Royal jelly — “the goo that sustains honeybees destined for royalty” and is touted dubiously for everything “from youthful skin to virility,” as Nature put it — is apparently a hot research topic. So when a Retraction Watch tipster sent us a corrigendum that seemed to have done something we hadn’t seen before — retract a single figure, without saying why — we figured we’d check it out.
Eric Smart, who as we reported in November was sanctioned by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) for faking dozens of images in ten papers and seven grants over the past decade, has had his first retraction.
Milena Penkowa, the former University of Copenhagen scientist found by her university to have embezzled grant funds and to have possibly committed misconduct in 15 papers, has another retraction.
Terry S. Elton, a researcher at Ohio State University in Columbus who studies genetic expression in various heart conditions and Down syndrome, has been sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity for fabricating and/or falsifying data in a number of NIH grants and resulting papers.
A group of cardiology researchers formerly of the University of Cologne has retracted two papers, after investigations into allegations of misconduct led to an admission of guilt by one of the lab’s junior members.
Dipak Das, the resveratrol researcher found guilty of more than 100 counts of misconduct by the University of Connecticut, has two more retractions for his resume. But that’s not the most interesting part of this post, so keep reading after the notices.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) asked a journal to retract a paper once it became clear that some of the images in it were actually from a different HHMI lab.
The International Journal of Cancer, a Wiley title, has retracted a pair of articles from a group at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, for image manipulation.