Category: data issues

Journal reviewing papers by researcher who sexually assaulted disabled author

Screen Shot 2015-11-03 at 12.10.00 PMA disability journal is “paying significant attention” to papers authored by Anna Stubblefield, a former Rutgers researcher recently convicted of sexually assaulting a disabled man who participated in her research.

Stubblefield was convicted of sexually assaulting “DJ,” a man in his thirties with cerebral palsy who was “declared by the state to have the mental capacity of a toddler,” according to a lengthy piece in the New York Times. Stubblefield and DJ published papers in Disability Studies Quarterly; in one, Stubblefield describes a controversial technique which she claimed helped DJ communicate. But when she eventually used the technique to say DJ was in love with her, his family took her to court, and she was convicted of aggravated sexual assault.

Here is the note from Disability Studies Quarterly, which was published this morning:  Continue reading Journal reviewing papers by researcher who sexually assaulted disabled author

Sex addiction article retracted, republished

Screen Shot 2015-10-14 at 2.01.12 PMAn open-access journal with a speedy peer review process has been having some issues with a retracted article on the biology of sex addiction.

Here’s the simple timeline of events: “Hypersexuality Addiction and Withdrawal: Phenomenology, Neurogenetics and Epigenetics,” a review article, was published by Cureus in July, following a two-day peer review. In the weeks that followed, the paper received a number of criticisms. So the journal quietly corrected it, then issued a formal correction, then retracted the paper — and now, finally, has republished it. The editor of the journal, Stanford professor emeritus John Adler, admitted the “decision was dumb” to initially fix the article without an alert, but it was ultimately doomed by “political” issues — namely, a larger debate over whether or not “sex addiction” exists at all.

We’ll start with the retraction. According to the note, it stems from the mistaken characterization of how sex addition — “hypersexuality” — is described in the current “bible” of psychiatry:

Continue reading Sex addiction article retracted, republished

Authors retract highly cited Nature quantum dot letter after discovering error

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Authors have retracted a highly cited Nature letter that purported to discover a much sought-after, stable light source from quantum dots, after they realized the light was actually coming from another source: the glass the dots were affixed to.

When the paper “Non-blinking semiconductor nanocrystals” was published in 2009, it received some media coverage, such as in Chemistry World. That’s partly because very small sources of “non-blinking” light could have wide-ranging, big-picture applications, author Todd Krauss, a physical chemist at the University of Rochester, told us:

Off the top of my head, a quantum computer. Quantum cryptography is another one. People want a stable light source that obeys quantum physics, instead of classic physics.

The retraction note, published Wednesday, explains how the researchers found out the effect was coming from the glass, not quantum dots:

Continue reading Authors retract highly cited Nature quantum dot letter after discovering error

Duplicated data, “careless errors” expire lung cancer paper

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A paper about the molecular details of lung cancer is being retracted for repeating datasets and “careless errors” in a pair of figures.

According to the note, the editor of Carcinogenesis wouldn’t have known about the problems if he hadn’t been tipped off that the paper by first author, XiaoJuan Sun — a researcher at Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital in China — shared “significant similarities” with another one of Sun’s papers that was retracted years ago. After the journal investigated the paper, it discovered that the authors had reported the same data as in the retracted paper “without significant additions or amendments,” along with some errors and inconsistencies.

Here’s the detailed note for “The EDA-containing cellular fibronectin induces epithelial mesenchymal transition in lung cancer cells through integrin α9β1-mediated activation of PI3-K /Akt and Erk1/2:”

Continue reading Duplicated data, “careless errors” expire lung cancer paper

Journal retracts — and republishes — small study on gamma rays for OCD

Screen Shot 2015-10-28 at 8.40.00 PMJAMA Psychiatry has retracted and republished a paper on a cutting-edge procedure for patients with obsessive compulsive disorder.

In the original paper, the authors claimed that three out of eight patients who underwent a procedure that used gamma rays to kill brain cells showed improvements 12 months later (versus zero in the group who underwent a “sham” procedure). But after a reader noticed an “inadvertent” error in the calculation of how many patients had improved, the authors realized that only two of the patients had responded meaningfully to the procedure.

The new results “did not reach statistical significance,” the authors write in a “Notice of Retraction and Replacement.”  JAMA Psychiatry published it yesterday, along with a new version of the article, a letter from psychiatrist Christopher Baethge pointing out the error, and an editorial. The original article is available in the supplemental material of the new version, with the errors highlighted.

