More than 14 months after Blood issued a notice of concern about a paper by a Harvard stem cell scientist and her former post-doc, the journal has retracted the article.
Here’s the notice for the paper, “Osteolineage niche cells initiate hematopoietic stem cell mobilization,” by Shane Mayack and Amy Wagers: Continue reading Blood retracts stem cell paper from Amy Wagers’ Harvard lab after 14 months of concern
The list of papers retracted by former Duke oncologist Anil Potti has grown to five. The notice, from Blood: Continue reading A fifth retraction for Anil Potti, this one in Blood
The journal Blood has retracted a paper from a group of prestigious Harvard researchers after the article, which appeared in January 2011, was found to have multiple instances of material — text, data and other elements — that had appeared in a previous publication from several of the authors.
The article was titled “Cannabinoid receptor 2 and its agonists mediate hematopoiesis and hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell mobilization.” Its authors included Hava Avraham, a noted cancer researcher, and Jerome Groopman, known for his New Yorker articles about medicine and, scientifically, for his work on cannabinoids and cancer, among other areas.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading “Nonessential” duplication leads to retraction of Blood cannabinoid paper
Blood tells Retraction Watch that they are reviewing a 1999 paper co-authored by Silvia Bulfone-Paus, who has already retracted 12 papers in other journals.
The study, “Human monocytes constitutively express membrane-bound, biologically active, and interferon-gamma-upregulated interleukin-15,” has been cited 124 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Its corresponding author is Tiziana Musso, of the University of Turin.
Joerg Zwirner, over at the Abnormal Science blog, has a three-part series deconstructing what he says are the flaws in the paper. Zwirner points out a number of data duplications. As he notes: Continue reading Another Bulfone-Paus paper under review, this one in Blood
The journal Blood has retracted an article after the authors determined that they could not longer trust in the validity of the data.
The paper has been cited 22 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. From the retraction notice:
Niessen F, Furlan-Freguia C, Fernández JA, Mosnier LO, Castellino FJ, Weiler H, Rosen H, Griffin JH, Ruf W. Endogenous EPCR/aPC-PAR1 signaling prevents inflammation-induced vascular leakage and lethality.
Blood. 2009;113(12):2859-2866.
The authors retract the 19 March 2009, paper cited above. Recently, the authors discovered that some primary data presented in this paper could not be independently reproduced. All coauthors concur with the retraction of the paper and apologize to the readers, reviewers, and editors of Blood for publishing these invalid data.
The nature of the data problem isn’t clear from that passage. But Blood editor Cynthia Dunbar told us that her journal Continue reading No confidence vote on sepsis paper data leads to Blood retraction
The journal Blood has two retractions this month, one of which seems particularly interesting. So let’s deal with the other one first.
The paper, “MicroRNAs 15a/16-1 function as tumor suppressor genes in multiple myeloma,” appeared online in October 2010. But according to the retraction notice, the authors
have recently discovered that the cell lines used in their paper were inadvertently misidentified. The cell lines utilized in the paper have now been found to contain the bcr/abl translocation and most likely represent the K562 CML cell line, instead of MMS1 and RPM1 myeloma cell lines. Due to this issue, the relevance of the findings to myeloma and thus, the conclusions of the paper, are not supported by the data. The authors apologize to the readers, reviewers, and editors of Blood for publishing these erroneous data.
That seems straightforward enough, and we couldn’t find any evidence that this problem affected other publications.
The second paper, however, could be more significant. Continue reading Blood retracts two, including a disputed paper from the Karolinska Institute
Last October, Retraction Watch readers will recall, up-and-coming stem cell researcher Amy Wagers retracted a study in Nature describing how her team rejuvenated blood-forming stem cells in older mice. Shane Mayack, a postdoc in Wagers’ lab who had been dismissed after an inquiry into what happened, did not sign that retraction. Since then, Mayack has not spoken to the press, except for a brief comment to Nature through her attorney.
Here, we present, unedited, Mayack’s side of the story. While accepting responsibility, she also has a number of suggestions for how universities and journals can handle these situations better. Shane can be reached at smayck[at]yahoo.com.
Since it was well covered by this blog, the readers of Retraction Watch are no doubt aware that in October 2010, a paper that I co-authored was retracted from Nature and a notice of concern was posted regarding a second paper published in Blood.
So, what went wrong? Continue reading In a retraction’s wake: Postdoc Shane Mayack, dismissed from Amy Wagers’ stem cell lab, speaks out
Thrombosis and Haemostasis has issued an “expression of concern” over a 2004 paper by Tunisian researchers:
Concerns have been raised by readers about the accuracy and validity of the data reported in the September 2004 article by Abdelkefi et al., entitled “Prevention of central venous line-related thrombosis by continuous infusion of low-dose unfractionated heparin, in patients with haemato-oncological disease. A randomized controlled trial” (Abdelkefi A et al.Thromb Haemost 2004; 92: 654–661).
In the trial, 108 patients with blood cancers reportedly received infusions of either saline or heparin, a blood thinner. Those given the active drug were far less likely to develop clots related to their catheters, according to the researchers, and no more likely to experience severe bleeding. In the report, the researchers write:
This is the first prospective, randomized study, which shows that low-dose of unfractionated heparin is safeand effective to prevent catheter-related thrombosis in patients with haemato-oncological disease.
The article has had an impact, having been cited 32 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. At some point after publication, however, the results evidently began to look fishy. Again from the journal: Continue reading Our computer ate the data: Expression of concern over blood thinner study raises concerns itself
A day after an up and coming Harvard stem cell scientist retracted a Nature paper, Blood has issued a notice of concern about another paper by the same group, published in August 2008, the Boston Globe reports. Such notices often, but not always, precede retractions.
According to the notice for “Osteolineage niche cells initiate hematopoietic stem cell mobilization”: Continue reading Blood posts “notice of concern” over second Wagers-Mayack paper