What Caught Our Attention: Thousands of papers have relied on contaminated or wrong cell lines, a problem journals have not been particularly proactive in addressing. So far, only a few studies have been retracted for using misidentified cell lines. Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Journals still (slowly) purging archives of bad cell line studies
A project to identify studies doomed by problematic reagents has triggered three more retractions, bringing the total to five.
Jennifer Byrne, a scientist at the University of Sydney, who developed the the idea of double-checking the nucleic acid sequences of research materials — thereby ensuring studies were testing the gene in question — told Retraction Watch that all three retractions came after she started emailing journals in January to alert them to the problems: Continue reading Project to “fact check” genetic studies leads to three more retractions. And it’s just getting started.
A pair of plant biologists has lost a string of papers over concerns about image manipulation. One author has added eight new retractions to his CV; the other has added five.
Last summer, a journal retracted another paper by the pair, also citing suspicions of image manipulation. The latest batch of retractions — issued by seven different journals — includes some papers that have been questioned on PubPeer.
Dibyendu Talukdar, listed at the University of Calcutta in West Bengal, India, is the sole author on three retracted papers. He shares five new retractions with Tulika Talukdar listed at the University of North Bengal. That brings their totals to nine and six, respectively. (We’re not sure if the Drs. Talukdar are related).
We’ll start with the papers they share: Continue reading Plant biologist earns string of retractions, bringing total to 9
A paper on the genetics underlying a common neurological disorder has issued a correction that influences the results of the paper.
“Genetic Diagnosis of Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease in a Population by Next-Generation Sequencing” was published in BioMed Research International, and looked at 81 families with the disease. The researchers identified mutations that might be connected to the disease. The problem, says the correction note, is that the authors classified a couple variants in one patient’s genes as “likely pathogenic,” when their true nature was less clear.
The correction explains the new numbers:
Continue reading Correction changes results about genetics of neurological disorder
The Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology — now BioMed Research International — has retracted a 2012 paper by a group from China who seem really to have admired a related 2007 article by a team from the Scripps Research Institute — and evidently other work, as well.
Here’s the abstract of the now-retracted paper, titled “Stable Plastid Transformation for High-Level Recombinant Protein Expression: Promises and Challenges” (emphasis ours): Continue reading Recombinant protein paper retracted for recombining others’ work
BioMed Research International has retracted a 2013 paper after it became clear that it was lifted from another 2013 paper about the same subject by some of the same authors.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Duplication forces retraction of liver cancer paper
The Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary Medicine (JEBCAM) has retracted a 2013 review on probiotics by an author from Turkey who patched the paper together from a variety of other sources — and then appears to have reused his own work elsewhere without attribution.
The article was written by Öner Özdemir, a pediatric allergy specialist at İstanbul Medeniyet University. According to the abstract: Continue reading Plagiarism spells demise of complementary medicine paper