Category: neuroscience retractions

ORI: Former SUNY Upstate neuroscience dept. chair Miller manipulated data in four grant applications

Last month, we reported on two retractions by the former neuroscience and physiology department chair at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. Both of the retractions were requested by the university after an investigation found that Michael W. Miller had committed misconduct.

Now, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which reviews misconduct investigations by NIH grantee institutions, has weighed in. As detailed in the Federal Register, ORI found that Miller falsified or fabricated data in four NIH grant applications, the two published (and now retracted) papers, and one manuscript submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). For example, he Continue reading ORI: Former SUNY Upstate neuroscience dept. chair Miller manipulated data in four grant applications

Second retraction for former SUNY Upstate department chair found guilty of misconduct

Last week, we covered the case of Michael W. Miller, a former department chair at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate who was forced to retract a paper in the Journal of Neurochemistry after a university investigation found he had committed misconduct.

We figured more retractions might be on the way, so we weren’t surprised when a commenter informed us earlier today of “very interesting and odd retraction letter.” Miller has had at least one other retraction, it turns out, this one in Developmental Neuroscience for 2009’s “Lability of Neuronal Lineage Decisions Is Revealed by Acute Exposures to Ethanol.” Here’s the notice, published online on January 19: Continue reading Second retraction for former SUNY Upstate department chair found guilty of misconduct

Journal of Neurochemistry retracts paper after SUNY Upstate medical school finds evidence of fraud

Following an investigation by the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate into the work of one of its neuroscientists, the Journal of Neurochemistry has retracted a 2007 paper.

The retraction notice is quite clear about why the paper is being withdrawn: Continue reading Journal of Neurochemistry retracts paper after SUNY Upstate medical school finds evidence of fraud

Does a new retraction suggest a glimmer of hope for transparency at the Journal of Neuroscience?

Believe it or not, we look for policies to praise here at Retraction Watch HQ, especially if they mark a change from approaches that we and others have criticized. So we were heartened to read this retraction notice in The Journal of Neuroscience for “Lmx1b-Controlled Isthmic Organizer Is Essential for Development of Midbrain Dopaminergic Neurons:”

The Journal of Neuroscience has received a report describing an investigation by the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which found major data misrepresentation in the article by Guo et al. Because the results cannot be considered reliable, The Journal is retracting the paper.

The study has been cited five times since it was published in 2008, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s some background on why we thought we’d have something to praise, from a Nature feature this week on retractions: Continue reading Does a new retraction suggest a glimmer of hope for transparency at the Journal of Neuroscience?

You can do that? A massive correction in Nature, but no retraction

courtesy Nature

This past April, Amparo Acker-Palmer and colleagues published a study in Nature, “Ephrin Bs are essential components of the Reelin pathway to regulate neuronal migration.” Within a day of its publication, Nature readers were raising questions about many of its figures. They started like this:

Andy Gu said:

Looks like Fig 1a, the two middle figures are actually the same with little move from desired regions. I don’t trust their data now…..

After several such comments, Nature senior editor Noah Gray weighed in: Continue reading You can do that? A massive correction in Nature, but no retraction

Cryptic “legal issues” lead to retraction of paper about potential Novartis alcohol abuse drug

Readers of this blog by now know that if there’s one thing that really gets us going, it’s obfuscation. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the following retraction notice from the journal Psychopharmacology, made us particularly batty:

This paper has been retracted by the author because of legal issues.

The notice refers to  “Selective activation of the metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 7 “mGluR7” attenuates acquisition, expression, and reinstatement of ethanol place preference,” was published online in late June by Amine Bahi under the heading “Original Investigation.”

Bahi is in the department of anatomy at United Arab Emirates University. He has also held positions at Yale and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Among his publications is one that involved a collaborator from Novartis (more on that in a moment). Continue reading Cryptic “legal issues” lead to retraction of paper about potential Novartis alcohol abuse drug

Update on Journal of Neuroscience retractions: Authors being investigated. Plus, editor explains why notices say nothing

We have updates on the two mysterious Journal of Neuroscience retractions we reported on yesterday. One is that we have learned that there is a university investigation into the work of one of the teams that retracted one of the studies. More on that in a bit.

Two, the journal’s editor, John Maunsell, responded to our request for comment, and we’re quoting his entire email (with annotation) because we think it raises important issues: Continue reading Update on Journal of Neuroscience retractions: Authors being investigated. Plus, editor explains why notices say nothing

Journal of Neuroscience retracts two, one 13 years old

The June 8 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience includes two retractions:

The notices are completely uninformative. They read: Continue reading Journal of Neuroscience retracts two, one 13 years old

University of East London “looking into” Jatinder Ahluwalia’s career

We’re continuing to follow the case of Jatinder Ahluwalia. As we reported on Tuesday, Ahluwalia was dismissed from graduate school at the University of Cambridge years before a University College London (UCL) investigation found had renumbered files to deceive a co-author, and had likely sabotaged his colleagues’ work while manipulating his solutions to improve how his results looked. The results of that investigation came to light as part of a Nature retraction.

Ahluwalia now works — and studies plagiarism, in fact — at the school of health and bioscience at the University of East London. We asked Neville Punchard, the school’s dean, whether the university was aware of Ahluwalia’s past. Punchard replied by email: Continue reading University of East London “looking into” Jatinder Ahluwalia’s career

Nobelist Linda Buck retracts two studies on olfactory networks — and the news is embargoed

Well, it’s happened: The Embargo Watch and Retraction Watch worlds have collided. I had initially figured on two posts here, but it soon became clear that how journals were handling these retractions, using embargoes, was central to both. So this is being cross-posted on both blogs.

Linda Buck, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, has retracted two papers published in 2005 and 2006. Both retractions — one in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and one in Science — appear online today.

The papers describe how nerves that carry information about scents connect from the nose to the olfactory bulb, where they are processed. They were published after the 2004 Nobel, which was for discoveries “of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.”

The retractions come two and a half years after Buck retracted a 2001 Nature paper co-authored with Zhihua Zou, a post-doc in her then-Harvard lab. She’s been at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center since 2002, and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. In 2008, Nature’s news section reported:

Harvard Medical School has formed an ad hoc committee to review the retraction, and Buck has asked the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to review two later publications on which Zou was the lead author. “It’s disappointing of course,” says Buck. “The important thing is to correct the literature.”

The PNAS and Science retractions are of those two later publications. The PNAS study was cited 61 times, and the Science study was cited 73 times, according to the Thomson Scientific Web of Knowledge.

The Science retraction reads: Continue reading Nobelist Linda Buck retracts two studies on olfactory networks — and the news is embargoed