Category: genetics retractions

Fernández genetics paper in limbo over data concerns

annrevgenAriel Fernández, the protein researcher whose theories of drug design lately have come in for questioning, has lost a paper, at least for the moment.

The article, “Supramolecular Evolution of Protein Organization,” appeared online in Annual Reviews of Genetics prior to print. It lists Fernández’s affiliation as ProWD Sciences, in Madison, Wisc. Not much exists on the web about that company, however, except an under-construction site. (ProWD, by the way, is short for PROtein-Water-Dehydron, Fernández’s area of interest.)

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Fernández genetics paper in limbo over data concerns

Aoki notches fourth retraction for image problems

jbc1013We have a fourth retraction in the Journal of Biochemistry for Naohito Aoki, a Japanese researcher and former postdoc in a German lab, whose images have been called into question but whose retraction notices were scant. In this case, however, the journal, while not exactly overbrimming with information about the article, at least gives us some sense of what’s going on.

Aoki worked in the lab of Axel Ullrich, of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, and appeared on two retracted articles in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) with his mentor, along with a third with a co-author from Japan, Tsukasa Matsuda. Although those notices don’t say anything about the reason for the retractions — this was before the JBC started providing such information — Ulrich told us that Aoki had been manipulating images. Continue reading Aoki notches fourth retraction for image problems

Spat over tuberculosis study data leads to Expression of Concern

jcmA fight over who owns tuberculosis study data has led the Journal of Clinical Microbiology to publish an Expression of Concern.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Spat over tuberculosis study data leads to Expression of Concern

Author of “way out there” paper merging physics and biology has second paper retracted

jcellsigIn February, we brought you the story of Konstantin Meyl, a

professor who claims to have developed “a self-consistent field theory which is used to derive at all known interactions of the potential vortex”

At the time, one of Meyl’s papers — which a reviewer had called “way out there” — had just been retracted, for duplication. Now a second paper — among the works from which the first retracted paper had drawn — has been retracted.

Here’s the notice from the Journal of Cell Communication and Signaling (which is buried in a footnote at the bottom of the paper): Continue reading Author of “way out there” paper merging physics and biology has second paper retracted

Author stalemate in Czech DNA paper leads to retraction

200px-Kafka_portrait
Franz Kafka

Okay, so it’s not quite Kafka, but a group of forensic geneticists from Prague’s Charles University has lost a paper in Folia Biologica (a journal from that famed institution where Kafka studied) over what appears to be a rather Byzantine dispute about authorship and the quality of the data.

The 2010 article, “DNA analysis of ancient skeletal remains” was written by a trio of authors from Charles University’s Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics. According to its abstract: Continue reading Author stalemate in Czech DNA paper leads to retraction

Duplication forces retraction of genomics paper

biosA group of biologists has lost a paper about a genomics tool after they published the findings twice.

Here’s the notice for the now-retracted paper in BIOS: Continue reading Duplication forces retraction of genomics paper

“Conflicting investigations” prompt expression of concern in BMC Genomics

Source: Wikipedia
Ariel Fernandez, source: Wikipedia

BMC Genomics has issued an expression of concern for a 2011 paper by a prominent Argentine chemist, Ariel Fernandez, whose work covers several disciplines — “His research spans representation theory in algebra, physical chemistry, molecular biophysics, and more recently, molecular evolution and drug discovery” — and institutions. And therein lies the tale.

Fernandez appeared as the first author of the article, titled “Subfunctionalization reduces the fitness cost of gene duplication in humans by buffering dosage imbalances,” along with a pair of researchers from Taiwan. Fernandez’s affiliations were listed as being with the Instituto Argentino de Matemática “Alberto P. Calderón”, CONICET (National Research Council of Argentina), in Buenos Aires, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, and the Morgridge Institute for Research, in Madison, Wisc.

According to the abstract:

Continue reading “Conflicting investigations” prompt expression of concern in BMC Genomics

Geneticists take HeLa sequence off-line after Lacks family notes they hadn’t given consent

g3HeLa — the cell line that has apparently taken over any number of others commonly used in science, suggesting that many researchers may not have been studying what they thought they were studying — is back in the news. This weekend, it was the DNA sequence of the cells that’s made headlines, with a quiet unpublishing of data.

As Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks — Lacks’s name is where “HeLa” comes from, as they’re her cells — wrote in the New York Times Sunday, a group of researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory published an analysis of the HeLa cells’ genome on March 11 in G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics, a new journal from the Genetics Society of America.

That genome, of course, could be very useful in research, given how widely used HeLa cells are. But the problem was Continue reading Geneticists take HeLa sequence off-line after Lacks family notes they hadn’t given consent

Seals of disapproval, as pinniped paper gets yanked for plagiarism

ImageJoseph Hoffman, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Bielefeld in Germany says he got a “kind of odd” feeling as he read a recent paper on the transcriptome of the spotted seal. Let’s just call it deja vu.

The article, “Characterization of the spotted seal Phoca largha transcriptome using Illumina paired-end sequencing and development of SSR markers,” which appeared in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part D: Genomics and Proteomics:

Continue reading Seals of disapproval, as pinniped paper gets yanked for plagiarism

Paper with “missing or placed wrongly” controls retracted because there’s “no editorial mechanism to review the errors”

jgvTwo researchers from Singapore are retracting a paper that included errors in three figures because there’s apparently no way to fix the mistakes and have the new work reviewed.

Here’s the notice for “Host-dependent effects of the 3′ untranslated region of turnip crinkle virus RNA on accumulation in Hibiscus and Arabidopsis,” by Weimin Li and Sek-Man Wong of National University of Singapore and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory: Continue reading Paper with “missing or placed wrongly” controls retracted because there’s “no editorial mechanism to review the errors”