Category: by journal

Ethics dispute forces retraction of paper on Hep C in Japanese leper colony

jcmcoverHere’s a case of retraction being a hammer when a scalpel might have been better.

The authors of a 2011 paper in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology looking at transmission of hepatitis C in a former leper colony in Japan have retracted the article because an ethics panel in that country objected to the scientists’ use of fetal tissue.

The article involves a controversial aspect of modern Japanese history — the country’s efforts to eradicate leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, by isolating patients in a string of state-run sanatoriums. The policy was eventually realized to be unnecessary and ruled unconstitutional in 2001, triggering a wave of apologies to patients and their families.

Continue reading Ethics dispute forces retraction of paper on Hep C in Japanese leper colony

Two crystallography papers break apart for “trivial errors,” says author

ACBiophysicists in India have retracted two crystallography papers describing protein binding sites following “concerns,” according to one retraction note.

The last author on both papers, however, told us he believed the retractions were the result of “trivial errors.” Although one journal praised him in its retraction note for his “positive engagement,” he said the process left him feeling “disgusted.”

One paper, “Structural Studies on Molecular Interactions between Camel Peptidoglycan Recognition Protein, CPGRP-S, and Peptidoglycan Moieties N-Acetylglucosamine and N-Acetylmuramic Acid,” was withdrawn from the Journal of Biological Chemistry in August 2014.

The second, “Mode of binding of the antithyroid drug propylthiouracil to mammalian haem peroxidases,” was retracted from Acta Crystallographica Section F this month. Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Two crystallography papers break apart for “trivial errors,” says author

Psych journal axes study of child molesters

Journal Of Sexual Aggression

A journal has issued a “notice of redundant publication” for a paper that used virtual reality to understand arousal patterns in child molesters — the result of “an unfortunate sequence of personal events relating to the first author.”

The study, “Using immersive virtual reality and ecological psychology to probe into child molesters’ phenomenology,” was originally published online in 2011 and printed in 2013.

The Journal of Sexual Aggression announced the “notice of redundant publication” after the editors discovered the article contained “content of which much was included in an article published between the first online publication date of the original article and the final publication”. The article shares many of the same co-authors, and has since been retracted.

Patrice Renaud, the first author and a lecturer at the University of Quebec in Outaouais, took responsibility for the additional publications. In an email to Retraction Watch, Renaud said that the issues arose because of a family medical emergency:

Continue reading Psych journal axes study of child molesters

Journal quarantines MERS paper, posts EoC for “rights to use the data”

ES_anniversary_bannerEurosurveillance is investigating potential problems with study on the deadly breakout of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in South Korea. The notice was issued after the journal discovered that study data might have been used without permission.

“Epidemiological investigation of MERS-CoV spread in a single hospital in South Korea, May to June 2015,” was published last month by a group of researchers at the Gyeonggi Infectious Disease Control Center in Korea, and details 37 cases of people at one hospital, one portion of the nearly 200 who’ve developed the new respiratory infection since the outbreak began. The researchers tracked the path of infection from one initial patient to 25 secondary cases, who then infected 11 additional people. As the researchers note:

Continue reading Journal quarantines MERS paper, posts EoC for “rights to use the data”

Recursive recursiveness: Retracted Lewandowsky et al conspiracy ideation study republished

Stephan Lewandowsky
Stephan Lewandowsky

A paper on “the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial” whose puzzling publication (and retraction) history formed the basis of a series of Retraction Watch posts in 2013 and 2014 is back, as part of a new article in a different journal.

Retraction Watch readers may recall a paper published in 2013 in Frontiers in Psychology. That paper, “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation,” was an attempt by Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues to describe the reactions to another controversial Psychological Science paper Lewandowsky had co-authored, “NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science.”

