Category: data issues

Duke lung researcher up to seven retractions

Enviromental Health Perspectives

More journals have pulled papers co-authored by researchers Erin Potts-Kant and Michael Foster, at Duke University, bringing the total up to seven for Potts-Kant and six for Foster.

Authors were unable to replicate the experiments after “concerns about the initial data from the animal physiology laboratory” led them to reanalyze source data, according to the note in Environmental Health Perspectives. The comparison showed “potential inconsistencies in the data,” which “significantly impact the overall conclusions of the manuscript.” Similar issues appear to have felled the pair’s other papers, including the other two recent retractions in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and the American Journal of Physiology – Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology — but in the latter case, the discrepancies don’t affect the conclusion.

Potts-Kant was arrested on embezzlement charges in 2013. Authorities alleged that she stole almost $15,000 from Duke University.

Environmental Health Perspectives posted a retraction in July, for a 2012 paper that looked at the molecular underpinnings in airways that react to ozone.

Here’s the full notice:

Continue reading Duke lung researcher up to seven retractions

“To our horror”: Widely reported study suggesting divorce is more likely when wives fall ill gets axed

home_coverA widely reported finding that the risk of divorce increases when wives fall ill — but not when men do — is invalid, thanks to a short string of mistaken coding that negates the original conclusions, published in the March issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

The paper, “In Sickness and in Health? Physical Illness as a Risk Factor for Marital Dissolution in Later Life,” garnered coverage in many news outlets, including The Washington Post, New York magazine’s The Science of Us blog, The Huffington Post, and the UK’s Daily Mail . 

But an error in a single line of the coding that analyzed the data means the conclusions in the paper — and all the news stories about those conclusions — are “more nuanced,” according to first author Amelia Karraker, an assistant professor at Iowa State University.

Karraker — who seems to be handling the case quickly and responsibly —  emailed us how she realized the error:

Continue reading “To our horror”: Widely reported study suggesting divorce is more likely when wives fall ill gets axed

Gynecologic cancer researcher up to 13 retractions

13277Noriyuki Takai, a gynecologic cancer researcher at Oita University in Japan, has lost another five papers. With a new total of 13, that means he’s now on our leaderboard.

Three of the retractions are from the journal Tumor Biology, one is from the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer, and one from Anticancer Research.

Takai is the first author on all 5 papers.

As has been the case with Takai’s retractions, and there’s evidence that all were felled by issues with figures. In all, according to the retraction notices, “original data were processed inappropriately.” Four end with the following sentence (or some close variation thereof):

Continue reading Gynecologic cancer researcher up to 13 retractions

Gut paper retracted after university review says “figures cannot be validated by original data”

IBDA biologist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Ohio has retracted a paper from Inflammatory Bowel Diseases after a university review found the figures within it could not be “validated by original data.”

The 2010 paper, “Elevated IL-13Rα2 in intestinal epithelial cells from ulcerative colitis or colorectal cancer initiates MAPK pathway,” concerns the elevated expression and role of an inflammatory protein in colon cancer cells.

According to the notice, corresponding author and biologist Alan Levine — who recently received a $3.9 million Avant-Garde Award for HIV/AIDS Research from the National Institute on Drug Abuse — requested the retraction.

Here’s the full notice: Continue reading Gut paper retracted after university review says “figures cannot be validated by original data”

Two crystallography papers break apart for “trivial errors,” says author

ACBiophysicists in India have retracted two crystallography papers describing protein binding sites following “concerns,” according to one retraction note.

The last author on both papers, however, told us he believed the retractions were the result of “trivial errors.” Although one journal praised him in its retraction note for his “positive engagement,” he said the process left him feeling “disgusted.”

One paper, “Structural Studies on Molecular Interactions between Camel Peptidoglycan Recognition Protein, CPGRP-S, and Peptidoglycan Moieties N-Acetylglucosamine and N-Acetylmuramic Acid,” was withdrawn from the Journal of Biological Chemistry in August 2014.

The second, “Mode of binding of the antithyroid drug propylthiouracil to mammalian haem peroxidases,” was retracted from Acta Crystallographica Section F this month. Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Two crystallography papers break apart for “trivial errors,” says author

Journal quarantines MERS paper, posts EoC for “rights to use the data”

ES_anniversary_bannerEurosurveillance is investigating potential problems with study on the deadly breakout of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in South Korea. The notice was issued after the journal discovered that study data might have been used without permission.

