Category: genomics

Bigfoot paper corrected because it doesn’t exist — the author’s institution, that is

Image via Joe Shlabotnik
Image via Joe Shlabotnik

A paper on the genetics of mythical creatures — yeti and bigfoot — is being corrected after the journal discovered the first author, Bryan Sykes, listed a mythical institution.

The Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper, “Genetic analysis of hair samples attributed to yeti, bigfoot and other anomalous primates,” examined 30 samples from “museum and individual collections” that had been labeled as the North American bigfoot, Tibetan yeti, Mongolian almasty, and Sumatran orang pendek. The analysis showed the samples actually came from a variety of species, such as bears, horses, and cows. Perhaps the most striking is the paper’s claim that two samples match with a prehistoric polar bear, “but not to modern examples of the species.”

Continue reading Bigfoot paper corrected because it doesn’t exist — the author’s institution, that is

Retracted retraction leaves Genomics paper intact — but authors wonder if anyone will know

Last March, the journal Genomics retracted a paper, “Discovery of transcriptional regulators and signaling pathways in the developing pituitary gland by bioinformatic and genomic approaches,” for reasons that don’t really fit into a tight lede sentence. Let’s just say that at times the problems involved both questions of authorship and the validity of the research. More on all that in a moment.

Meanwhile, things change. Now the journal, an Elsevier title, is un-retracting (that can’t be a real word, can it?) the retraction. You’d think that would please the authors, and it does to an extent. But they also wonder, legitimately, whether the original retraction will refuse to relinquish its grip on the resurrected article and consign it to database oblivion.

First, some background. Continue reading Retracted retraction leaves Genomics paper intact — but authors wonder if anyone will know