The reason we started writing about the Frontiers paper was that it was removed from the journal’s site in March of 2013, for unclear reasons, before being formally retracted a year later with a reference to an investigation that “did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study” but found that “the legal context is insufficiently clear.” Continue reading Recursive recursiveness: Retracted Lewandowsky et al conspiracy ideation study republished

JAMA issues mega-correction for data breach letter due to “wording and data errors”

s_cover_jcv062315A JAMA letter published in April on data breaches accidentally included some data that shouldn’t have been published, either — specifically, “wording and data errors” that affected five sentences and more than 10 entries in a table. One result — a reported increase in breaches over time — also went from statistically significant to “borderline” significant, according to the first author. (So yeah, this post earns our “mega correction” category.)

According to an author, an “older version” of a table made it into the letter, “Data Breaches of Protected Health Information in the United States,” which was corrected in the journal’s June 23/30 issue.

The letter and table in question detail 949 breaches of “unencrypted protected health information.”  The letter says the number of breaches has increased from 2010 to 2013; the original article claimed that the P value on that increase was <.001, but the correction says it’s really 0.07. The original says 29.1 million personal records were affected in those breaches; the real number is 29.0. And so on.

Continue reading JAMA issues mega-correction for data breach letter due to “wording and data errors”

To catch a cheat: Paper improves on stats method that nailed prolific retractor Fujii

anaesthesiaThe author of a 2012 paper in Anaesthesia which offered the statistical equivalent of coffin nails to the case against record-breaking fraudster Yoshitaka Fujii (currently at the top of our leaderboard) has written a new article in which he claims to have improved upon his approach.

As we’ve written previously, John Carlisle, an anesthesiologist in the United Kingdom, analyzed nearly 170 papers by Fujii and found aspects of the reported data to be astronomically improbable. It turns out, however, that he made a mistake that, while not fatal to his initial conclusions, required fixing in a follow-up paper, titled “Calculating the probability of random sampling for continuous variables in submitted or published randomised controlled trials,” also published in Anaesthesia.

According to the abstract:

Continue reading To catch a cheat: Paper improves on stats method that nailed prolific retractor Fujii

Cancer Research retraction is fifth for Robert Weinberg; fourth for his former student

13.coverAnother domino has fallen in a chain of retractions for Robert Weinberg, the man who discovered the first tumor-causing gene in humans, along with the first tumor suppressor gene: Cancer Research just retracted a paper of his on some of the molecular steps to metastasis.

The paper, “Concurrent Suppression of Integrin α5, Radixin, and RhoA Phenocopies the Effects of miR-31 on Metastasis,” has been cited 70 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. As we have noted before, Weinberg’s papers are frequently highly cited. His bio at the Whitehead Institute bills him as “a pioneer in cancer research.”

Four of Weinberg’s retracted papers — including this latest — share a first author: Scott Valastyan, once a very promising grad student in Weinberg’s lab. 

This retraction, like Valastyan’s others, is linked to his retracted 2009 Cell paper. (That paper was cited 482 times, and there’s even a video from the Cell press office to go with it). Continue reading Cancer Research retraction is fifth for Robert Weinberg; fourth for his former student

Another author withdrawal from JBC earns another opaque notice

Journal of Biological Chemistry1The authors of a 2014 study on the biochemical changes that can encourage the progression of cancer have withdrawn the paper from the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The post from the JBC – which we’ve noted are rarely helpful – doesn’t provide any details or reason for the withdrawal. As usual, this is all we got:

Continue reading Another author withdrawal from JBC earns another opaque notice

Misidentified genetic sequence causes retraction of pathogen paper one month after publication

Genome Announcements

The author of an article mapping the genome of an infectious bacterium is pulling the paper because — well, it wasn’t the bacterium she thought it was.

Study author Celia Abolnik is retracting her paper in Genome Announcements because it didn’t actually map out the DNA of Mycoplasma meleagridis, a bacterium that typically infects turkeys but has recently been found in chickens.

The trouble was, the sequence for Mycoplasma meleagridis in the National Institute of Health’s DNA database, Genbank, was actually a different variety of bacteria — Mycoplasma gallinaceum, another scourge of poultry.

Here’s the notice for “Complete Genome Sequence of Mycoplasma meleagridis, a Possible Emerging Pathogen in Chickens:”

Continue reading Misidentified genetic sequence causes retraction of pathogen paper one month after publication