“Epidemiological investigation of MERS-CoV spread in a single hospital in South Korea, May to June 2015,” was published last month by a group of researchers at the Gyeonggi Infectious Disease Control Center in Korea, and details 37 cases of people at one hospital, one portion of the nearly 200 who’ve developed the new respiratory infection since the outbreak began. The researchers tracked the path of infection from one initial patient to 25 secondary cases, who then infected 11 additional people. As the researchers note:

Continue reading Journal quarantines MERS paper, posts EoC for “rights to use the data”

JAMA issues mega-correction for data breach letter due to “wording and data errors”

s_cover_jcv062315A JAMA letter published in April on data breaches accidentally included some data that shouldn’t have been published, either — specifically, “wording and data errors” that affected five sentences and more than 10 entries in a table. One result — a reported increase in breaches over time — also went from statistically significant to “borderline” significant, according to the first author. (So yeah, this post earns our “mega correction” category.)

According to an author, an “older version” of a table made it into the letter, “Data Breaches of Protected Health Information in the United States,” which was corrected in the journal’s June 23/30 issue.

The letter and table in question detail 949 breaches of “unencrypted protected health information.”  The letter says the number of breaches has increased from 2010 to 2013; the original article claimed that the P value on that increase was <.001, but the correction says it’s really 0.07. The original says 29.1 million personal records were affected in those breaches; the real number is 29.0. And so on.

Continue reading JAMA issues mega-correction for data breach letter due to “wording and data errors”

Editors retract algae study, citing “issues with the data”

International Journal of PhytoremediationThe International Journal of Phytoremediation  has issued a retraction for a 2013 article suggesting algae could shield against gamma radiation better than lead.

Sadly, such an innovation was not to be — the editors have pulled the paper, saying:

We are now cognizant that there are issues with the data and determinations made within the manuscript that cannot be corrected through a corrigendum.

The paper is now covered by a dizzying watermark. (The first page can be seen here.)

Here’s more from the retraction for “Shielding Property of Natural Biomass Against Gamma Rays”, authored by a group of professors at Amasya University, Aksaray University, and Suleyman Demirel University in Turkey:

Continue reading Editors retract algae study, citing “issues with the data”

Corrections (and one EoC) propagate for distinguished plant biologist, Olivier Voinnet

Olivier Voinnet
Olivier Voinnet

There may be some deeply rooted issues in the work of high-profile plant biologist Olivier Voinnet, biology department research director at ETH in Zurich. Corrections have continued to pile up months after his work was hit with a barrage of criticism on PubPeer. We’ve tracked a total of seven corrections over the past five months (not including the April retraction of a 2004 paper in The Plant Cell). One of the corrected papers also received an Expression of Concern this week.

Collectively, the corrected papers have accumulated more than 1200 citations.

In January, Voinnet said he planned to correct multiple papers, after receiving “an anonymous email.”

One of the recent corrections we found is for a 2003 article in The Plant Journal, “An enhanced transient expression system in plants based on suppression of gene silencing by the p19 protein of tomato bushy stunt virus,” which details using proteins from a tomato virus to help alter gene expression. The study has been cited 862 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the correction notice, posted June 8:

Continue reading Corrections (and one EoC) propagate for distinguished plant biologist, Olivier Voinnet

Duke University lung researchers cough up fourth retraction, due to “inconsistent” data

Journal of Applied PhysiologyThe Journal of Applied Physiology has retracted a 2012 respiratory study after the authors found “inconsistent” data that “could not be traced to their source.” It’s the fourth retraction for two of the researchers, including Erin Potts-Kant, who was arrested in 2013 for embezzling more than $14,000 from Duke University.

The study, “Effects of corticosteroid treatment on airway inflammation, mechanics, and hyperpolarized 3He magnetic resonance imaging in an allergic mouse model,” looked at how corticosteroid therapy, a steroid treatment used for asthma, worked on mice. It’s been cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, and was one of the products of the environmental lung health research conducted by Potts-Kant and Duke professor William Foster, the other co-author on the retracted studies.

Here’s the complete retraction notice: Continue reading Duke University lung researchers cough up fourth retraction, due to “inconsistent” data