Category: by journal

New in PNAS: Potti retraction number seven, and a Potti correction

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has published the seventh retraction for former Duke researcher Anil Potti, who now faces a lawsuit in the midst of an ongoing investigation into his work:

Retraction for “A genomic approach to colon cancer risk stratification yields biologic insights into therapeutic opportunities,” by Katherine S. Garman, Chaitanya R. Acharya, Elena Edelman, Marian Grade, Jochen Gaedcke, Shivani Sud, William Barry, Anna Mae Diehl, Dawn Provenzale, Geoffrey S. Ginsburg, B. Michael Ghadimi, Thomas Ried, Joseph R. Nevins, Sayan Mukherjee, David Hsu, and Anil Potti, which appeared in issue 49, December 9, 2008, of Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (105:19432–19437; first published December 2, 2008; 10.1073/pnas.0806674105).

The authors wish to note the following: “We wish to retract this article because we have been unable to reproduce certain key experiments described in the paper regarding validation and use of the colon cancer prognostic signature. This includes the validation performed with dataset E-MEXP-1224, as reported in Fig. 2A, as well as the generation of prognostic scores for colon cancer cell lines, as reported in Fig. 4. Because these results are fundamental to the conclusions of the paper, the authors formally retract the paper. We deeply regret the impact of this action on the work of other investigators.”

The 2008 paper, which has been cited 27 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, was already the subject of a minor 2009 correction: Continue reading New in PNAS: Potti retraction number seven, and a Potti correction

Why didn’t XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome researcher Mikovits — now fired — share data with Science?

The saga of XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) continues, with the news that Judy Mikovits, a main proponent of the link between the virus and CFS, has been fired from her post at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) in Reno. From a blog post yesterday on X Rx:

Breaking news. The entire WPI research program has been closed by the institute’s CEO, and the facility is now locked down. It’s former principle investigator, Dr. Judy Mikovits, is in active discussions concerning institutions to which she may move to continue her grant-funded research.

We spoke to Mikovits last week, apparently within a day of her being fired, according to the sequence of events reported today on the Wall Street Journal Health Blog. We were interested in her reaction to a comment to Retraction Watch by Science executive editor Monica Bradford about why the 2009 study Mikovits had co-authored had been partially retracted — a rare move, as we noted: Continue reading Why didn’t XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome researcher Mikovits — now fired — share data with Science?

Science issues Expression of Concern over already-corrected Melendez-Puneet paper

Two weeks ago, we posted on a Nature Immunology retraction by a group that had earlier published a correction to figures in a Science paper. At the time, many readers suggested there was more to this story — and we had the same hunch.

Turns out those hunches were right.

Today, Science issued an “Expression of Concern” about the paper they’ve already corrected: Continue reading Science issues Expression of Concern over already-corrected Melendez-Puneet paper

Authors retract chemistry paper after failing to get company’s permission to publish

Two chemists who published a paper earlier this year in Bioconjugate Chemistry have withdrawn it, after their company, Life Technologies, let them know they didn’t have permission to submit the work. The retraction notice reads:

Facile Synthesis of Symmetric, Monofunctional Cyanine Dyes for Imaging Applications, by Lai-Qiang Ying and Bruce P. Branchaud, Bioconjugate Chem., 2011, 22 (5), pp 865–869, DOI: 10.1021/bc2001006, has been retracted at the request of the authors and Life Technologies. The article was submitted for publication without the approval of Life Technologies.

Where the paper had appeared previously — it’s been completely removed from the journal’s site, as opposed to being marked as “withdrawn” or “retracted” — this is all that’s left: Continue reading Authors retract chemistry paper after failing to get company’s permission to publish

Physics paper in Science retracted after Vanderbilt facility closes

If the facility you need to reproduce your experiments closes after you’ve discovered questions about your original findings, what do you do?

If you’re a group of physicists that published a 2006 paper in Science, “Desorption of H from Si(111) by Resonant Excitation of the Si-H Vibrational Stretch Mode,” you retract your study. Here’s the notice, from today’s Science: Continue reading Physics paper in Science retracted after Vanderbilt facility closes

You can do that? A massive correction in Nature, but no retraction

courtesy Nature

This past April, Amparo Acker-Palmer and colleagues published a study in Nature, “Ephrin Bs are essential components of the Reelin pathway to regulate neuronal migration.” Within a day of its publication, Nature readers were raising questions about many of its figures. They started like this:

Andy Gu said:

Looks like Fig 1a, the two middle figures are actually the same with little move from desired regions. I don’t trust their data now…..

