Bruce Murdoch, a neuroscientist formerly of the University of Queensland, will appear in court next week to face fraud charges stemming from an investigation that has already led to three retractions, several corrections, and similar charges for one of his colleagues.
Here’s the notice from the Crime and Corruption Commission: Continue reading Second former University of Queensland researcher to appear in court to face fraud charges
Have you ever noticed that hearing something read aloud as you follow along helps you remember what you’re reading better?
Two bioengineers at Trinity College Dublin, Michael Crosse and Edmund Lalor, decided to investigate the underlying reason for the phenomenon. Unfortunately, after they published their findings in the Journal of Neurophysiology earlier this year, they tried to recreate the experiments and discovered that their equipment didn’t line up the audio and visual stimuli properly.
They did the right thing and contacted the journal for a retraction. Here’s the notice for “The cortical representation of the speech envelope is earlier for audiovisual speech than audio speech”: Continue reading Can you hear me now? Neuroscience paper sunk by audio stimulus error
The Journal of Neuroscience hasn’t changed its policy of not explaining retractions if authors don’t want to, as this October 8 notice attests.
Here’s the notice for “Coordinated Regulation of Hepatic Energy Stores by Leptin and Hypothalamic Agouti-Related Protein:” Continue reading Journal of Neuroscience still won’t explain author-initiated retractions
The recent retraction of a paper in Science Translational Medicine reporting “one of the biggest things to happen” in narcolepsy research has claimed a bystander: A letter that commented on the no-longer-landmark article.
The authors of the letter are with GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine division. Here’s the new notice: Continue reading Downstream effects: Comment on retracted narcolepsy paper retracted
The authors of a paper on brain genetics published online in June in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) are retracting it for “a potential confound relating to statistical inference.”
Here’s the notice for “Identification of gene ontologies linked to prefrontal–hippocampal functional coupling in the human brain:” Continue reading Authors retract PNAS brain genetics paper for statistical issues
Cory Toth is up to nine retractions.
The University of Calgary researcher who told us earlier this year that he “will not be publishing in the world of science in the future” has retracted two papers from Neuroscience.
Here’s the notice for “Local erythropoietin signaling enhances regeneration in peripheral axons:” Continue reading Diabetes researcher Cory Toth now up to nine retractions
An article purporting to find that black children are at substantially increased risk for autism after early exposure to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine has been shelved.
Although we don’t know if the events are related, the move comes amid claims that a CDC whistleblower has accused health officials of suppressing information about the link.
Not surprisingly, the prospect that the CDC has been sitting on evidence of an autism-vaccine connection for more than a decade has inflamed the community of activists wrongly convinced that such a link exists.
The paper, “Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young african american boys: a reanalysis of CDC data,” was written by Brian Hooker, an engineer-turned-biologist and an active member of that community. It was submitted in April, accepted on August 5, and published on August 8.
Translational Neurodegeneration, which published the article earlier this month, has now removed it and posted the following notice: Continue reading Journal takes down autism-vaccine paper pending investigation
Tardigrades, the most hardy animals on or off planet Earth, can survive boiling, freezing, and even the ravages of outer space.
Unfortunately, some data on water bears’ memories proved to be less long-lasting, earning a retraction for a George Mason University researcher who also published the paper without alerting her co-workers ahead of time.
Here’s the notice for “Suspended animation: effects on short-term and long-term positive associative memory in Hypsibius dujardini,” which first appeared in Invertebrate Neuroscience: Continue reading Bearly believable: Water bear paper retracted for missing lab notebooks
A researcher at Tufts University has retracted a paper in Cell, a year after retracting a study on a similar subject from the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Here’s the notice for “SIRT1 Suppresses β-Amyloid Production by Activating the α-Secretase Gene ADAM10,” a 2010 paper by Tufts’ Gizem Donmez, MIT’s Leonard Guarante — of longevity research fame — and colleagues: Continue reading Cell retraction of Alzheimer’s study is second for Tufts neuroscientist
A group of researchers at Stanford and elsewhere is retracting a 2013 paper that another scientist told Nature was “one of the biggest things to happen in the narcolepsy field for some time.”
The Science Translational Medicine paper caused a buzz because it claimed to show that narcolepsy was an autoimmune disease. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Authors retract paper “confirming” that narcolepsy is an autoimmune disease
