The U.S. Office of Research Integrity is investigating work done at a Caltech lab after researchers there couldn’t replicate it, and retracted a paper based on the findings.
Here’s the notice, which ran this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): Continue reading ORI investigating work from Caltech lab as PNAS paper is retracted
Here at Retraction Watch, we’ve covered retractions for misconduct, journal errors, editorial system hacking and even no particular reason.
And that’s just in the last week.
However, we’ve identified a new reported reason: carelessness. A paper in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry claimed to show how a tiny RNA causes fat cells to die.
Instead, the paper died.
Turned out that rather than describe previously published data, the authors say they inadvertently included a figure that had already appeared in another paper.
The retraction for “miR-598 induces replicative senescence in human adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells via silent information regulator 1,” reads, in full: Continue reading RNA paper retracted for “carelessness in including some of the figures”
Plant Physiology and Biochemistry has an amusing retraction notice this month that underscores the perils of allowing authors to come up with their own statements.
The paper, “Molecular strategies in manipulation of the starch synthesis pathway for improving storage starch content in plants (review and prospect for increasing storage starch synthesis),” came from a group at Sichuan Agricultural University in China — including its Maize Research Institute — and was published in the December 2012 issue.
The Journal of Neuroscience has retracted a 2011 paper by an international group of scientists, including the prominent Maryland researcher Ronald Dubner, but readers won’t know why.
As the notice “explains“: Continue reading Journal of Neuroscience retraction, typically opaque, from author with history of errors
Sometimes, retraction notices offer tantalizing clues, but no real information. Take the case of a paper called “Florid osseous dysplasia,” which was published last year in Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology by a group at Mumbai’s Nair Hospital Dental College and retracted recently.
Here’s the notice, which is suggestive but doesn’t say much: Continue reading Dental papers retracted after investigations find “issue with respect to misconduct”
Last month, we brought you news that Pfizer had retracted a paper in the Journal of Clinical Oncology
purporting to show a benefit of their experimental drug for lung cancer figitumumab after discovering that its clinical lead on the project had done analyses improperly.
There’s been another retraction, of a related paper, in the British Journal of Cancer, “Pre-treatment levels of circulating free IGF-1 identify NSCLC patients who derive clinical benefit from figitumumab.” Here’s the notice: Continue reading Another retraction for Pfizer’s experimental cancer treatment figitumumab
As Werner Heisenberg famously conjectured, you can’t measure an atomic particle’s momentum and position at the same time. But perhaps the principle named for the German physicist and godfather of quantum mechanics should be applied to another important scientific truth: you can’t publish the same article in two different but competing journals.
Just ask a group led by Ted Sargent, a prominent physicist at the University of Toronto. He and his colleagues recently lost a paper in Thin Solid Films — which sounds like it ought to be the name of an indie movie company, dibs! — on quantum dot solar cells. (If those sound familiar to readers of this blog, there’s a good reason. We wrote about the retraction of another quantum dot paper, this one in Nature Photonics, in October of this year.)
Sargent’s article, “Advances in colloidal quantum dot solar cells: The depleted-heterojunction device,” which he wrote with colleagues in Spain and Switzerland, appeared in August 2011. According to the notice: Continue reading Quantum physicists learn about Heisenberg’s (publishing) uncertainty principle the hard way
The journal System evidently needs a new one — at least when it comes to production.
The publication has been forced to retract an article that it published twice — in the same issue.
Here’s what happened: Continue reading Failure at System — systems failure? — leads to duplicate publication, retraction
A group of cardiology researchers formerly of the University of Cologne has retracted two papers, after investigations into allegations of misconduct led to an admission of guilt by one of the lab’s junior members.
Here’s the first retraction, for “Connexin 43 acts as a cytoprotective mediator of signal transduction by stimulating mitochondrial KATP channels in mouse cardiomyocytes,” published last week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation: Continue reading Two patch-clamping retractions in PNAS and the JCI after first author admits image manipulation
In April, we wrote about a group of cancer researchers from Tunisia:
The M.O. of the group…appears to be quite simple: Find a study that looks easy to “replicate,” change a few of the particulars and submit as if it were a piece of local, original work.
One of the papers we cited in that post for appearing to be heavily plagiarized has now been retracted, with a heavy penalty for the authors. Here’s the notice, from the Annals of Saudi Medicine: Continue reading Serial plagiarists earn lifetime publishing ban from Saudi journal