nature publishing group – Retraction Watch

Nature flags doubts over Google AI study, pulls commentary

A new editor’s note in Nature highlights concerns about a paper by Google researchers who claimed computer chips designed in just a few hours using artificial intelligence beat chip plans that human experts took months to develop.

In the note, published September 20, the journal stated:

Readers are alerted that the performance claims in this article have been called into question. The Editors are investigating these concerns, and, if appropriate, editorial action will be taken once this investigation is complete.

Britney Spears story “remains as part of the publication record,” says Nature

A 2008 story in Nature about Britney Spears that prompted an apology from the author and the journal earlier this week “remains as part of the publication record,” Nature said in an editor’s note.

The story, titled “When Britney Spears comes to my lab,” appeared in a section of the journal called Nature Futures and refers to Spears “wearing a silver strapless stretch top that doesn’t show too much of her belly (unless she actually moves her arms), and black Capri pants with a little dip in the waistband.”

Spears, it said, would eventually go on to earn a PhD from Harvard and develop a treatment for diabetes. Before that, however, “Britney will pump out a lot of good data (she is something of a workaholic), but gradually, with her music, her intermittent marriages and pregnancies, not to mention her classes, the amount of time she spends in lab will begin to dwindle.”

In a note appended to the article sometime this week, following thousands of tweets and a Retraction Watch post, the editors write:

Britney Spears story prompts apology from Nature and author

Britney Spears has, as Retraction Watch readers no doubt know, been in the news a great deal lately, as the battle over her father’s “broad control over her life and finances” plays out in court. But a science fiction story about Spears that published in Nature in 2008 — the year Spears’ father was appointed her conservator — has prompted apologies from its author and the journal.

The story, which appeared in a section of the journal called Nature Futures, is titled “When Britney Spears comes to my lab.” It begins:

When Britney Spears comes to [Louisiana State University] LSU she’ll be wearing a silver strapless stretch top that doesn’t show too much of her belly (unless she actually moves her arms), and black Capri pants with a little dip in the waistband.

That and other passages in the piece — in which Spears goes on to earn a PhD from Harvard and discover a treatment for diabetes — caught the attention of more than 1,000 Twitter users since Friday. Many questioned why Nature would publish it. An example:

Nature Communications looking into paper on mentorship after strong negative reaction

A Nature journal has announced that it is conducting a “priority” investigation into a new paper claiming that women in science fare better with male rather than female mentors.

The article, “The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance,” appeared in Nature Communications on November 17, and was written by a trio of authors from New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi.

According to the abstract:

Springer Nature journal takes eight months to retract paper after US government misconduct finding

A Springer Nature journal waited eight months to retract a paper flagged by the Office of Research Integrity for containing fabricated data — a delay the publisher blames on “staff changes and human error.”

The 2014 article in Neuropsychopharmacology by Alexander Neumeister included “falsified and/or fabricated research methods and results,” according to the findings of the ORI investigation, which were reported in late December of last year. But the retraction notice is dated September 8, 2020.

The notice itself sounds a lot like a child who says “I’m invisible because my eyes are closed.” It reads:

Figure “anomalies” prompt Harvard group to retract Nature paper

A group of researchers based at Harvard Medical School have retracted their 2019 paper in Nature after a data sleuth detected evidence of suspect images in the article.

The move comes ten months after the journal first heard from the sleuth, Elisabeth Bik.

The paper, “Fatty acids and cancer-amplified ZDHHC19 promote STAT3 activation through S-palmitoylation,” came from the lab of Xu Wu, of the Cutaneous Biology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, and his colleagues. It appeared last August — and immediately caught the attention of Rune Linding, who flagged it for Bik, who in turn noticed several regions of concerning duplications in a few of the Western blots that appeared in the paper.

On August 29 of last year, Bik tweeted:

‘How I got fooled’: The story behind the retraction of a study of gamers

In April of this year, Corneel Vandelanotte realized something had gone wrong with a paper he had recently published.

First, there was a post about his paper by Nick Brown, a scientific sleuth, questioning the results, ethics, and authors behind the work. That was followed by a comment on PubPeer by Elisabeth Bik, another scientific sleuth.

“People started alerting me,” Vandelanotte, a public health researcher at Central Queensland University in Rockhampton, told Retraction Watch. “Hey, have you seen this blog by Nick Brown? And, and then yeah, okay, that was a bad day. Let me put it that way.”

Nature retracts study touted as step toward treatments for bone diseases

A Nature study that could have provided a “potential therapeutic target for osteoporosis and bone metastases of cancer” has been retracted.

Since being published in 2014 by researchers at UT Southwestern, MD Anderson and elsewhere, “miR-34a blocks osteoporosis and bone metastasis by inhibiting osteoclastogenesis and Tgif2” has been cited more than 200 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

A year ago — on May 24, 2019 — Nature published a correction to the paper:

Heavily criticized paper blaming the sun for global warming is retracted

A controversial paper claiming that fluctuations in the sun’s magnetic field could be driving global warming has been retracted — prompting protests from most of the authors, who called the move

a shameful step to cover up the truthful facts about the solar and Earth orbital motion reported by the retracted paper, in our replies to the reviewer comments and in the further papers.

The 2019 article, “Oscillations of the baseline of solar magnetic field and solar irradiance on a millennial timescale,” appeared in Scientific Reports and was written by a group of authors from the UK, Russia and Azerbaijan. The first author was Valentina Zharkova, a mathematician/astrophysicist at Northumbria University, whose group reported having received funding for the work from the U.S. Air Force and the Russian Science Foundation.

The paper purported to find that fluctuations in the sun’s magnetic field are making the earth hotter:

‘Text neck’ — aka ‘horns’ — paper earns corrections

A highly controversial 2018 paper suggesting that too much bent-neck staring at your cell phone could sprout, in the words of one of the authors, a “horn” on the back of your head is — perhaps unsurprisingly — getting corrected.

The article, “Prominent exostosis projecting from the occipital squama more substantial and prevalent in young adult than older age groups,” which appeared in Nature Publishing Group’s Scientific Reports in February 2018, received scads of media coverage earlier this year. The stories initially were alarmist but grew increasingly skeptical as journalists and experts began poking holes in the authors’ claims.

The corrected paper doesn’t completely walk back the association, but it definitely mutes the assertions significantly. For example, the original discussion section included this passage:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: