Category: elsevier

More on the latest Cell retraction: PI says a graduate student was at fault

Carsten Carlberg

This morning we reported on a new retraction in Cell involving fraud from a lab in Finland, which led us to a second retraction of a paper by the same group in the Journal of Molecular Biology. The first author on both papers was Tatjana Degenhardt, who at the time was a graduate student in the lab of Carsten Carlberg, professor of biochemistry at the University of Kuopio.

A few minutes ago Retraction Watch spoke with Carlberg, who had this to say about Degenhardt: Continue reading More on the latest Cell retraction: PI says a graduate student was at fault

Third retraction for Indiana University scientist who altered figures in NIH-funded research

Another shoe has dropped in the case of Emily M. Horvath, the Indiana researcher whose tinkering with figures while on a $369,000 federal grant ended in sanctions by government officials.

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, an Elsevier title, has retracted another paper on which Horvath was an author, bringing to three the number of her articles tainted in the scandal. The paper, “A novel membrane-based anti-diabetic action of atorvastatin,” was published online in June 2008, and cited four times since, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. (Atorvastatin is sold as Lipitor.) According to the journal: Continue reading Third retraction for Indiana University scientist who altered figures in NIH-funded research

Scientist raised serious questions about 2008 Cell study by Amy Wagers

Amy Wagers, a Harvard stem cell researcher, retracted a Nature study last week and has another published paper under scrutiny at Blood. Retraction Watch has now learned that a 2008 Cell paper she co-authored drew significant criticism from a stem cell researcher at Children’s National Medical Center.

In the paper, Wagers and her team said they were able to prepare a set of muscle cells that reversed some of the effects of muscular dystrophy in a mouse model of the disease. In a 2008 letter to the editor of Cell, however, Terence Partridge wrote Continue reading Scientist raised serious questions about 2008 Cell study by Amy Wagers

Editor of another journal where Wagers and Mayack published an abstract is monitoring the situation

Yesterday, we noted that Amy Wagers and Shane Mayack have published five papers together. One of those, published earlier this year in Nature, was retracted Wednesday, and another is now the subject of a “notice of concern” from Blood.

We wanted to find out about some of the other papers published by Wagers and Mayack, so we contacted the editor of Developmental Biology, which published one of them. They have not heard from Wagers or Harvard, but are monitoring developments, according to editor in chief Robb Krumlauf: Continue reading Editor of another journal where Wagers and Mayack published an abstract is monitoring the situation

Beyond retractions: A technique gets an obituary

Sometimes, apparently, a retraction isn’t enough to put research findings to bed forever. Consider this obituary recently posted online at the Journal of Pediatrics, for a method of detecting gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) in children:

We commonly recognize the contributions of distinguished members of the pediatric community and, with regret, their passing. It is appropriate, therefore, that we acknowledge the timely death of an old friend, the pH probe. Crushed to death under the weight of evidence against it, it was found abandoned in a trash can with a note that read, ‘‘Good riddance to a bad test.’’

To be fair, the pH probe has always been the standard bearer for mediocrity.

The obituary goes on: Continue reading Beyond retractions: A technique gets an obituary

Microbial reproduction: Plagiarism from Wikipedia, elsewhere leads to retraction of biotech paper

When is an advance not an advance?

Biotechnology Advances has retracted a 2008 review by researchers in India who allegedly stole chunks of their manuscript from several sources including journal articles, Wikipedia, and StateMaster.com, a statistics clearinghouse.

According to the notice, the article, titled “Microbial production of dihydroxyacetone” Continue reading Microbial reproduction: Plagiarism from Wikipedia, elsewhere leads to retraction of biotech paper

Best Of Retractions, Part I: Water, water, everywhere, except in “Historical Palestine,” aka Israel

Although Retraction Watch might have been born just before yesterday, we find it instructive to look back in time for items we would have covered had we been around a bit longer. We’ll do this periodically to generate a “Best Of” collection of retractions that catch our eye both for what they might suggest about scientific publishing and for good old-fashioned  interest. Here’s the first installment:

A furtive attempt to play politics with a galley proof led to the retraction of a paper on Middle East water policy a few months ago. The article, “Optimizing irrigation water use in the West Bank, Palestine,” appeared in the February 2010 issue of Agricultural Water Management, an Elsevier journal. Written by Palestinian and Dutch researchers, the article modeled various scenarios of water and crop policies in the West Bank in an effort to determine the most efficient use of resources.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the printer. The authors decided to make a political protest of sorts in the galleys, a ham-handed gesture that led to the retraction of the paper, as the journal explained in a note: Continue reading Best Of Retractions, Part I: Water, water, everywhere, except in “Historical Palestine,” aka Israel

Update on stem cell-cancer link retraction: Why not everyone signed, and why authors ended up in another journal first

Last month, we wrote about the retraction of a 2005 paper suggesting that some adult stem cells might give rise to cancer. That, of course, would be a problem if researchers tried treating heart disease and other conditions with them. The paper’s authors retracted it, however, when it became clear that instead of being transformed — that’s the scientific word for “became cancerous” — the cells had simply become contaminated and overgrown with tumor cells used in research.

We had some questions for the authors of the original paper, and for the editor of the journal. Last week, we heard back from one of the paper’s authors, Javier Garcia-Castro, who had been on vacation without Internet access for weeks. In an email to Retraction Watch, Garcia-Castro wrote: Continue reading Update on stem cell-cancer link retraction: Why not everyone signed, and why authors ended up in another journal first

Update: German university investigating authors who retracted caffeine-liver fibrosis letter

Yesterday we reported on a retraction in a European liver journal involving post-acceptance shenanigans by a group of German researchers including a father and son, Axel and Olav Gressner. Well, it turns out there’s a bit more there there.

Didier Samuel, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Hepatology, where the team’s letter to the editor was retracted, tells Retraction Watch he was contacted earlier this year by the University of Aachen. The university was investigating potential misconduct by Olav Gressner. The journal launched its own inquiry, leading to the retracted letter, Samuel says.

Samuel’s journal has not pulled any other papers from the Gressners. However, the group “is not encouraged to submit to our journal” in the future, he says. Although the lab has claimed that “typewritten errors” were to blame for the alerted manuscript, Samuels says, “the editors were not convinced” of this explanation. Continue reading Update: German university investigating authors who retracted caffeine-liver fibrosis letter

Liver spots: Hepatology journal yanks research letter on caffeine-fibrosis link, saying authors falsified data

Work from a prolific father-son team of liver researchers in Germany has come under scrutiny after accusations that they falsified data in a 2009 letter to the editor that appeared in the Journal of Hepatology.

The letter, retracted in the September issue (after an online notice in June), referred to a 2008 article in the journal by Axel Gressner, his son Olav, and their colleagues at University Hospital in Aachen in which the authors reported that doses of caffeine might be an effective treatment for liver fibrosis, scarring of the organ that results from chronic ailments such as cirrhosis or hepatitis.

Epidemiologic evidence has suggested that people who drink coffee are somewhat protected from liver fibrosis—although some experts dispute the purported connection—and the German group claimed to have been among the first to find a plausible molecular mechanism for the link. Their November 2008 paper on the subject has been cited 16 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Science, a hefty number for just 22 months.

In their follow-up letter, they went a step further, stating that injecting rats with caffeine blocked the expression of a key protein associated with growth of connective tissue necessary for the formation of liver scars.

But the evidence backing the letter appears to be far weaker than the researchers initially let on. Continue reading Liver spots: Hepatology journal yanks research letter on caffeine-fibrosis link, saying authors falsified data