by journal – Page 8 – Retraction Watch

Authors retract second Majorana paper from Nature

A year after retracting a Nature paper claiming to find evidence for the elusive Majorana particle that many hope would have paved the way for a quantum computer, a group of researchers have retracted a second paper on the subject from the same journal.

In the August 2017 paper “Epitaxy of advanced nanowire quantum devices,” Erik Bakkers of QuTech and Kavli Institute of NanoScience, Delft University of Technology, in The Netherlands, and colleagues claim that the work is a “substantial materials advancement that paves the road for the first Majorana braiding experiments.” The paper has been cited 189 times, earning it a “highly cited paper” designation from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

But the Majorana story has been unraveling after other physicists began raising questions. In March 2021, the group retracted a Nature paper. That was followed by an expression of concern for related work in Science in July, and another expression of concern in Science in December.

8 years after three papers are flagged — and after losing original correspondence — PLOS ONE retracts

A group of nutrition researchers in Canada led by the prominent diabetes scientist Emile Levy has lost three papers in PLOS ONE over concerns about the integrity of the data.

The concerns were raised nearly eight years ago by Elisabeth Bik, early in her career as a data sleuth.

In May 2014, Bik told us, she contacted the journal to point out problems with images in the articles, as well as a fourth paper that has received an expression of concern:

Triple sunrise, triple sunset: Science paper retracted when it turns out a planet is a star

Artist’s impression of HD 131399 from 2016 (via European Southern Observatory)

When Kevin Wagner at the University of Arizona and colleagues published a paper in Science about their discovery of a new planet in 2016, it captured the attention of a lot of science writers.

Finding the object – HD 131399 – meant that “astronomers have discovered a planet with an even more exotic sight on its horizon: a triple sunset,” in the words of The New York Times.

Or, as the AP put it, “a planet with triple sunrises and sunsets every day for part of the year.”

Is a “Wall of Shame” a good idea for journals?

Today, the journal Cureus — which is no stranger to Retraction Watch — unveiled what they are calling a “Wall of Shame,” which “highlights authors and reviewers who have committed egregious ethical violations as well as the institutions that enabled them.”

Doing the right thing: Neuroscientist announces retractions in ‘the most difficult tweet ever’

A group of neuroscientists in Germany and Hungary is calling for the retraction of two of their recent papers after discovering a fatal error in the research.

Myriam Sander, a memory researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, took to social media on Wednesday to alert her followers to the decision. In what Sander called the “most difficult tweet ever,” she wrote:

Five studies linked to Cassava Sciences retracted

A researcher at the center of questions about a biotech’s controversial experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s disease has lost five papers in PLOS One.

The journal says it is retracting the articles, by Hoau-Yan Wang and colleagues, over concerns about the integrity of the data and the images in the papers. Wang does not agree with any of the retractions.

As we’ve reported, Wang, of the CIty University of New York, helped conduct the studies that formed the backbone of the regulatory filing for the drug simufilam, which Cassava Sciences — formerly Pain Therapeutics — has been trying to bring to market. Cassava, according to a citizen’s petition to the FDA, has funded Wang’s lab for more than 15 years, and two of the now-retracted papers feature Lindsay Burns, a Cassava employee, as a co-author. (The citizen’s petition, which called on the FDA to halt Cassava’s trials, was filed by a law firm representing Cassava short sellers but eventually denied by the FDA because it was not an appropriate venue.)

Firing, publishing ban, 15 retractions for author who ‘defrauded’ co-authors in pay-to-publish scheme

Cureus has retracted 15 papers, including three on Covid-19, after concluding that the articles were produced in a scheme by a researcher in Pakistan who charged his co-authors to join the manuscripts, lied about the ethics approval for the studies and may have fabricated data.

The journal says Rahil Barkat~~, who already had lost a pair of articles in Cureus,~~ charged researchers – some in Pakistan, others elsewhere – “editing fees” of as much as $300 to proofread and sign on to his manuscripts.

Barkat’s name appears on a few of the now-retracted articles but not all. However, the journal has linked him to the 15 papers.

The 21-year-old apology – and retraction from JAMA

Contrary to what Toscanini famously said, it’s never too late to apologize.

Ask Shetal Shah. In 2000, Shah, now a professor of pediatrics at New York Medical College’s Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital, in Valhalla, published an essay in JAMA about a young medic providing care to indigenous people in Alaska.

Titled “Five Miles From Tomorrow,” the piece focused on the narrator’s encounter with a wizened 97-year-old Yupik man

Lancet journal retracts, replaces paper on treatment for pancreatic cancer

A Lancet journal has retracted and replaced a 2021 paper on the treatment of pancreatic cancer over an error that prompted an institutional investigation.

The article, “Stereotactic body radiotherapy plus pembrolizumab and trametinib versus stereotactic body radiotherapy plus gemcitabine for locally recurrent pancreatic cancer after surgical resection: an open-label, randomised, controlled, phase 2 trial,” appeared last July in Lancet Oncology and received a significant amount of attention on social media. It has already been cited seven times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

According to the journal, after publication readers notified the editors about potential problems with the data – in particular, apparent issues with the survival curves in study. In October 2021, the journal published a letter to the editor by a group in Japan detailing the concerns and stating that:

NASA researchers retract Nature paper on climate change and evapotranspiration

The authors of a 2021 Nature paper on how climate change might affect the amount of evaporation from the earth’s land surface have retracted the article after learning of a crucial error in their analysis.

The crux of the paper, titled “A 10 per cent increase in global land evapotranspiration from 2003 to 2019,” was the finding that:

Variability in global land evapotranspiration is positively correlated with El Niño–Southern Oscillation. The main driver of the trend, however, is increasing land temperature. Our findings provide an observational constraint on global land evapotranspiration, and are consistent with the hypothesis that global evapotranspiration should increase in a warming climate.

In other words, according to the authors – from a pair of NASA labs in California and Maryland – the rate of evapotranspiration over that 17-year-period was twice as high as previous estimates. As the lead author, Madeleine Pascolini-Campbell, said in this press release (Wayback Machine link) from NASA:

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