Amine Bahi, a neuroscience researcher in the United Arab Emirates, has had a third paper retracted.
Here’s the notice for “Blockade of Protein Phosphatase 2B Activity in the Amygdala Increases Anxiety- and Depression-Like Behaviors in Mice,” which was posted on November 19: Continue reading Rats! Neuroscientist notches third retraction, this one for using the wrong RNAs
About a month ago, we reported on a retraction by Pamela Ronald, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues. We noted then that this was a case of scientists doing the right thing. Ronald contacted us after that post ran, and let us know that there would be another retraction shortly. That retraction notice has now appeared, in Science: Continue reading Pamela Ronald does the right thing again, retracting a Science paper
At team of researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center has retracted a paper after realizing that the cell lines they were using weren’t what they thought they were.
Here’s the detailed notice: Continue reading Cancer cell line mixup leads to retraction
We’ll say it again: We like being able to point out when researchers stand up and do the right thing, even at personal cost.
In December 2011, Pamela C. Ronald, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues published a paper in PLOS ONE,”Small Protein-Mediated Quorum Sensing in a Gram-Negative Bacterium.” Such quorum sensing research is a “hot topic” right now, so not surprisingly the paper caught the attention of other scientists, and the media, including the Western Farm Press. The study has been cited eight times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
One of those scientists who took notice was Ronald’s UC Davis colleague Jonathan Eisen, who posted about the paper on his blog. That was on January 9, 2012. But if you go to that post today, you’ll see that Eisen struck through most of it, and added this comment: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Researchers retract quorum sensing paper after public process
A group of chemical engineers in China has retracted their article on photocatalysts after alerting the journal that images in the paper did not show what they’d reported.
The article, which appeared in Catalysis Communications earlier this year, was titled “Synthesis and characterization of novel Cu2O/PANI composite photocatalysts with enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability,” and was written by Xiufang Wang, Guangmei Chen and Jun Zhang of the School of Materials and Chemical Engineering at Anhui University of Architecture, in Hefei.
Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Paper retracted because images “were, in fact, electron microscopy results of totally different catalysts”
We’ve written before about retractions for cell lines that turn out not to be what researchers thought they were. In a few cases, that has involved contamination by HeLa cells, named for Henrietta Lacks. Today, we note the retraction of a paper whose authors, from Taiwan, thought they were using human muscle cells that line blood vessels when they were actually studying such cells from rat embryos.
Here’s the notice in the British Journal of Nutrition for “Molecular mechanism of green microalgae, Dunaliella salina, involved in attenuating balloon injury-induced neointimal formation”: Continue reading Cell line mixup causes retraction of paper on blood vessel damage
The 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
Two different teams of physicists have retracted papers from Physical Review B after realizing that a sample used in the paper published first — and which formed the basis of the second paper — was mislabeled.
Here’s the notice for the first paper, “s-wave superconductivity in barium-doped phenanthrene as revealed by specific-heat measurements,” by Jianjun Ying of the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, and colleagues: Continue reading Mislabeled sample leads to a chain reaction of physics retractions
They 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
A labeled chemical bottle may contain a genie and not the expected reagent, according to a cautionary retraction that could be a warning for all bench researchers.
Sreenivasan Sasidharan, a researcher at the Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), part of the Universiti Sains Malaysia, used a bottle labeled lantadene A, a liver-destroying chemical from the leaves of the Lantana camara plant that some livestock eat.
Sasidharan found that contrary to expectations, “lantadene A” protected livers against damage from acetaminophen — aka Tylenol.
But Manu Sharma, assistant pharmacy professor at Jaypee University of Information Technology in India, suspected something was technically amiss: Continue reading Mislabeled chemical bottle leads to retraction of liver protection paper