A retraction appeared earlier this month in Retrovirology that we think could be a model for other scientists and journals facing similar situations. The paper by Canadian and Chinese authors, “The cellular source for APOBEC3G’s incorporation into HIV-1,” was originally published in January 2011 and cited just once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the notice: Continue reading A model retraction notice in Retrovirology
Category: by publisher
Reason behind opaque Antioxidants & Redox Signaling retraction notice revealed
There’s an unhelpful retraction notice online in the journal Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, a Mary Ann Liebert publication. The paper, “Inhibition of LXRalpha-dependent steatosis and oxidative injury by liquiritigenin, a licorice flavonoid, as mediated with Nrf2 activation,” has been removed from the site, except for the abstract, which now has this in front of it:
THIS WORK HAS BEEN RETRACTED BY THE AUTHORS
That, as we’ve said before in exasperation, certainly clears things right up.
But we found out the reason for the retraction from Paul S. Brookes, an associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Here’s the letter he sent the editors of Antioxidants & Redox Signaling and Free Radical Biology and Medicine, an Elsevier title: Continue reading Reason behind opaque Antioxidants & Redox Signaling retraction notice revealed
Materials paper retracted after post-doc’s plagiarism
The Journal of Materials
Science: Materials in Medicine has retracted a 2011 paper after it was determined that the first author, then a post-doc at the University of Michigan, had plagiarized from another publication.
The first author of the retracted article, “Functionalization of titanium based metallic biomaterials for implant applications,” was the post-doc, Rahul Bhola, who received his PhD from the Colorado School of Mines and went to Michigan to work in the lab of Catherine Krull.
Fruit of that relationship was the paper — and here’s how that worked out: Continue reading Materials paper retracted after post-doc’s plagiarism
Ghost authorship? Two Meccanica retractions as an author’s work is plagiarized by disappearing scientists
About two years ago, Marc Duflot, a research engineer at Cenaero, heard a disturbing tale from a collaborator. The collaborator, it seemed, had been asked to review a paper submitted to a journal, and noticed that it was remarkably similar to a paper by Duflot. Duflot’s collaborator recommended that the journal reject the paper, and it did. Duflot tells Retraction Watch (we added a link to the paper in question):
Then, several months later, I discovered that the…paper had been submitted and accepted in Meccanica. If I remember correctly, I discovered it by searching the web with Google Scholar with terms related to my field of expertise.
So in January 2010, Duflot wrote to the editors of Meccanica to alert them to the plagiarism by the authors, M. Garzon and D. Sargoso of the University of Madrid. He concluded his email:
I am deeply disappointed by the fraudulent behaviour of M. Garzon and D. Sargoso. Strangely, I cannot find any mention of these two people on the web neither of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Madrid. Otherwise, I would have reported this to the head of their department.
An editorial assistant got back to him: Continue reading Ghost authorship? Two Meccanica retractions as an author’s work is plagiarized by disappearing scientists
Elsevier ob-gyn journal retracted paper after legal threat
When we broke the story last week about a juicy retraction notice in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology (AJOG) — known by its readers as “the Gray Journal” — we wrote that there was more to it than we suspected. That’s an understatement.
As we reported, the AJOG retracted an article that it had published earlier this year because 1) the author, Laurence Cole, had failed to disclose a potential financial conflict of interest with a pregnancy test maker named Church & Dwight; and 2) the article lacked a “credible scientific reason given for conducting the study,” along with other flaws detailed in the notice. (As we wrote the other day, we wonder why those issues did not arise during the initial review of the manuscript — but more on that shortly.)
We’ve since learned that the journal’s move came after it received a sharply worded letter from a high-powered San Francisco lawyer demanding immediate retraction of the article on the grounds that it represented a “substantial” threat to the financial health of his client. That client? A maker of home pregnancy tests who is now in the process of suing the very firm that provided Cole with research funding he failed to disclose.
First, here’s what Cole, the hormone expert at the University of New Mexico whose paper the journal retracted, said about why he didn’t disclose that funding: Continue reading Elsevier ob-gyn journal retracted paper after legal threat
Expression of Concern for a Bulfone-Paus paper
Retraction Watch readers may recall the story of Silvia Bulfone-Paus, who has been forced to retract 12 papers and has another under review at Blood. All of that scrutiny came after an investigation by her home institution, Germany’s Borstel Institute, that found evidence of image manipulation.
The latest development is perhaps no surprise. It concerns a review Bulfone-Paus and her colleagues published in BioEssays in 2006. Here’s the Expression of Concern, which was published online in July but just came our attention (we’ve added links to our coverage of specific retractions): Continue reading Expression of Concern for a Bulfone-Paus paper
Ob-gyn journal pulls pregnancy test paper for undeclared conflict of interest, other problems
The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG) as a remarkable retraction notice in its November issue — the likes of which we haven’t seen before.
A little background: Earlier this year, Laurence Cole, an academic obstetrics specialist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, published a paper in the AJOG looking at the wide variability in the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, during pregnancy (we’d link to the article, but the journal has pulled it, so here’s the abstract on Medline).
Cole runs — or did run until recently, more on that in a moment — the USA hCG Reference Service at the university, which purports to be the only lab in the world that can measure all forms of hCG. He has published extensively in this area of research, with at least 125 papers to his name on the subject, according to a Medline search. One of his websites puts the figure at 246.
So Cole was definitely a known quantity to the journal editors when he submitted his manuscript and when it was published online in February of this year. That’ll be more important in a bit. But first, the retraction notice: Continue reading Ob-gyn journal pulls pregnancy test paper for undeclared conflict of interest, other problems
Florida group loses second hypertension paper, but retraction notice stays mum on why
We’ve obviously gotten plenty of mileage out of our conversation last January with L. Henry Edmunds, the grumpypants editor of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery who told us that the reason behind an opaque retraction notice in his journal was “none of [our] damn business.”
Still makes us chuckle.
That episode came to mind recently when we learned of a new retraction, this one in the journal Perfusion, involving the same lead researcher, anesthesiologist Felipe Urdaneta, whose work Edmunds had pulled. Continue reading Florida group loses second hypertension paper, but retraction notice stays mum on why
A flying what? Symbiosis retracts paper claiming new species arise from accidental mating
In 2009, Donald Williamson made what many biologists said was an extraordinary claim: The reason caterpillars become butterflies is that two different species accidentally mated with one another. As Brendan Borrell explained at the time in Scientific American: Continue reading A flying what? Symbiosis retracts paper claiming new species arise from accidental mating
A retraction as a group’s papers on smoking and weight loss are too close for comfort
The American Journal of Physiology Endocrinology and Metabolism is retracting a 2009 article by Japanese researchers who appeared to be so fond of their data they published them thrice.
The paper, “Dual suppression of adipogenesis by cigarette smoke through activation of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor and induction of endoplasmic reticulum stress,” by Masanori Kitamura and colleagues, looked at the biochemical mechanism by which cigarette smokers seem to be able to keep weight off. It has been cited eight times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
But according to the retraction notice: Continue reading A retraction as a group’s papers on smoking and weight loss are too close for comfort