Category: doing the right thing

Dipping into history: An 87-year-old retraction in a statistics journal

jamstatsocWe came across a rather long-toothed retraction in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, which represents a case of doing the right thing (similar to that involving the apparent first-ever English language retraction from 1756, about which we wrote in 2012).

The 1927 notice came in the form of a letter by C. H. Whelden Jr., who was for a time the chief statistician for the American National Red Cross, referencing his 1926 article in the JASA,”The Trend-Seasonal Normal in Time Series:”

Continue reading Dipping into history: An 87-year-old retraction in a statistics journal

Author steps in to clarify vague tuberculosis retraction

You’ve got to love when an author is willing to detail the specifics of an unhelpful retraction notice.

This May, a paper came out in Journal of Thoracic Diseases about drug-resistant tuberculosis. It was retracted in June, for “some misconduct in the manuscript.”

Here’s the notice:

The article “Application status of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry in the identification and drug resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis” (doi: 10.3978/j.issn.2072-1439.2014.02.19) that appeared on page 512-516 of the May 2014 issue of the Journal of Thoracic Disease needs to be withdrawn due to some misconduct in the manuscript. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Since that’s pretty vague and unhelpful, we reached out to corresponding author Jiayun Liu, who gave us a thorough rundown:

Continue reading Author steps in to clarify vague tuberculosis retraction

If only more retractions could be like this: Authors of cardiac stem cell paper show the way

Researchers at Qingdao University have fully retracted a paper originally published in Molecular Medicine Reports with a clear, detailed outline of what went wrong and how they discovered the error.

Here’s the notice for “Generation of induced pluripotent stem cells using skin fibroblasts from patients with myocardial infarction under feeder-free conditions:”

Continue reading If only more retractions could be like this: Authors of cardiac stem cell paper show the way

Bad spreadsheet merge kills depression paper, quick fix resurrects it

The authors of a paper showing a link between immune response and depression requested a retraction after they realized they’d merged two spreadsheets with mismatching ID codes.

Here’s the notice for “Lower CSF interleukin-6 predicts future depression in a population-based sample of older women followed for 17 years,” retracted in February 2014:

Continue reading Bad spreadsheet merge kills depression paper, quick fix resurrects it

Geneticist retracting four papers for “significant problems”

jbc 620Benjamin Barré, a genetics researcher who recently set up his own group at the University of Angers, is retracting four papers he worked on as a graduate student and postdoc.

Neil Perkins, in whose lab Barré was a postdoc, and Olivier Coqueret, in whose lab he did his PhD, tell Retraction Watch: Continue reading Geneticist retracting four papers for “significant problems”

Rats! Snake mistake sinks paper

Senticolis_triaspis_by_abikeOdyssey
Senticolis triapsis by A Bike Odyssey, under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Check List, the “journal of species lists and distribution,” retracted a paper in February after the authors realized they hadn’t spotted a yellow-red rat snake in a strange range, but rather a green rat snake in its known home.

Here’s the notice for “New distribution and elevation records for the snake Pseudelaphe flavirufa Cope, 1867 (Squamata: Colubridae) in Oaxaca, Mexico,” as written by the authors: Continue reading Rats! Snake mistake sinks paper

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder where you went: Astronomy report retracted

nasaA group of physicists has retracted their preliminary report in the GCN Circular of a massive star-sized explosion after deciding that what they’d really observed was another phenomenon.

Although we could try to explain this, we’d rather leave it up to Giacomo Vianello, an experimental physicist at Stanford University, who was a member of the research team.

Vianello told us: Continue reading Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder where you went: Astronomy report retracted

Researchers retract breast cancer study after realizing they were using the wrong antibody

br j cancerA group of researchers at Istanbul University has swiftly retracted a paper they published in March in the British Journal of Cancer once it became clear that they were using the wrong antibody.

Here’s the notice for “Clinical significance of p95HER2 overexpression, PTEN loss and PI3K expression in p185HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer patients treated with trastuzumab-based therapies:” Continue reading Researchers retract breast cancer study after realizing they were using the wrong antibody

Miłość at first sight: A retraction notice worth emulating from Poland

j polish cimacIf we had a Retraction Watch headquarters (other than the diner where we occasionally meet for breakfast), we would have had to have closed up early today, because we both swooned when we saw a retraction notice from the Journal of Polish CIMAC this morning.

The notice, signed by the journal’s editor-in-chief Jerzy Girtler, of Gdansk University of Technology, reads:

Continue reading Miłość at first sight: A retraction notice worth emulating from Poland

Lactobacillus intolerance: Bacterium mixup forces retraction

bjncoverThe British Journal of Nutrition has retracted a 2013 paper by a group of researchers from Taiwan after learning that the authors had studied the wrong strain of microbe.

The article was titled “Oral Lactobacillus reuteri GMN-32 treatment reduces blood glucose concentrations and promotes cardiac function in rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes mellitus.”

According to the abstract: Continue reading Lactobacillus intolerance: Bacterium mixup forces retraction