Cell Metabolism has retracted a 2006 article by a group of researchers at Oxford in England after an investigation concluded that the first author had committed misconduct.
The paper, “Nicotinamide nucleotide transhydrogenase: A key role in insulin secretion,” came from the lab of Frances Ashcroft, a world-renowned expert on ion channels. (We’ve written about Ashcroft’s lab before.)
According to the abstract: Continue reading Misconduct at Oxford prompts retraction of insulin paper
A group of researchers have lost a paper in a computer science journal because they were apparently using its references to help the impact factor of a different journal that one of them edits.
Here’s the notice for “Impacts of sensor node distributions on coverage in sensor networks,” a paper first published in 2011 and cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Citation manipulation: Journal retracts paper because author boosted references to a journal he edits
A group of dental researchers from India has lost their 2008 paper on the salubrious effects of coconut water on periodontal health.
The article, “Comparison of coconut water, propolis, HBSS, and milk on PDL cell survival,” appeared in the Journal of Endodontics, an Elsevier title. It has been cited 24 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Here’s the abstract: Continue reading Dental journal pulls article for “sufficient evidence” of plagiarism
The journal Appetite has retracted a recent paper that purported to show that children whose parents kept a tight fist on the grub were less likely to become obese than those whose parents were more laissez-faire with the feed bag.
The article, “Relation of parenting styles, feeding styles and feeding practices to child overweight and obesity. Direct and moderated effects,” appeared last year. The senior author was Laura Hubbs-Tait, of Oklahoma State University. Continue reading Spreadsheet error forces loss of Appetite paper on obesity and parenting styles
The debate over the retraction of a highly controversial paper on the effects of GMOs on rats continues unabated. This week, Adriane Fugh-Berman and Thomas Sherman wrote on the Hastings Center website that Continue reading Journal editor defends retraction of GMO-rats study while authors reveal some of paper’s history
More than two years ago, we wrote about a retraction for duplication in Biophysical Journal prompted by an email from pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis. That post generated a robust discussion, including one comment from someone calling himself or herself “Double Dutch.”
This past weekend, the last author of that paper, Rienk van Grondelle, left a lengthy response to that comment in which he explained how the duplication happened. We’ve confirmed that it was van Grondelle who left the comment, which we reproduce here in full (we’ve added paragraph breaks for readability): Continue reading “Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction
A team of neuroscientists from Sweden has retracted their 2013 paper in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity after discovering that they’d made a mistake while merging their data.
According to the abstract, the study, “Lower CSF interleukin-6 predicts future depression in a population-based sample of older women followed for 17 years,” purported to find that: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Team finds data merge error in depression paper, retracts
Researchers have retracted a fourth paper following an investigation at Cardiff University that found evidence of image manipulation by a researcher named Rossen Donev.
Here’s the notice for “The mouse complement regulator CD59b is significantly expressed only in testis and plays roles in sperm acrosome activation and motility,” a paper first published in Molecular Immunology in 2008: Continue reading Fourth retraction results from Cardiff investigation
We’re a bit late to this, but a Federal court in Massachusetts last fall heard a medical malpractice case with fascinating implications for journals.
The case involved allegations by the plaintiffs — two children who had suffered permanent birth defects and their mothers — that they had lost previous malpractice suits because a fraudulent case report was being used to bolster the defense.
The case targeted two ob-gyns, Henry Lerner, of Harvard, and Eva Salamon, of the Bond Clinic, in Winter Haven, Fla., who had published the case study in question. It also named the clinic itself and the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, which published the article in early 2008.
The article, titled “Permanent brachial plexus injury following vaginal delivery without physician traction or shoulder dystocia,” purported to show:
Earlier this month, we reported on the unexplained withdrawal of a case report from the American Journal of Medicine whose authors said they had treated a man in St. Louis who used krokodil, a homemade mixture of prescription painkillers heroin and flammable contaminants that has proven deadly in Russia.
At the time, all the journal’s publisher, Elsevier, would say about why the article was removed was that there was “a permission problem that the originating institution is working to resolve.”
The paper has now reappeared. And contrary to the notice that appeared on the withdrawal Continue reading St. Louis Krokodil paper reappears