Category: journal of immunology retractions

A partial retraction appears for former Salzburg crystallographer who admitted misconduct

j imm april 2013A paper by a crystallographer fired from his university for misconduct has been partially retracted.

Last year, we covered the case of Robert Schwarzenbacher, formerly of Salzburg University. Schwarzenbacher had provided the crystallographic data for a paper in the Journal of Immunology, but those results raised questions with another crystallographer and prompted an investigation by the university.  Schwarzenbacher admitted he’d committed misconduct, although he recanted at one point, and was eventually fired.

Now, the authors have retracted the crystallographic data from the Journal of Immunology paper. Here’s the partial retraction, which is listed as a correction:
Continue reading A partial retraction appears for former Salzburg crystallographer who admitted misconduct

And then there were eight: Three more retractions for Alirio Melendez, all in the Journal of Immunology

alirio_melendezAlirio Melendez, who has already retracted five papers and was found by one of his former universities to have committed misconduct on more than 20, has three more retractions.

Here’s the notice for “Antisense Knockdown of Sphingosine Kinase 1 in Human Macrophages Inhibits C5a Receptor-Dependent Signal Transduction, Ca2+ Signals, Enzyme Release, Cytokine Production, and Chemotaxis,” cited 68 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading And then there were eight: Three more retractions for Alirio Melendez, all in the Journal of Immunology

Immunology paper retracted because “documents were not archived with due diligence”

A group of researchers from Austria, Canada, Germany, and the U.S. have retracted a 2008 paper in the Journal of Immunology after being unable to verify the contents of some key figures.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Immunology paper retracted because “documents were not archived with due diligence”

University clears leading dermatology lab head of misconduct as authors issue two corrections

Michael Hertl, a leading dermatology researcher at Philipps-University Marburg, has been cleared of any wrongdoing in a case that spawned a retraction last year and two just-published retractions.

Felicitas Riedel, a legal officer for the university, tells Retraction Watch that the

…Committee for Scientific Misconduct of the Philipps-University Marburg closed the matter and submitted its results to the President of the University who in the meantime after examination consented with it.

The findings? Continue reading University clears leading dermatology lab head of misconduct as authors issue two corrections

ORI findings lead to two retractions — nearly 17 years later

Well, it only took 17 years.

As two retraction notices in the September 15 issue of the Journal of Immunology note:

On October 19, 1995, the Office of Research Integrity at the National Institutes of Health found that Weishu Y. Weiser, Ph.D., formerly of the Harvard Medical School at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, committed scientific misconduct by falsifying data in biomedical research supported by two Public Health Service grants. As a result, she agreed to submit a letter to The Journal of Immunology to retract this article. The offices of The Journal of Immunology have no record of receiving such a letter and hence the article is now being retracted.

The retractions, for “Recombinant Migration Inhibitory Factor Induces Nitric Oxide Synthase in Murine Macrophages” and “Human Recombinant Migration Inhibitory Factor Activates Human Macrophages to Kill Leishmania donovani,” both say the same thing.

“Recombinant Migration Inhibitory Factor Induces Nitric Oxide Synthase in Murine Macrophages” has been  cited 66 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge — 40 of those times since the ORI’s report was released. The numbers for the Leishmania paper are almost identical: Continue reading ORI findings lead to two retractions — nearly 17 years later

Fifth Alirio Melendez retraction offers clues about University of Glasgow misconduct findings

A new retraction — his fifth — in the Journal of Immunology for Alirio Melendez, formerly of the National University of Singapore, the University of Glasgow, and the University of Liverpool, sheds some light on the results of an investigation by one of the universities.

Last month, a Glasgow spokesperson told Nature that the university’s investigation had been completed in October 2011, but that it did not comment on individual cases. A spokesperson, according to the Times Higher Education:

…would say only that there was “no evidence that our current staff contributed, falsified or duplicated data to any publications co-authored with (Professor) Melendez”. He also confirmed that relevant journals would be contacted where retractions or corrections were deemed necessary.

The notice for one such necessary retraction, in the September 15 issue of the Journal of Immunology, gives a few details: Continue reading Fifth Alirio Melendez retraction offers clues about University of Glasgow misconduct findings

Why retraction notices matter: Group’s repeated misuse of figures gets different play from five journals

For some journals, thorough retraction notices are the rule — and, when misconduct is involved, the price authors pay for abusing the trust of the editors and the readers. Others seem to take a more casual approach. Guess which we think is best.

Consider the case of a group of researchers in China led by Tan Jinquan, an immune system expert at Wuhan University. Over the past two years or so, Jinquan and colleagues have lost no fewer than a half-dozen papers containing evidence of image manipulation. But, depending on the journal pulling the articles, you might not know it.

Continue reading Why retraction notices matter: Group’s repeated misuse of figures gets different play from five journals

Salzburg University fires crystallographer Robert Schwarzenbacher for faking data in Journal of Immunology paper

Robert Schwarzenbacher

The crystallographer who confessed to data fabrication that has forced the retraction of a structure in a Journal of Immunology paper on birch pollen allergen — but later recanted — has been fired by the University of Salzburg.

Robert Schwarzenbacher, 39, was awarded a 1.7 million-euro Marie Curie fellowship, the highest individual European research award, six years ago. According to Salzburg’s ORF.at: Continue reading Salzburg University fires crystallographer Robert Schwarzenbacher for faking data in Journal of Immunology paper

Protein structure retracted after investigation into “highly improbable features,” journal calls it fraud

In 2010, a group of crystallographers immunologists and allergy researchers at the University of Salzburg published a paper in the Journal of Immunology claiming to have derived the structure of a birch pollen allergen.

That structure, however, caught the attention of Bernhard Rupp, an eminent crystallographer. In January of this year, Rupp submitted a paper to Acta Crystallographica Section F pointing out problems with it, which prompted the editors of the crystallography journal to contact the authors of the original paper a month later. Those authors, it turns out, agreed with Rupp, they write in a response to his paper published in the April 2012 issue of Acta Crystallographica Section F: Continue reading Protein structure retracted after investigation into “highly improbable features,” journal calls it fraud

Cardiff University misconduct investigation leads to Journal of Immunology retraction

The senior author of a Journal of Immunology paper has retracted it after a university investigation found that he had inappropriately manipulated images, Retraction Watch has learned.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Cardiff University misconduct investigation leads to Journal of Immunology retraction