Category: elsevier

Group retracts microRNA paper after realizing reagent was skewing results

A retraction from a high-profile group uncovered a technical limitation involving a widely used reagent.

Some quick background: the sequence hypothesis central hypothesis dogma of biology states that DNA gets transcribed to RNA that gets translated into proteins. Some RNAs, however, don’t code for proteins, but instead help to regulate gene expression. These microRNAs are tiny in size, but can regulate gene expression across animal and plant kingdoms.

In September 2011, the Molecular Cell published an entire issue with regulatory RNA as its theme. V. Narry Kim, associate professor at Seoul National University and high-profile microRNA researcher contributed a study that her group has now retracted just months later on June 29.

The problem? A reagent used to purify miRNAs favors some miRNAs and fails to isolate those rich low in guanine and cytosine — two of the four building blocks of RNA — or those with few secondary folding structures.

University of Michigan psychologist resigns following concerns by statistical sleuth Simonsohn: Nature

A second psychology researcher has resigned after statistical scrutiny of his papers by another psychologist revealed data that was too good to be true.

Ed Yong, writing in Nature, reports that Lawrence Sanna, most recently of the University of Michigan, left his post at the end of May. That was several months after Uri Simonsohn, a University of Pennsylvania psychology researcher, presented Sanna, his co-authors, and Sanna’s former institution, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with evidence of “odd statistical patterns.”

Simonsohn is the researcher who also forced an investigation into the work of Dirk Smeesters, who resigned last month. Last week, Yong reported that Simonsohn had uncovered another case that hadn’t been made official yet.

According to today’s story, Sanna has asked the editor of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology — which is also retracting one of Smeesters’ papers — to retract three papers published from 2009 to 2011. These are the three he seems to have published there during that time: Continue reading University of Michigan psychologist resigns following concerns by statistical sleuth Simonsohn: Nature

Elsevier parasitology journal retracts paper after finding author made up peer reviewer email addresses

Note to authors: If a journal asks you to suggest reviewers for your submitted manuscript, don’t thank them by faking the reviewer’s emails.

You might just get caught.

That’s what happened recently at Experimental Parasitology, according to the retraction notice for “Entamoeba histolytica: Cloning, expression and evaluation of the efficacy of a recombinant amebiasis cysteine proteinase gene (ACP1) antigen in minipig:” Continue reading Elsevier parasitology journal retracts paper after finding author made up peer reviewer email addresses

Pulp fiction: doubtful “veracity” leads to retraction of endodontics paper

This one’s like taking candy from a baby.

The Journal of Endodontics — or JOE — has retracted a 2011 article (its online date) on the prospects of tissue engineering for the mouth by a group of Chinese authors who appear to have tried to pass bogus data into print.

The paper was titled “Mineralized Tissue Formation by Bone Morphogenetic Protein-7–transfected Pulp Stem Cells“. According to the notice: Continue reading Pulp fiction: doubtful “veracity” leads to retraction of endodontics paper

Noteworthy: Journal posts all the corrections it wanted in a climate change paper after authors refuse most

In a case of refreshing transparency, a journal has published a detailed list of corrections it requested from authors of a paper on the costs of climate change, even though the authors declined to make most of them.

Earlier this year, the journal Ecological Economics published a paper that cast some doubt on the FUND model, which, as the article explains:

The FUND model of climate economics, developed by Richard Tol and David Anthoff, is widely used, both in research and in the development of policy proposals. It was one of three models used by the U.S. government’s Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon in 2009 (Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon, 2010). The Working Group’s “central estimate” 1 of the social cost of carbon (SCC), i.e. the monetary value of the incremental damages from greenhouse gas emissions, was $21 per ton of CO2.

The paper concluded: Continue reading Noteworthy: Journal posts all the corrections it wanted in a climate change paper after authors refuse most

Journal retracts antipsychotic study when all subjects’ PET scans turn out to be unreliable or invalid

The Journal of Psychiatric Research is retracting a 2010 paper claiming to show a relationship between quetiapine (Seroquel) and certain lab tests and brain scans, after it turns out the brain images were either unreliable or invalid.

Here’s the notice for “Relationship between dopamine D2 receptor occupancy, clinical response, and drug and monoamine metabolites levels in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid. A pilot study in patients suffering from first-episode schizophrenia treated with quetiapine”: Continue reading Journal retracts antipsychotic study when all subjects’ PET scans turn out to be unreliable or invalid

Controversial paper on life-extending buckyballs corrected after blog readers note problems

Back in April, a group of French and Tunisian researchers published a paper in Biomaterials which came to the astonishing conclusion that buckyballs (carbon tetrachloride) coated in olive oil could dramatically extend the lives of lab rodents. That news was picked up by Derek Lowe’s In the Pipeline blog, on which he expressed some bemusement about the work but ultimately praised it:

These are reasonable (but unproven) hypotheses, and I very much look forward to seeing this work followed up to see some more light shed on them. The whole life-extension result needs to be confirmed as well, and in other species. I congratulate the authors of this work, though, for giving me the most number of raised eyebrows I’ve had while reading a scientific paper in quite some time.

One of those eyebrows dropped a bit the following day, when Lowe reported that readers had pointed him to a clear case of image duplication in the article. At the time, Lowe concluded: Continue reading Controversial paper on life-extending buckyballs corrected after blog readers note problems

Following investigation, Erasmus social psychology professor retracts two studies, resigns

Dirk Smeesters

The social psychology community, already rocked last year by the Diederik Stapel scandal, now has another set of allegations to dissect. Dirk Smeesters, a professor of consumer behavior and society at the Rotterdam School of Management, part of Erasmus University, has resigned amid serious questions about his work.

According to an Erasmus press release, a scientific integrity committee found that the results in two of Smeesters’ papers were statistically highly unlikely. Smeesters could not produce the raw data behind the findings, and told the committee that he cherry-picked the data to produce a statistically significant result. Those two papers are being retracted, and the university accepted Smeesters’ resignation on June 21.

The release also takes pains to say that the university has no reason to doubt the work of his co-authors. You can read the complete report in Dutch, with Smeesters’ co-authors’ names blacked out, in an NRC Handelsblad story.

Erasmus tells Retraction Watch that these are the two papers being retracted: Continue reading Following investigation, Erasmus social psychology professor retracts two studies, resigns

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

‘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