Category: pnas retractions

Former Mount Sinai postdoc faked gene therapy data: ORI

ori logoA former postdoc at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York faked data in four published papers, one submitted manuscript, and four NIH grant applications, according to new findings by the Office of Research Integrity.

We reported on six retractions from Savio Woo’s Mount Sinai lab in 2010, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and two each from Human Gene Therapy and Molecular Therapy. The PNAS paper, as we noted then:

claimed to have discovered a possible cure for phenylketonuria, or PKU, in mice—a finding that was cited more than 30 times and trumpeted in the media.

At the time, Mount Sinai said that two of the lab’s postdocs had been dismissed for misconduct. Now, more than three and a half years later, the ORI reports that a former postdoc in that lab, Li Chen: Continue reading Former Mount Sinai postdoc faked gene therapy data: ORI

Shigeaki Kato notches retractions 16 and 17, in PNAS

katoShigeaki Kato has two more retractions, both in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Here’s one of the notices: Continue reading Shigeaki Kato notches retractions 16 and 17, in PNAS

Former NIH scientist falsified images in hepatitis study: ORI

Baoyan Xu, via NIH
Baoyan Xu, via NIH

A former postdoc at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) committed misconduct in a study of hepatitis by falsely claiming that data from a single trial subject were actually from more than a dozen different people, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has found.

The investigation was prompted by allegations made by readers of the paper. Baoyan Xu made what the ORI called “a limited admission” that “some better looking strips were repeatedly used as representatives for several times [sic].”

According to a report of the ORI’s findings to be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, the paper, “Hybrid DNA virus in Chinese patients with seronegative hepatitis discovered by deep sequencing, published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): Continue reading Former NIH scientist falsified images in hepatitis study: ORI

Cell, Nature, Science boycott: What was Randy Schekman’s tenure at PNAS like?

Randy Schekman, via eLife
Randy Schekman, via eLife

By now, Retraction Watch readers may have heard about new Nobel laureate Randy Schekman’s pledge to boycott Cell, Nature, and Science — sometimes referred to the “glamour journals” — because they damage and distort science. Schekman has used the bully pulpit of the Nobels to spark a conversation that science dearly needs to have about the cult of the impact factor.

The argument isn’t airtight. Schekman — now editor of eLife, an open access journal — says that open access journals are a better way to go, although he doesn’t really connect mode of publishing with the quality of what’s published. Others have pointed out that the move will punish junior members of his lab while likely having no effect on the career of someone who has published dozens of studies in the three journals he’s criticizing, and has, well, won a Nobel.

All that aside, it was Schekman’s reference to retractions that, not surprisingly, caught our eye: Continue reading Cell, Nature, Science boycott: What was Randy Schekman’s tenure at PNAS like?

PNAS retraction notice reveals name of Leiden University researcher fired for data manipulation

pnas 1113In August, we reported on a case in which a researcher had been fired from Leiden University in the Netherlands for fraud. The university said there would be two retractions, but did not name the researcher in question. At the same time, however, there were clues in the university’s report that suggested it could only be one person, the lead author of a 2010 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that was to be retracted.

That notice has now appeared, and confirms that the fired employee was Annemie Schuerwegh, as a number of our comments surmised. Here’s the notice: Continue reading PNAS retraction notice reveals name of Leiden University researcher fired for data manipulation

Correction by punctuation? PNAS fixes paper by putting quotes around plagiarized passages

PNAScover1113PNAS has a curious correction in a recent issue. A group from Toronto and Mount Sinai in New York, it seems, had been rather too liberal in their use of text from a previously published paper by another researcher — what we might call plagiarism, in a less charitable mood.

To paraphrase Beyoncé: If you like it, better put some quotation marks around it. But we’re pretty sure she meant before, not after, the fact.

The article, “Structural basis for substrate specificity and catalysis of human histone acetyltransferase 1,” had appeared in May 2012, in other words, some 17 months ago. It has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

As the notice states: Continue reading Correction by punctuation? PNAS fixes paper by putting quotes around plagiarized passages

Researcher who threatened Retraction Watch with lawsuit corrects funding source for several papers

Ariel Fernandez, source: Wikipedia
Ariel Fernandez, source: Wikipedia

Ariel Fernandez, an Argentine chemist (who claims to hold the fastest-awarded PhD from Yale) and the subject of institutional investigations at multiple universities, has corrected several papers recently. What makes the moves particularly unusual — and interesting — is the stated reason for the amendments: disclaiming any funding from the National Institutes of Health for the work.

Fernandez was the recipient in 2005 of a $275,880 award “Protein packing defects as functional markers and drug targets.” The following year he received $294,217, and in 2007, $284,461, for the same four-year project, if we’re reading the link correctly.

Fernandez, readers of this blog might recall, threatened us with legal action when we wrote last spring about an expression of concern regarding his 2011 paper in BMC Genomics, “Subfunctionalization reduces the fitness cost of gene duplication in humans by buffering dosage imbalances.” According to that notice: Continue reading Researcher who threatened Retraction Watch with lawsuit corrects funding source for several papers

Rapid response: Authors retract a PNAS paper within six weeks after Nobel Prize winner spots an error

pnas 2-26Sometimes, retractions happen months, or even years, after another researcher spots problems in a paper. But when it’s a Nobel Prize winner who finds the error, things might move more quickly.

In the case of a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the retraction happened within six weeks. Here’s the notice for “Voltage sensor ring in a native structure of a membrane-embedded potassium channel,” by Liang Shi, Hongjin Zheng, Hui Zheng, Brian A. Borkowski, Dan Shi, Tamir Gonen, and Qiu-Xing Jiang, which first appeared online on February 11: Continue reading Rapid response: Authors retract a PNAS paper within six weeks after Nobel Prize winner spots an error

Copy editor, stat! PNAS spells its editor-in-chief’s name wrong — on a piece he co-authored

pnas 3 5 13With apologies in advance to the good folks at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) for making a joke about something that could very well happen to any of us, we note the following correction: Continue reading Copy editor, stat! PNAS spells its editor-in-chief’s name wrong — on a piece he co-authored

Musical figures: PNAS paper corrected with version of “intentionally contrived and falsified” Nature figure

pnasOne of the two corrections recommended by a McGill committee for work by Maya Saleh and colleagues has appeared, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

As we reported last month, the committee found that

two figures in [a] Nature paper had been “intentionally contrived and falsified.” One of those figures was duplicated in a PNAS paper, which also contained an image that  had incorrectly labeled some proteins.

The committee recommended that both of the papers be corrected, and the PNAS correction  for “Confinement of caspase-12 proteolytic activity to autoprocessing” reads as follows: Continue reading Musical figures: PNAS paper corrected with version of “intentionally contrived and falsified” Nature figure