FASEB J retracts 15-year-old study after author comes forward, but universities decline to investigate

The FASEB Journal — FASEB stands for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology — is retracting a 15-year-old paper without the consent of all of the authors, despite what seem like valiant attempts to figure out exactly what went wrong.

Here’s the notice for the University of Bern-University of Urbino paper:
Continue reading FASEB J retracts 15-year-old study after author comes forward, but universities decline to investigate

Two new corrections for Utah group that retracted two Cell Metabolism papers for missing notebooks

We have an update on the case of a University of Utah lab that retracted two Cell Metabolism papers last month after a fired lab technician disposed of two lab notebooks without permission. The team has now corrected two other papers, one in Blood and the other in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Here’s the notice from Blood: Continue reading Two new corrections for Utah group that retracted two Cell Metabolism papers for missing notebooks

Premature delivery? Paper on rapid assay for ruptured placenta pulled for “mishandling” of tests

The other day we brought you the story (well, not quite a STORY) of a group of researchers who had to retract a paper in the Journal of Computational Chemistry because of a “computation error.” We still don’t know what that means.

That was fresh in our minds when we came across the following retraction notice in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research: Continue reading Premature delivery? Paper on rapid assay for ruptured placenta pulled for “mishandling” of tests

Computational chem journal retracts article for, um, computation error

If you’re going to publish in the Journal of Computational Chemistry, it probably makes sense to have one’s computer tuned up for the task.

Or else you might wind up like a group of researchers in China who had to endure this misfortune: Continue reading Computational chem journal retracts article for, um, computation error

Retraction count for resveratrol researcher Dipak Das rises to 12

Das, via UConn

Dipak Das, the UConn researcher whom the university earlier ths year found to have fabricated or falsified data more than 100 times, has four more retractions to his name.

The notices appear in the June 1, 2012 issue of the American Journal of Physiology: Heart and Circulatory Physiology, and suggest that Das was not all that cooperative: Continue reading Retraction count for resveratrol researcher Dipak Das rises to 12

Psychologists take a gamble on using data about risky behavior, and are forced to retract a paper

When the first sentence of a science paper reads like this, you might think you’re in for quite a ride:

Jumping out of an airplane may seem like a crazy and scary thing to do, but for a skydiver it is a fun and exciting experience.

Unfortunately for the authors of an earlier version of that paper comparing gamblers and skydivers, published in 2011 in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, the ride was short-lived, according to a retraction notice just published: Continue reading Psychologists take a gamble on using data about risky behavior, and are forced to retract a paper

‘Molecular characterization’ errors lead to retraction from medicinal chemistry journal

The European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry has published a curious retraction notice for a paper in its February 2012 issue from a group of Indian scientists.

The abstract of the article,”Proton-pumping-ATPase-targeted antifungal activity of cinnamaldehyde based sulfonyl tetrazoles,” is still available on Medline:

Here’s what the abstract of the paper said about the study: Continue reading ‘Molecular characterization’ errors lead to retraction from medicinal chemistry journal

Millennium Villages Project forced to correct Lancet paper on foreign aid as leader leaves team

A senior member of a high-profile foreign aid research team has left the project on the heels of a Lancet correction of a heavily criticized paper the team published earlier this month.

Paul Pronyk, who until last week was director of monitoring and evaluation at Columbia University’s Center for Global Health and Economic Development, which runs the Millennium Villages Project, wrote a letter to the Lancet acknowledging errors in the paper, “The effect of an integrated multisector model for achieving the Millennium Development Goals and improving child survival in rural sub-Saharan Africa: a non-randomised controlled assessment,” originally published May 8. That admission came after Jesse Bump, Michael Clemens, Gabriel Demombynes, and Lawrence Haddad wrote a letter criticizing the work, which was published this week accompanied by corrections to the paper: Continue reading Millennium Villages Project forced to correct Lancet paper on foreign aid as leader leaves team

An Immunity retraction for Luk van Parijs, three years after the ORI found evidence of fabrication in the paper

Earlier this month, we reported on a correction by Luk van Parijs, the biologist the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) fired in 2005 after he admitted to making up data.

Immunity has now run a retraction involving van Parijs, dated May 25, 2012, for 2003’s “Autoimmunity as the Consequence of a Spontaneous Mutation in Rasgrp1”: Continue reading An Immunity retraction for Luk van Parijs, three years after the ORI found evidence of fabrication in the paper

Not for the faint of heart: Cardiologists retract syncope paper after realizing data columns weren’t aligned right

Improperly aligned columns have cost researchers at the Mayo Clinic a paper in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The paper originally concluded that fainting spells (syncope) give patients with high blood pressure in their lung arteries poor prognoses, an observation that turned out to be incorrect.

The problem? The group merged two electronic databases, but did not align columns properly, a problem found only after first author Rachel Le revisited the dataset looking to cull more data.

The retraction notice published on May 22 (the one on ScienceDirect is free to air, while the one on the JACC site is behind a paywall): Continue reading Not for the faint of heart: Cardiologists retract syncope paper after realizing data columns weren’t aligned right