Category: by journal

Journal of Neuroscience retracts two, one 13 years old

The June 8 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience includes two retractions:

The notices are completely uninformative. They read: Continue reading Journal of Neuroscience retracts two, one 13 years old

Elsevier apologizes for Applied Mathematics Letters retraction, pays author’s legal fees

Elsevier, the publisher of Applied Mathematics Letters, which retracted a paper questioning the second law of thermodynamics earlier this year, will issue an apology and pay $10,000 in legal fees.

According to John West at the Discovery Institute’s blog, which broke the story: Continue reading Elsevier apologizes for Applied Mathematics Letters retraction, pays author’s legal fees

Three more withdrawals for Naoki Mori, and a hint of the mother of retractions

Lest readers of Retraction Watch had forgotten about Naoki Mori, the cancer researcher who liked his Western blots so much he decided to reuse them — and reuse them some more — he’s back.

The British Journal of Haematology (BJH) has retracted two papers Mori published in that journal, and BMC Microbiology has retracted another, bringing the total of retractions involving his work to at least 19 by our count. [See update at end.]

The BJH issued both retractions online in the end of February, and they’ve since come out in print. Here’s the retraction notice for the first paper, in the BJH (first only because it was published first): Continue reading Three more withdrawals for Naoki Mori, and a hint of the mother of retractions

So when is a retraction warranted? The long and winding road to publishing a failure to replicate

Sometime in 2009, the University of Nottingham’s Uwe Vinkemeier thought something was wrong with two papers he read in Genes & Development, one from 2006 and one from 2009. The papers claimed to show how changes to a protein called STAT1 affect programmed cell death. So he did what scientists are supposed to do: He tried to repeat the experiments, to replicate the results.

He couldn’t.

So he submitted the results to G&D, which was initially willing to publish the data along with a rebuttal by the original authors. But everyone seemed to be dragging their feet. Continue reading So when is a retraction warranted? The long and winding road to publishing a failure to replicate

On second thought: PNAS retracts two papers after results fail replication

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) ran two retractions this week.

One of those papers was “Properdin homeostasis requires turnover of the alternative complement pathway,” which first appeared online in October of last year. The researchers were looking at the interaction between complement — a sort of primitive immune system — and a protein called properdin.

From the notice: Continue reading On second thought: PNAS retracts two papers after results fail replication

A third Milena Penkowa paper, in FASEB Journal, now subject to Notice of Concern

As we reported earlier this week, two journals have issued Expressions of Concern about papers by Milena Penkowa, who is under investigation for scientific misconduct and misuse of grants. Now we learn that the FASEB Journal has published a Notice of Concern about a third paper: Continue reading A third Milena Penkowa paper, in FASEB Journal, now subject to Notice of Concern

Another Bulfone-Paus paper under review, this one in Blood

Blood tells Retraction Watch that they are reviewing a 1999 paper co-authored by Silvia Bulfone-Paus, who has already retracted 12 papers in other journals.

The study, “Human monocytes constitutively express membrane-bound, biologically active, and interferon-gamma-upregulated interleukin-15,” has been cited 124 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Its corresponding author is Tiziana Musso, of the University of Turin.

Joerg Zwirner, over at the Abnormal Science blog, has a three-part series deconstructing what he says are the flaws in the paper. Zwirner points out a number of data duplications. As he notes: Continue reading Another Bulfone-Paus paper under review, this one in Blood

No confidence vote on sepsis paper data leads to Blood retraction

The journal Blood has retracted an article after the authors determined that they could not longer trust in the validity of the data.

The paper has been cited 22 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. From the retraction notice:

Niessen F, Furlan-Freguia C, Fernández JA, Mosnier LO, Castellino FJ, Weiler H, Rosen H, Griffin JH, Ruf W. Endogenous EPCR/aPC-PAR1 signaling prevents inflammation-induced vascular leakage and lethality.

Blood. 2009;113(12):2859-2866.

The authors retract the 19 March 2009, paper cited above. Recently, the authors discovered that some primary data presented in this paper could not be independently reproduced. All coauthors concur with the retraction of the paper and apologize to the readers, reviewers, and editors of Blood for publishing these invalid data.

The nature of the data problem isn’t clear from that passage. But Blood editor Cynthia Dunbar told us that her journal Continue reading No confidence vote on sepsis paper data leads to Blood retraction

Borstel update: Former director’s plagiarized 2009 paper to be retracted

Peter Zabel/Borstel

Yesterday, we reported that Peter Zabel, managing director of Germany’s Research Center Borstel, had stepped down amid allegations that he had duplicated one of his German papers in English. It turns out, however, that the reason for his resignation was plagiarism of a 2008 paper in Nature Reviews Immunology by a group at the University of Michigan.

Laborjournal reports (see update at end) that long passages of text, and three figures, in a 2009 article by Zabel and Hans-Peter Hauber in Der Internist are very similar to material in the Nature Reviews Immunology paper. According to an email to Laborjournal from the head of academic publishing at Springer, which publishes Der Internist: Continue reading Borstel update: Former director’s plagiarized 2009 paper to be retracted

Borstel hit with more potential misconduct as managing director steps down amid questions of plagiarism

Peter Zabel/Borstel

Retraction Watch readers are likely to be familiar with Germany’s Research Center Borstel, because it is home to Silvia Bulfone-Paus, who has recently retracted 12 papers. Now it turns out that Borstel’s managing director, Peter Zabel — who was involved in the Bulfone-Paus investigation — has stepped down because of allegations of duplication of his own work.

According to a statement from Borstel, translated from German: Continue reading Borstel hit with more potential misconduct as managing director steps down amid questions of plagiarism