After several such comments, Nature senior editor Noah Gray weighed in: Continue reading You can do that? A massive correction in Nature, but no retraction

Lack of ethical approval leads to JCO retraction

The Retraction Watch category for “lack of IRB approval” as a reason for retraction — a subject we covered in our most recent Lab Times column — is growing. First there were the 90-odd retractions by Joachim Boldt, then three by Australian researchers studying Aussie-rules football players. Now, we learn that the Journal of Clinical Oncology has retracted a paper over concerns that the authors failed to obtain ethical approval to conduct their study.

The 2010 publication, by researchers at Saitama Medical University in Japan, reported on an analysis of 314 lymphoma patients being treated with chemotherapy — some, and perhaps none, of whom knew they were being studied.

Here’s the notice, which appeared this month: Continue reading Lack of ethical approval leads to JCO retraction

*Savaskan and Nitsch, forced to retract FASEB J paper, correct Cell study with duplicated figure

In August, we wrote about the complicated case of a paper retracted from FASEB Journal that had originally been slated for a correction instead. There had been allegations of misconduct by one of the authors, Nicolai E. Savaskan, and the key parts of the retraction notice for the paper were as follows:

A well-recognized and top-class fact finding commission concluded that the publication contains gross flaws. A key figure (Figure 14) and the conclusions drawn from it could not be underlined with the corresponding primary data.

Savaskan told us at the time that FASEB Journal had agreed to a correction of the figure in question, but ended up retracting the paper after receiving a letter from Annette Gruters-Kieslich at Charite – Universitatsmedizin Berlin, where the work was done. We didn’t get much of an answer from FASEB Journal about why they changed their minds.

*Since understanding why one paper warrants a correction and another gets retracted is important for us at Retraction Watch, a correction of a 2009 Cell paper by a group that included Savaskan and his FASEB J c0-author Robert Nitsch caught our eye. The correction for “Synaptic PRG-1 Modulates Excitatory Transmission via Lipid Phosphate-Mediated Signaling” — a paper cited nine times so far, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge — ran in the September 16, 2011 issue of Cell: Continue reading *Savaskan and Nitsch, forced to retract FASEB J paper, correct Cell study with duplicated figure

The ‘Goldilocks’ retraction? Revealing differences in how several neurology journals handled related problems

Four neurology journals have retracted articles by a Japanese researcher who admitted to having made “mistakes” in his handling of data. Although the cases are related, the way the journals have handled the  notices is startlingly different. One chose to say nothing, one chose to say little, while two went for full — or at least, approximately that — disclosure.

Guess which ones we like the most? Continue reading The ‘Goldilocks’ retraction? Revealing differences in how several neurology journals handled related problems

Why did Science partially retract the XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome paper?

If past experience is any indication, billions of pixels will be spilled in the coming days as scientists and advocates debate the latest twist in the story of XMRV, or xenotropic murine leukemia-related virus, and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Today’s news is that Science is partially retracting a 2009 paper by Judy Mikovits and colleagues, including Vincent Lombardi, purporting to show a link between the virus and the syndrome — a paper about which they issued an Expression of Concern in May. The retraction is of a table and a figure — more on that in a bit.

In an excellent blow-by-blow account in Science of the nearly 20-year-long saga, also out today, Jon Cohen and Martin Enserink review the unusual circumstances of that Expression of Concern. Science editor-in-chief Bruce

Alberts and Science Executive Editor Monica Bradford had first suggested that Mikovits and her co-authors retract the paper voluntarily. “Science feels it would be in the best interest of the scientific community,” they wrote in a 26 May letter. Mikovits was livid and questioned Alberts’s motives. “Who wrote that letter? I don’t think it was Science,” she says. The co-authors thought the retraction request was premature, too. “What if we walk away from this based on contamination and it’s not contamination?” Lombardi asked. “You’ve got to give us time to figure this out.”

Alberts stresses that they floated the retraction idea because Science already planned to publish the Expression of Concern. “It wasn’t a public call for retraction,” he notes, emphasizing that the recipients shared it with the media. He also does not think it would have been premature, although he says it’s often a tough call whether to retract a paper. “Ultimately, it requires expert judgment and a lot of sensitivity to the issues,” he says. “We had lost confidence in the results.”

As Science noted in May, two studies accompanied the May Expression of Concern Continue reading Why did Science partially retract the XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome paper?