pnas – Retraction Watch

PNAS retracts paper that contributed to lung cancer trial

National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center

A paper that was the subject of a four-page correction in 2018, and which helped inform a now-halted clinical trial of a drug for lung cancer, has been retracted following an institutional investigation concluded that one of the researchers had falsified the data in that article and at least four others.

And we have learned that Springer Nature should be acting on a different article by the researcher shortly, and has just begun an investigation of yet another.

The PNAS article, which appeared in 2015, was written by Takashi Nojiri, formerly of Osaka University and the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Research Institute, in Japan. As we reported in June, an August 2020 report from National University Corporation Osaka University and National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Hospital concluded that Nojiri committed:

Astronomer apologizes, withdraws preprint slated for PNAS about impact in the field after criticism

A prominent astronomer at the University of Texas in Austin has withdrawn a preprint and a published paper after critics accused him of perpetuating inequality in the field, saying he is more sorry “than words can say” about the matter and that he is taking a hiatus from his work to allow the controversy to subside. He is also putting publication of a book he wrote on the subject on hold.

At the heart of the controversy was an article by John Kormendy, a specialist in black holes, titled “Metrics of research impact in astronomy: Predicting later impact from metrics measured 10-15 years after the PhD.”

Kormendy published the work last week as a preprint on arXiv before it appeared in PNAS but after he’d received word from the journal that it had been accepted.

According to a summary of the article:

Exclusive: Ohio State researcher kept six-figure job for more than a year after a misconduct finding

In 2016, Mingjun Zhang, a biomedical engineering researcher at The Ohio State University, along with collaborators, published a paper that explored the mechanism behind ivy’s impressive adhesive strength. In it, the authors claimed to report the genetic sequences of the proteins making up the adhesive.

The paper, entitled “Nanospherical arabinogalactan proteins are a key component of the high-strength adhesive secreted by English ivy” appeared in PNAS on June 7 and attracted some media attention.

But shortly after publication, an anonymous whistleblower sent a letter to OSU and PNAS simultaneously: “The authors have knowlingly [sic], intentionally, repeatedly, and substantially misrepresented data in order to publish the manuscript.”

A study finding no evidence of racial bias in police shootings earns a correction that critics call an “opaque half measure”

A group of researchers who published a controversial study that found no evidence of racial bias in deadly police shootings have corrected their paper but are standing by their findings — to the displeasure of some scholars who say the article is too flawed to stand.

The 2019 study, “Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings,” was written by David Johnson, of the University of Maryland, and several co-authors from Michigan State University. According to the abstract:

Former UCSD prof who resigned amid investigation into China ties retracts paper for ‘inadvertently misidentified’ images

Kang Zhang, a formerly high-profile geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, who resigned his post last July amidst an investigation into undisclosed ties to China, has retracted a paper because some of its images were taken from other researchers’ work.

The paper, “Impaired lipid metabolism by age-dependent DNA methylation alterations accelerates aging,” was submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) last fall, months after Zhang’s resignation. One of Zhang’s fellow corresponding authors, Jian-Kang Zhu, used the journal’s “Contributed Submissions” process, in which “An NAS member may contribute up to two of her or his own manuscripts for publication in PNAS each year.”

PNAS published the paper on February 6 of this year. But on February 18, authors of a different paper, in Aging Cell, sent the editors of PNAS a letter, writing:

Two years after he shared a draft of a “random brain fart side-project,” an astronomer sees a version published — without his name

In 2015, Peter Yoachim became interested in how long astronomers remained active astronomers or, more to the point, how long they continued publishing in astronomy.

Yoachim, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle, dug into some data, “did a burst of work in late 2015/early 2016, then fizzled out by 2017 when I ran out of time to work on it.” As he told Retraction Watch: Continue reading Two years after he shared a draft of a “random brain fart side-project,” an astronomer sees a version published — without his name

Political scientist asks for correction, gets flip-flop

You’d think that if an author asked a journal to correct a modest mistake, the journal would oblige. After all, many researchers have to be dragged kicking and screaming to correct the record.

But for Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, self-correction of a paper he had published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) took far more steps than one might have hoped. Continue reading Political scientist asks for correction, gets flip-flop

Researchers retract PNAS paper when they realize they’d been victims of an antibiotic switcheroo

In March 2017, a group of researchers in Vancouver, along with a colleague in Philadelphia, published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) concluding that a particular antibiotic might be useful for treating conditions in people with rare mutations.

Then, this past July, while continuing the work, they had an unexpected result. That made them suspect that the antibiotic they thought they had ordered, gentamicin, wasn’t what they thought it was. With the help of a different company that sells the antibiotic, they confirmed they were studying a different compound — and retracted the paper.

Here’s the notice for “Gentamicin B1 is a minor gentamicin component with major nonsense mutation suppression activity:” Continue reading Researchers retract PNAS paper when they realize they’d been victims of an antibiotic switcheroo

A 2015 PNAS paper is six pages long. Its correction is four pages long.

Sometimes, corrections are so extensive, they can only be called one thing: Mega-corrections.

Recently, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) issued a four-page correction notice to a paper about a compound that appeared to reduce the chances a cancer will recur. The notice describes figure duplication, problems with error bars and figure legends — as well as the loss of statistical significance for some data.

According to the authors’ statement in the notice:

Continue reading A 2015 PNAS paper is six pages long. Its correction is four pages long.

An awkward correction later, these researchers have a warning for would-be authors

Mitchell Knutson learned to take a journal’s policies seriously the hard way.

Early in 2017, Knutson, a professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville who studies iron metabolism, had findings he and his team were excited about publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). So they submitted a manuscript on January 30. Continue reading An awkward correction later, these researchers have a warning for would-be authors

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