Here’s the note in full for “Gamma ventral capsulotomy for obsessive-compulsive disorder: a randomized clinical trial,” which explains the error:

Continue reading Journal retracts — and republishes — small study on gamma rays for OCD

Taste researcher falsified data in two papers: ORI

ori-logoA federal report has found that a former University of Maryland postdoc “falsified and/or fabricated” data in two papers about taste receptors.

The Office of Research Integrity report found that Maria C.P. Geraedts manipulated bar graphs in the papers to “produce the desired result.” Both have been retracted. Geraedts left academia in 2014, and is now a science writer.

We reported on one retraction in July, “Gustatory stimuli representing different perceptual qualities elicit distinct patterns of neuropeptide secretion from taste buds,” published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

The other, “Transformation of postingestive glucose responses after deletion of sweet taste receptor subunits or gastric bypass surgery,” published in 2012 in the American Journal of Physiology Endocrinology and Metabolism, was retracted in September. Here’s the note, which cites the university’s investigation: Continue reading Taste researcher falsified data in two papers: ORI

Bone researcher manipulated data in JAMA study, says investigation

Screen Shot 2015-10-27 at 10.53.53 AMA bone researcher manipulated data in a 2011 JAMA study about an inexpensive treatment for osteoporosis. That’s the conclusion of an investigation at the researcher’s former workplace, the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, the Toronto Star reports.

The study — led and manipulated by Sophie Jamal — followed 243 women over two years, as they applied nitroglycerin ointment once a day. The ointment is currently used to prevent chest pain and treat anal fissure pain by relaxing blood vessels; Jamal’s study concluded it could help patients with osteoporosis, too:

Among postmenopausal women, nitroglycerin ointment modestly increased [bone mineral density] and decreased bone resorption.

But even the modest effect was too good to be true. Continue reading Bone researcher manipulated data in JAMA study, says investigation

Authors retract second study about medical uses of honey

Journal of Clinical NursingA paper that tested the clinical value of honey on venous ulcers has been pulled by the Journal of Clinical Nursing after an investigation uncovered “errors in the data analysis.” Last year, the authors pulled another paper on the healing properties of honey on wounds. 

We just discovered this second retraction, which appears in the September 2015 issue of the journal, but was posted online last year.

The journal’s editor-in-chief, Debra Jackson, confirmed the dates and said that “a commercial company” brought the matter to their attention. After the journal asked a statistician to weigh in, they stated that a “substantial re-write would be required to correct the article,” and a retraction would be “the most suitable course of action.”

Although she said the authors initially sought to correct, not retract, the study, they eventually agreed with the decision.

Here’s the notice:

Continue reading Authors retract second study about medical uses of honey

Mega-correction for “empirical anomalies” in management paper

The Academy of Management JournalThe author of a paper that looked at how the geographical spread of research and development sites has impacted innovation has posted a four-page list of corrections that fixed “empirical anomalies” in the paper.

A group of PhD students raised concerns about the paper’s findings, according to the editor-in-chief of The Academy of Management Journal, Gerard George. The journal formed a committee that worked with the author to reproduce the results. That ended with a correction to two of the paper’s three hypotheses, and corresponding parts of the text.

The four-page notice — (the details of which are paywalled, unfortunately) — includes notes from the journal’s editor and the author:

Continue reading Mega-correction for “empirical anomalies” in management paper

Activist group retracts warnings about midwest oil wells

downloadAfter receiving additional data from the government, an activist group has retracted an analysis that suggested energy companies were not taking steps to cut back on a controversial practice.

The Bakken analysis — named for North Dakota’s gigantic underground deposit of oil and natural gas — was published by the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC). It focused on a practice known as “gas flaring” — burning natural gas instead of using or selling it. The analysis, released last month, found that hundreds of wells in North Dakota had not filed the necessary plans for saving excess gas produced in the course of extracting oil from wells. But after the Department of Mineral Resources provided more data — we’re not sure what kind of data, specifically — the ELPC retracted that conclusion.

The group posted the retraction notice on September 25, just four days after they presented the analysis at a news conference. It states why their recent evaluation of companies’ plans to capture excess gas might be wrong — and what they’re doing next:

Continue reading Activist group retracts warnings about midwest oil wells