Category: by paywall status

A retracted periodontitis-heart disease paper that didn’t make it into the new AHA review

On Wednesday, the American Heart Association announced something that those of us who’d been reading the medical literature carefully had known for a while: Bad gums do not cause heart disease.

Periodontitis is linked to bad heart disease, you see, as studies have shown, and periodontists have sure been using this as an excuse to tell us to floss. But there’s never been a convincing study showing that one causes the other.

In fact, it’s not even clear how you’d do that study. “Let’s see, for a control group, we should have 100 people convince themselves they’re flossing for a year, but not actually floss….oh, what else can we get funding for?”

That “news” prompted an email from Retraction Watch friend Marc Abrahams, Continue reading A retracted periodontitis-heart disease paper that didn’t make it into the new AHA review

Whistling the same Tunisia: Serial plagiarists plague the oncology literature

A group of cancer researchers from Tunisia has been seeding the oncology literature with plagiarized articles that steal liberally — both text and data — from the work of others.

The group has one retraction, in the journal Obesity — whose splash page has the jaunty, if disconcerting, invite: “Welcome to Obesity!” — and at least two withdrawn papers. However, we have been alerted to at least one other case of apparent plagiarism involving an article in the Annals of Saudi Medicine that ought to receive careful scrutiny. Continue reading Whistling the same Tunisia: Serial plagiarists plague the oncology literature

Math paper retracted because it “contains no scientific content”

Have a seat, this one’s a howler.

According to a retraction notice for “Computer application in mathematics,” published in Computers & Mathematics with Applications: Continue reading Math paper retracted because it “contains no scientific content”

Group investigated by University of Louisville corrects lung cancer paper after retracting six others

A group of researchers whose work has been under investigation at the University of Louisville has issued a correction for a paper in the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology (AJRCMB).

The correction follows three retractions each in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the AJRCMB, the latter of which made it clear that lab member ShouWei Han was responsible for the manipulations and duplications that brought down the papers. Here’s the new notice, which appeared in the March 1, 2012 issue of the journal: Continue reading Group investigated by University of Louisville corrects lung cancer paper after retracting six others

It’s all bad, it’s all good: JCI retracts for made-up data but authors stand behind work

The Journal of Clinical Investigation has retracted a 2010 article after the researchers acknowledged that the paper contained a substantial amount of manipulated or manufactured data.

How much bad data? Enough to sink seven figures. And the authors said they could not produce raw data in another 19 or so figures and four tables.

But, as the notice states, the researcher said that despite the retraction, they stand by the thrust of their article, “Sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor-2 deficiency leads to inhibition of macrophage proinflammatory activities and atherosclerosis in apoE-deficient mice:” Continue reading It’s all bad, it’s all good: JCI retracts for made-up data but authors stand behind work

Crise de foie: Liver journals retract duplicate biomarker pubs

Two liver journals have retracted articles from a group of Irani researchers who published similar — but not quite identical — versions of the same paper some months apart.

A retraction notice in the Journal of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases — which bills itself as the “Official Journal of the Romanian Societies of Gastroenterology” — explains what happened: Continue reading Crise de foie: Liver journals retract duplicate biomarker pubs

JCO expresses concern over images from Spanish group that had aroused earlier concern

The Journal of Clinical Oncology has issued an expression of concern about a 2003 article by a group of researchers in Spain who appear to have had recurrent problems with images.

The paper has been cited 56 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the notice:

It has been brought to our attention, regarding Figure 1, Part A, that similarity exists between bands 3, 4, and 5 of the top row and bands 1, 2, and 3 of the bottom row, including the presence of artifacts, in the April 15, 2003 article by [Jose] RomanGomez et al, entitled, “Cadherin-13, a Mediator of Calcium Dependent Cell-Cell Adhesion, Is Silenced by Methylation in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia and Correlates With Pretreatment Risk Profile and Cytogenetic Response to Interferon Alfa” (J Clin Oncol 21:1472-1479, 2003).  This similarity has raised concerns about whether these rows represent independent data. We alerted the corresponding author, Dr. Roman-Gomez, of this concern, and he has repeated the experiment shown in the original Figure 1, with the results below. Although the results of the figure appear to be unchanged, we wish to inform the readers of this issue, so that they may make their own independent assessment.

Continue reading JCO expresses concern over images from Spanish group that had aroused earlier concern

Third retraction arrives for Alirio Melendez, this one in the Journal of Cellular Physiology

Alirio Melendez, the former National University of Singapore researcher who has already retracted two papers in the midst of an investigation into about 70 of his publications, has had a third retracted a third.

Here’s the notice from the Journal of Cellular Physiology: Continue reading Third retraction arrives for Alirio Melendez, this one in the Journal of Cellular Physiology

It “takes a long time to have these experiments redone,” so group retracts wheat paper after reader challenges

Normally we’d make hay with the following notice in Acta Biochimica et Biophysica Sinica — separating the wheat from the chaff, Love and Death, and all that — but, well, it speaks for itself (sort of).

A group of researchers in China have retracted their 2011 paper on the biochemistry of chloroplast in wheat: Continue reading It “takes a long time to have these experiments redone,” so group retracts wheat paper after reader challenges

Salami slicing and heart attacks don’t mix: Duplication, lack of transparency lead to retraction

A group of French cardiology researchers have retracted a study of a potential way to rule out heart attacks, after it became clear they had used data from another study without alerting the journal.

In an unusually forthright letter accompanying the retraction of “Concomitant measurement of copeptin and high-sensitivity troponin for fast and reliable rule out of acute myocardial infarction,” originally published in Intensive Care Medicine, Bruno Riou and colleagues note: Continue reading Salami slicing and heart attacks don’t mix: Duplication, lack of transparency lead to retraction