mega-corrections – Page 5 – Retraction Watch

A Cancer Cell mega-correction for highly cited researcher who retracted paper earlier this year

MIT’s Robert Weinberg, a leading cancer researcher who retracted a Cancer Cell paper earlier this year for “inappropriate presentation” of figures, has corrected a different paper in the same journal.

Here’s the correction for “Species- and Cell Type-Specific Requirements for Cellular Transformation:”

We were apprised recently of errors made in the assembly of Figures 2B, 3A, 4A, 4B, and 5G, resulting in the incorporation of incorrect representative images in these figures. These errors occurred during the electronic assembly and have no bearing on the conclusions of the study. The corrected figures are shown below. The authors apologize for any possible confusion this might have caused.

Here’s the original Figure 2 and caption, followed by the new version (read all the way to the end of the post for more details on how this came to light): Continue reading A Cancer Cell mega-correction for highly cited researcher who retracted paper earlier this year

A mega-correction for Rui Curi, whose lawyers threatened to sue Science-Fraud.org

A Brazilian researcher whose legal threats helped lead to the shutdown of Science-Fraud.org and who has had two papers retracted has had to correct another paper.

The fourth correction for Rui Curi — and we’d call it a mega-correction — is of a paper in PLOS ONE. Curi is the fourth out of 11 authors; someone named Tania Pithon-Curi is the final author:
Continue reading A mega-correction for Rui Curi, whose lawyers threatened to sue Science-Fraud.org

Arsenic-in-the-water paper with “interesting data” first corrected, now retracted

Note (4/9/13): John McArthur contacted us with a few corrections, which we have made below.

The Journal of Contaminant Hydrology has retracted a 2008 paper by a group of Indian scientists for plagiarism and the failure to adequately reference their sources.

What makes this case somewhat unusual is that the journal allowed the authors to issue a correction (of the mega variety) attempting to acknowledge the problems, but then evidently decided that the patient was too sick to live — and that part of the disease was iatrogenic.

Here’s the retraction notice for the article, titled “Hydrogeochemical behavior of arsenic-enriched groundwater in the deltaic environment: Comparison between two study sites in West Bengal, India”:

Continue reading Arsenic-in-the-water paper with “interesting data” first corrected, now retracted

Hefty correction in JBC for GMO researchers in image tampering case

Last November we wrote about the case of Alejandra Bravo and Mario Soberón, a wife-husband team of microbiologists studying genetically modified crops, who had been disciplined by the National Autonomous University of Mexico for having manipulated images in 11 papers.

The tinkering did not rise to the level of fraud, according to the university — which perhaps helps explain why it didn’t lead to requests for retractions, according to Soberón. Instead, he said at the time, at least seven journals would be issuing corrections. We now have what appears to be the first of these, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Continue reading Hefty correction in JBC for GMO researchers in image tampering case

Image correction in Current Biology for Harvard’s Sam Lee

The work of Sam W. Lee, a cancer biologist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, has come under fire at Science Fraud lately over concerns about the possible reuse of images in his group’s published studies.

Turns out there’s some there, there after all. The journal Current Biology has issued a pretty thorny correction for one of Lee’s 2006 articles, “RhoE Is a Pro-Survival p53 Target Gene that Inhibits ROCK I-Mediated Apoptosis in Response to Genotoxic Stress,” citing multiple issues with its figures: Continue reading Image correction in Current Biology for Harvard’s Sam Lee

The Nature paper that required three corrections

In baseball, it’s three strikes and you’re out. In Nature, apparently, you can stay at the plate after three swings-and-misses.

That’s what we concluded from a Corrigendum in last week’s issue, for “CD95 promotes tumour growth,” originally published in May 2010 and now corrected not once, not twice, but three times.

Here was the first Corrigendum, from March 2011: Continue reading The Nature paper that required three corrections

A pair of expressions of concern in PLOS ONE over vet science papers

PLoS ONE has issued two Expressions of Concern on unrelated studies, each of which offers plenty to be concerned about — and not just about the research itself.

One is a casualty of our old friend, Jesús Lemus, the Spanish veterinary scientist accused of fabricating his data.

The article, titled “The PHA-Skin Test Reflects Acquired T-Cell Mediated Immunocompetence in Birds,” was published in September 2008 and cited 61 times, according to Google Scholar.

Back in April, the publisher posted this comment to the paper: Continue reading A pair of expressions of concern in PLOS ONE over vet science papers

Correction for MD Anderson’s Bharat Aggarwal arches eyebrows for the right reasons

We’ve written about mega-corrections that allow scientists to retrace virtually all of their steps yet preserve their publications as supposedly legitimate. And we’ve seen plenty of corrections that allow authors to assert that their conclusions are correct when evidently important pieces of data are themselves unreliable.

Now comes a correction that seems to us to strike the right chords, given the fact that editors are to a large extent at the mercy of authors in these situations. Continue reading Correction for MD Anderson’s Bharat Aggarwal arches eyebrows for the right reasons

Authors retract two Cell Metabolism papers after “data were inappropriately removed from the laboratory”

A group of researchers at the University of Utah has retracted two papers from Cell Metabolism after they realized that a dismissed employee had tossed out data that were the basis of some error-laden figures.