Category: doing the right thing

Doing the right thing: Researchers retract two studies when they realize they misinterpreted data

protein scienceWhat do you do when new experiments show that you interpreted the data from your old experiments the wrong way?

Some scientists might just shrug and sweep those errors — and their previous papers — under the rug. But when it happened to Jeffery Kelly, of the Scripps Research Institute, and his colleagues, they decided to retract their earlier work.

Here’s the abstract of their new paper (we bolded a few sentences for emphasis): Continue reading Doing the right thing: Researchers retract two studies when they realize they misinterpreted data

A sad postscript: Paper by deceased researcher retracted

cancer researchIt was the last study ever published from prominent scientist Gerd Maul’s lab. And now it’s been retracted.

Maul was a highly cited cell biologist, with 30 papers cited at least 100 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. He was also a well-known sculptor. When he died in 2010, he had a paper under submission at Cancer Research, which was published late that year.

This year, however, his co-authors found problems with the study. And as the notice — one of the most detailed we’ve ever seen — explains: Continue reading A sad postscript: Paper by deceased researcher retracted

Retraction of JBC heparan paper shows much to like

jcb726coverWe have knocked the Journal of Biological Chemistry in the past for what we believed to be needless — and unhelpful — obfuscation. And more recently, we have praised the journal for taking what we believe to be positive steps in the direction of greater transparency.

Here, again, we come not to bury JBC but to praise it.

The journal has issued a retraction for a 2011 article by a group of researchers in London, England, led by Stephen Perkins. The paper, “The solution structure of heparan sulfate differs from that of heparin,” purported to show that:
Continue reading Retraction of JBC heparan paper shows much to like

Quorum sensing paper retracted when new study suggests compounds weren’t what they seemed

plos oneThe authors of a paper on quorum sensing — in simple terms, how bacteria “talk” to one another — have retracted it after another group’s findings led them to discover that the mixture they used weren’t what they thought.

The refreshingly detailed retraction notice in PLOS ONE explains: Continue reading Quorum sensing paper retracted when new study suggests compounds weren’t what they seemed

Doing the right thing: Psychology researchers retract after realizing data “were not analyzed properly”

cerebral cortexAmid an ongoing investigation, a group of psychology researchers at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium have taken a painful decision to retract a paper now that they’ve realized there were serious problems with one aspect of the work.

Here’s the notice for “The Emergence of Orthographic Word Representations in the Brain: Evaluating a Neural Shape-Based Framework Using fMRI and the HMAX Model,” by Wouter Braet, Jonas Kubilius, Johan Wagemans, and Hans P. Op de Beeck: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Psychology researchers retract after realizing data “were not analyzed properly”

Scientists doing the right thing: Malfunctioning lab equipment leads to retraction of neuroscience paper

cerebral cortexFor the second time inside of a week, we come to praise scientists who did the right thing when they realized their lab equipment or reagents weren’t performing as expected.

Here’s the retraction of a 2011 paper in Cerebral Cortex: Continue reading Scientists doing the right thing: Malfunctioning lab equipment leads to retraction of neuroscience paper

A model retraction in the Journal of Neurochemistry for “unexpected effect” of a filter

jneurochemThey say that a poor workman blames his tools. If you’re a scientist and you discover your tools don’t do exactly what you thought they did, however, the right thing to do is let other scientists relying on your work know.

That’s what the University of Auckland’s Nigel Birch and colleagues did recently, after a 2012 study they published in the Journal of Neurochemistry didn’t hold up. Here’s the notice, which we’d consider a model for retractions everywhere: Continue reading A model retraction in the Journal of Neurochemistry for “unexpected effect” of a filter

Rapid response: Authors retract a PNAS paper within six weeks after Nobel Prize winner spots an error

pnas 2-26Sometimes, retractions happen months, or even years, after another researcher spots problems in a paper. But when it’s a Nobel Prize winner who finds the error, things might move more quickly.

In the case of a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the retraction happened within six weeks. Here’s the notice for “Voltage sensor ring in a native structure of a membrane-embedded potassium channel,” by Liang Shi, Hongjin Zheng, Hui Zheng, Brian A. Borkowski, Dan Shi, Tamir Gonen, and Qiu-Xing Jiang, which first appeared online on February 11: Continue reading Rapid response: Authors retract a PNAS paper within six weeks after Nobel Prize winner spots an error

Poignancy in physics: Retraction for “fatal error” that couldn’t be patched

prl-bannerIn August of last year, Mladen Pavičić, chair of physics at the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Civil Engineering, published a paper in Physical Review Letters on quantum teleportation, “Near-Deterministic Discrimination of All Bell States with Linear Optics.”

Just six days later, after hearing from a physicist in China, Pavičić — who is also affiliated with Harvard’s physics department — submitted a correction, which ran on the journal’s site in November. The correction begins: Continue reading Poignancy in physics: Retraction for “fatal error” that couldn’t be patched

JBC publisher ASBMB hiring manager of publication ethics — and why Retraction Watch is cheering

We’re not generally — or ever — in the habit of running job ads here on Retraction Watch. But the purpose of this post is to highlight a new position available at the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (ASBMB) that we think is a great opportunity and a step forward for the society.

As regular Retraction Watch readers know, we frequently beat up on one of the ASBMB’s journals, the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), for publishing retraction notices that say simply “This article has been withdrawn by the authors.” We’re not the only ones; Ferric Fang and colleagues name-checked the journal’s policy when they wrote about factors that Continue reading JBC publisher ASBMB hiring manager of publication ethics — and why Retraction Watch is cheering