Category: AAAS

The editor of a Science family journal waited three years before beginning the process of retracting a paper after learning that the University of Wisconsin at Madison had found duplication and mislabeling but no misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned.

As we reported last November, the paper, “The receptor tyrosine kinase AXL mediates nuclear translocation of the epidermal growth factor receptor,” was published in 2017 in Science Signaling. It was retracted this past November, and the notice referred to a university investigation.

That prompted us to submit a public records request on November 12 for the investigation as well as any correspondence between the university and the journal. In a response on January 12, the university denied our request for the report of the investigation, saying that “There is a review still underway at the federal level regarding this issue.” (That is a good reminder of how long the U.S. Office of Research Integrity can take to review such investigations.)

But the university released correspondence between Deric Wheeler, the corresponding author of the paper, and John Foley, the editor of the journal, which we’ve made available here. The thread begins on July 6, 2021 – just one month shy of three years after Foley learned of an investigation into the research – with an email from Foley in which the editor acknowledged “an egregious delay”:

Continue reading ‘My egregious delay’: Science journal takes more than three years to retract paper after university investigation

An anniversary has prompted this reconsideration of the revolution in biochemistry that wasn’t: the “arsenic bacteria.” Just over 10 years have passed since an infamous Dec. 2, 2010, NASA press conference, which promised the revelation of “an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” 

Of course, nothing of the kind occurred. The carefully curated moment was less informative for its scientific value — in effect, nil — than for what it says about how years of attention-seeking and speculation in biology can drive an agenda. Equally concerning, despite the intervening decade in which other researchers debunked the overhyped result, is that the journal involved has yet to retract the article in question, allowing it to live in a zombie state.   

The announcement at the press conference was, to the disappointment of many, the supposed “discovery” of a microbe that could grow on arsenate in the absence of phosphate and incorporate arsenic instead of phosphorus in macromolecules such as nucleic acids and proteins that was being published in Science.  Steven Benner (referring to himself as a curmudgeon) was the only individual at the press conference who talked real sense by undermining the claims.   Mary Voytek, NASA Senior Scientist for Astrobiology (a position she still occupies) employed a Star Trek analogy:

Continue reading Why one biologist says it’s not too late to retract the “arsenic life” paper

Science Translational Medicine has issued an expression of concern about a 2020 paper on the genetics of colorectal cancer by a group in China whose results were pegged on a test that couldn’t have produced the findings. 

The article, “Circulating tumor DNA methylation profiles enable early diagnosis, prognosis prediction, and screening for colorectal cancer,” appeared in January, with authors from both academia and an outfit called the Guangzhou Youze Biological Pharmaceutical Technology Company. 

Continue reading Former UCSD prof who resigned amid investigation into China ties has paper flagged for using the wrong test