comment on retracted narcolepsy paper retracted
A group of liver researchers from the University of Pittsburgh has earned a pair of corrections in Hepatology for image problems.
The team was led by George K. Michalopoulos, chair of the department of pathology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
One article, “Excessive hepatomegaly of mice with hepatocyte-targeted elimination of integrin linked kinase following treatment with 1,4-bis [2-(3,5-dichaloropyridyloxy)] benzene,” appeared in January 2011. According to the notice: Continue reading Hepatology issues corrections in two papers from Pitt liver group
Last month, PubPeer announced that a scientist had threatened to sue the site for defamation. At the time, all PubPeer would say was that the “prospective plaintiff” is a US researcher” who was “aggrieved at the treatment his papers are getting on our site.”
Today, PubPeer revealed the that the prospective plaintiff was Fazlul Sarkar, a distinguished professor of pathology at Wayne State University in Detroit. Sarkar’s attorney, Nicholas Roumel, tells us that Sarkar had a job offer from the University of Mississippi, which rescinded it after seeing comments about his work on PubPeer.
We asked to see the letter rescinding the offer, but Roumel said he couldn’t send it because he and Sarkar are “in the process of making a claim against them.”
We also asked if there was an investigation into Sarkar’s work. Roumel told us:
As for any investigation, federal regulations make such things strictly confidential, so I can’t comment either way.
According to a post on PubPeer: Continue reading Scientist threatening to sue PubPeer claims he lost a job offer because of comments
The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has ruled in a case we’ve been following for nearly two years — and which seems to have been launched after Retraction Watch readers took a careful look at figures from what appeared to be an unrelated case.
Takao Takahashi and Makato Suzuki, both former postdocs at a cancer research center at UT-Southwestern, both “knowingly, intentionally, and recklessly falsified data” in a total of 10 papers, according to the ORI. Takahashi, now at Gifu University in Japan, was responsible for fakery in four papers, while Suzuki, now at Kumamoto University Hospital, also in Japan, falsified data in six.
We reported on the retraction of the four Takahashi papers, and one of the Suzuki papers, in November 2012. At that time, Adi Gazdar, the head of the lab where the researchers worked, told us that
Continue reading Former UT-Southwestern cancer researchers faked data in 10 papers: ORI
We brought you this story last week, about a paper on drug resistant staph being retracted for a lab error. Now, we’ve got an update from Rachel Safer, senior editor for medical journals at Oxford University Press, where the paper was published.
Apparently, the researchers “inadvertently relied upon the use of a test system that was not approved for the microorganism studied in their paper,” leading to the retraction, and the corresponding author of the study wasn’t initially all that responsive:
Continue reading Publisher updates with more info on staph retraction
When retraction notices and expressions of concern appear, particularly those that are opaque, we try our best to find out what’s behind them, whether it’s better explanations or the steps that led to moves. Today, we have one story in which we’ve been able to learn a lot more than usual.
In April, Bas van Steensel, Wendy Bickmore, Thomas Cremer, and Kerstin Bystricky sent a letter to about 80 leading labs in nuclear organization and steroid receptor biology. It began (we’ve added some relevant links): Continue reading A PNAS expression of concern appears — and so does its revealing backstory
The author of a doctoral dissertation on veterans education has lost the paper — and a mention of the work in a roster of theses — because he lifted text from a previously published dissertation from a student at another institution.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Dissertation in transition: Plagiarism leads to delisting of education thesis, lost PhD
A prestigious cancer journal has pulled an article over “concerns” regarding some of the figures, which PubPeer commenters had tagged as suspect.
A few weeks after the paper was published on June 9, comments on PubPeer began accumulating. Commenters called out both potentially manipulated and repeated images. The exact timeline is not clear, because Oncogene does not list a date on the retraction notice, but by August 29 the paper had been retracted.
Here’s the notice for “IL-6 secreted by cancer-associated fibroblasts induces tamoxifen resistance in luminal breast cancer,” by researchers at Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine and Ruijin Hospital, both in Shanghai, China, and the University of Michigan: Continue reading Fudged figures sink breast cancer paper
What could have been a truly scary study about drug resistant staph infections in hospitals has been retracted due to a lab error.
Researchers at a community hospital in Pittsburgh claimed that the commonly quoted 3% rate of staph that is resistant to ceftriaxone and sensitive to methicillin was drastically understated. However, an “honest error in the interpretation of a key lab test” called the findings into question.
Here’s the abstract: Continue reading 87% of bugs resistant to antibiotics? Not so fast, as staph paper yanked after staff mistake
A brain imaging study in children with epilepsy has been retracted by the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging due to a statistics error.
Here’s the notice for “Microstructural Brain Abnormalities of Children of Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy With Generalized Tonic-Clonic Seizure: A Voxel-Based Diffusional Kurtosis Imaging Study”: Continue reading Tonic-clonic stats error sinks epilepsy paper