A prominent biochemist and his co-author are pulling one of their papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry because…well, we’re not sure.
That’s because the retraction note is – as we’ve come to expect from JBC – not very informative.
Here’s the only explanation for the retraction of “The Down Syndrome Cell Adhesion Molecule (DSCAM) Interacts with and Activates Pak”:
Continue reading MacArthur awardee retracts signaling biology paper
The European Ophthalmic Review has retracted a 2014 article about the macular degeneration drug aflibercept without any explanation.
Here’s the retraction notice, such as it is:
Continue reading We’ll tell you later, says ophthalmology journal about retracted paper
An article published earlier this year has been retracted from the Journal of Heat Transfer. But the retraction notice gives no information about what was amiss.
The article is entitled “Neural Network Methodology for Modeling Heat Transfer in Wake Flow,” and the retraction notice, in full, reads: Continue reading Fluid mechanics article retracted with no explanation
A group of authors have withdrawn a 2011 Journal of Biological Chemistry paper, but then appear to have re-published almost the same paper a month later, only this time with just five of the original nine authors.
The paper, “HDAC3-dependent reversible lysine acetylation of cardiac myosin heavy chain isoforms modulates their enzymatic and motor activity,” concerns a type of protein regulation important to cardiac stress. Written by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh, it has been cited 16 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. It was rated “Exceptional” by a reviewer on the Faculty of 1000 website.
As we’ve come to expect from the JBC, here’s the full retraction notice, in all its inexplicit glory: Continue reading Déjà vu: JBC epigenetics paper is retracted, then largely re-published with fewer authors
A 2014 article in Occupational Medicine has been pulled with no retraction notice. Instead, the text was replaced with eight ominous words:
This article has been removed for legal reasons
Continue reading Lead poisoning article disappears for “legal” — but mysterious — reasons
The author of a 2006 review article published in Abdominal Imaging has retracted it because it hews too closely to previously published articles.
The review described the latest imaging techniques used in cancer, focusing on genitourinary conditions.
Here’s the full text of the retraction notice for “New Horizons in Genitourinary Oncologic Imaging”:
Continue reading Highly cited cancer researcher pulls review for “similar text and illustrations”
Reading is hard and takes a long time, so it’s nice that the Iron and Steel Institute of Japan didn’t give us too much work to do with this 12 word retraction.
Journal ISIJ International minced no words about why the 2014 paper on steel manufacturing was withdrawn, because there were no words. Here’s the notice for “Microstructure and Properties of Fiber Laser Welded Joints of Ultrahigh-strength Steel 22MnB5 and its Dissimilar Combination with Q235 Steel” in its entirety – half the length of the title!: Continue reading Retraction notice for steel manufacturing paper leaves much to the imagination
A group of researchers at two universities in South Korea have retracted two cell biology papers featuring retinoic acid.
The most recent retraction appears in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Although, in typical JBC fashion, the reason for it is anyone’s guess.
Here’s the unhelpful notice for “ASXL1 represses retinoic acid receptor-mediated transcription through associating with HP1 and LSD1:” Continue reading Cell biologists in South Korea retract two papers
Sometimes we run across retraction notices that are vague, and others that are contorted, but we’ve just found one that gets highest marks for being completely inscrutable.
The article, “Bayes Clustering and Structural Support Vector Machines for Segmentation of Carotid Artery Plaques in Multicontrast MRI,” was written by a group from China and Cambridge University in England — so, we’re thinking language ought not to have been much of a barrier to clear English. It appeared in November 2012 in Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine, and describes a way to analyze carotid artery plaque levels in MRI images.
But according to the notice, the technique did not work as planned (or so we think):
On January 12, we got hold of a retraction at AGRIVITA Journal of Agricultural Science a small journal published by the University of Brawijaya in Indonesia.
We went about our usual process, emailing authors and editors looking for more details. The retraction mentioned a double publication. It gave enough details that we’re fairly sure the earlier publication was this one, “Performance of Korean Soybean Varieties in Indonesia,” in the Journal of the Korean Society of International Agriculture.
However, when we went back to write up this post, we noticed something odd. The retraction notice of “Expressions of Introduced Soybean Varieties from Korea” was no longer to be found! And the link to the paper itself now forwards you on to the main page for Agrivita.
It still shows up in Google: Continue reading The mysterious case of the missing — and urgent — retraction