Circulation retracts four papers by author who misled on IRB approval

Circulation has retracted four articles by a pediatric cardiologist in Japan who failed to obtain ethics approval for the studies in question but evidently lied about it to the journal.

The researcher, Hideaki Senzaki, of Saitama Medical University, is a highly-published investigator who trained for a time with at Johns Hopkins.

According to the Circulation notice: Continue reading Circulation retracts four papers by author who misled on IRB approval

Chemist Craig Hill, author of JACS and Science papers, explains the retractions

Last week, we reported that Craig Hill, a prominent chemist at Emory University, and his colleagues at six other institutions are retracting three papers they published in the mid-2000s, two in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and one in Science.

We have now spoken with Hill, who walked us through the history of the research. According to Hill, the international team of researchers, after “unusually extensive experiments” felt they had enough evidence to publish their original articles

but all authors (and others) remained skeptical given the unprecedented nature of these compounds.

Hill’s lab continued to conduct experiments and probe the original data after the publications, he said. (Hill wrote a piece for Nature in 2008 explaining the significance of the research, which, among other things, might lead to better ways of harnessing solar energy.) Continue reading Chemist Craig Hill, author of JACS and Science papers, explains the retractions

Biologists delete paper from literature after realizing they’d deleted too many genes

Researchers deleted more genes than they bargained for in a Drosophila strain, a mistake that resulted in a retraction of a paper from 2007.

Ron Wides, a biologist specializing in pattern development at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and colleagues have retracted a paper published in Mechanisms of Development after his lab found that their technique to delete the Ten-a gene ended up deleting other nearby genes, too.

It was deletions of other genes, and not Ten-a, that killed the fruit flies, Wides concluded. His group had also concluded, erroneously, that Ten-a is what’s known as a “pair-rule” gene. Fruit fly embryos develop in stacked segments, like tubes of Pringles; pair-rule genes guide the development of alternating segments. Those other loci, and not Ten-a, caused lethality and caused the flies to develop improperly early,  Wides concluded.

The retraction reads in full: Continue reading Biologists delete paper from literature after realizing they’d deleted too many genes

JACS, Science retracting three papers from leading Emory chemist Craig Hill

The Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) and Science are retracting three papers by Craig Hill and colleagues which, we’re told, have been the focus of intense scrutiny within the field since they first appeared in the mid-2000. Hill is an internationally renowned expert in catalysis who has won a slew of awards for his work.

JACS has acted first, issuing two notices recently about the papers it published. The first notice, for 2005’s “A Palladium-Oxo Complex. Stabilization of This Proposed Catalytic Intermediate by an Encapsulating Polytungstate Ligand,” states: Continue reading JACS, Science retracting three papers from leading Emory chemist Craig Hill

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

Former Millennium Villages Project staffer responds to critical Nature editorial

courtesy Nature

Last week, we wrote about a correction of a heavily criticized paper in The Lancet by the Millennium Villages Project, a large aid program. Paul Pronyk, director of monitoring and evaluation at Columbia University’s Center for Global Health and Economic Development, which runs the Project, left his job shortly after writing an explanatory letter that accompanied the correction.

That correction had come after a letter to The Lancet, but also after Nature had raised issues in an editorial. Nature’s editorial concluded: Continue reading Former Millennium Villages Project staffer responds to critical Nature editorial

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