Category: image manipulation

Musical figures: PNAS paper corrected with version of “intentionally contrived and falsified” Nature figure

pnasOne of the two corrections recommended by a McGill committee for work by Maya Saleh and colleagues has appeared, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

As we reported last month, the committee found that

two figures in [a] Nature paper had been “intentionally contrived and falsified.” One of those figures was duplicated in a PNAS paper, which also contained an image that  had incorrectly labeled some proteins.

The committee recommended that both of the papers be corrected, and the PNAS correction  for “Confinement of caspase-12 proteolytic activity to autoprocessing” reads as follows: Continue reading Musical figures: PNAS paper corrected with version of “intentionally contrived and falsified” Nature figure

A retracted Cell paper reappears elsewhere, sans author who didn’t sign retraction notice

acta neuropathologicaOne of the things we try to do here at Retraction Watch is keep tabs on retracted work that appears again the literature. We did that twice in one day last year, once with a paper about chimps that was retracted from Biology Letters and ended up in the Journal of Human Evolution, and then again with a PLOS ONE paper on on “longevity genes” that had been retracted from Science.

Today, we have another case. Continue reading A retracted Cell paper reappears elsewhere, sans author who didn’t sign retraction notice

Lifted figure prompts retraction of Oncogene paper by Roman-Gomez

onc_cimageThe journal Oncogene has retracted a 2005 paper from a group led by Jose Roman-Gomez, a Spanish researcher who appears to be a serial image manipulator/misappropriator.

The article, “Promoter hypomethylation of the LINE-1 retrotransposable elements activates sense/antisense transcription and marks the progression of chronic myeloid leukemia,” was published online in September 2005 and has been cited 106 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Now comes this: Continue reading Lifted figure prompts retraction of Oncogene paper by Roman-Gomez

First author of recently retracted paper has another corrected, in J Ag Food Chem

jafcau_v061i004.inddA paper that shares a first author with a paper retracted in December has been corrected.

Late last year, we reported on a retraction in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling (ARDS) by Indika Edirisinghe, who was at the University of Rochester when the original paper was published, and colleagues. On January 17, the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry published a correction to “Effect of Black Currant Anthocyanins on the Activation of Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase (eNOS) in Vitro in Human Endothelial Cells,” on which Edirisinghe is also first author.

His affiliation on that paper, originally published in July 2011, is the Illinois Institute of Technology. Here’s the correction: Continue reading First author of recently retracted paper has another corrected, in J Ag Food Chem

Shigeaki Kato notches fifth retraction

kato
Shigeaki Kato

An endocrinologist who resigned from the University of Tokyo last March as the university was investigating his work has retracted another paper.

Here’s the notice for the paper by corresponding author Shigeaki Kato and colleagues in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research: Continue reading Shigeaki Kato notches fifth retraction

McGill committee says Nature figures were “intentionally contrived and falsified”

msaleh
Maya Saleh, via McGill

An associate professor at Montreal’s McGill University is correcting two papers, one of them in Nature, after a university committee found evidence of falsification, Retraction Watch has learned.

Concerns had been raised about four papers by Maya Saleh and colleagues: Continue reading McGill committee says Nature figures were “intentionally contrived and falsified”

Curi-us: Author whose lawyers threatened Science Fraud corrects a paper the site criticized

curi
Rui Curi

A few weeks ago, we reported on the shutdown of Science-Fraud.org, a site dedicated to highlighting problems with scientific papers, thanks to legal threats. At the same time, we noted that Rui Curi, one of the authors whose work had been questioned — and whose lawyers had sent the site a cease-and-desist letter — ended up retracting a paper the site had questioned.

Now, Curi has corrected another paper that featured on Science-Fraud.org. Here’s the notice: for “Comparative toxicity of oleic and linoleic acid on human lymphocytes,” which was originally published in Life Science in 2006: Continue reading Curi-us: Author whose lawyers threatened Science Fraud corrects a paper the site criticized

Clare Francis scores a bullseye: Journal of Cell Biology paper retracted for image manipulation

jcbIf you’re a journal editor or publisher, there’s a good chance your email inbox has seen its share of emails from “Clare Francis,” who has been crusading against text and image duplication in papers for some years now. Some editors have grown quite weary of those emails, sometimes because they don’t want to deal with anonymous whistleblowers, and sometimes because they have found Clare’s claims to be without merit.

But the Journal of Cellular Biology is one journal that has apparently continued to take them seriously. Today, they retract “Follistatin induction by nitric oxide through cyclic GMP: a tightly regulated signaling pathway that controls myoblast fusion,” a 2006 paper about which Francis first raised concerns in early November. Here’s the notice, one of those wonderfully detailed ones that make us squeal like schoolgirls meeting the Beatles: Continue reading Clare Francis scores a bullseye: Journal of Cell Biology paper retracted for image manipulation

Neuroscientists retract Cell autism model paper for “improperly assembled” figures

cell 1-17-13A group of authors have retracted a Cell paper describing a mouse model of autism because of image problems.

The senior author on the paper — there were 22 altogether — is Paul Worley of Johns Hopkins. Here’s the notice for “Enhanced Polyubiquitination of Shank3 and NMDA Receptor in a Mouse Model of Autism:” Continue reading Neuroscientists retract Cell autism model paper for “improperly assembled” figures

University of Lisbon investigation that spawned neuroscience retractions found no evidence of misconduct

j neuroscienceYesterday, we reported on two retractions in the Journal of Neuroscience whose notices referred to a University of Lisbon report that had determined there was  “substantial data misrepresentation” in the original articles.  The notice didn’t say anything about misconduct, but when we see “misrepresentation,” we tend to think — as do many others — that there had been funny business.

But we heard back this morning from the senior author of the study, Ana M. Sebastião, and there’s a lot more to this story. It turns out that the University of Lisbon committee that wrote the report concluded, unanimously, that Continue reading University of Lisbon investigation that spawned neuroscience retractions found no evidence of misconduct