Category: basic life sciences retractions

It’s not a tumor: Authors retract 2005 Cancer Research paper linking adult stem cells to cancer

The authors of a 2005 Cancer Research paper that cast some doubt on the safety of a population of adult stem cells used frequently in research have retracted it. According to the retraction, in the August 15 issue of the journal:

Upon review of the data published in this article, the authors have been unable to reproduce some of the reported spontaneous transformation events and suspect the phenomenon is due to a cross-contamination artifact.

Transformation refers to changes in the cells that make them “immortal” — think HeLa cells, made popular by Rebecca Skloot’s book about Henrietta Lacks — and cancer-like. Continue reading It’s not a tumor: Authors retract 2005 Cancer Research paper linking adult stem cells to cancer

Double negatives: Four years later, a journal restores retracted headache paper

drawing by JD Fletcher via Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Clusterhead.jpg

It might not be a first – although we can’t find another example — but a mental health journal has reinstated an article it retracted four years ago.

The retracted retraction notice appears in the August issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, a BMJ title, and refers to a 2005 article describing an alarming case of treatment-related emotional problems in a patient with cluster headaches.

These headaches, which often strike behind the eyes, are akin to migraines and have been dubbed “suicide headaches” because they are so intensely painful that many sufferers have said that death would be a preferable fate. (Think: “It beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”)

The patient had been taking high doses of the drug methysergide and began to experience Continue reading Double negatives: Four years later, a journal restores retracted headache paper

Science wants “reactome array” enzyme chip authors to retract paper

Following an investigation into an October 2009 study in Science that claimed to have proven the ability of a device to measure all of the enzyme activity in a cell at a particular time, the journal has asked the study’s authors to retract the paper, Science‘s news blog, ScienceInsider, reported on Friday.

The move comes after Bruce Alberts, Science‘s editor in chief, issued an Editorial Expression of Concern in December in response to concerns raised by other scientists

to alert our readers to thefact that serious questions have been raised about the methodsand data presented in this article. The questions focus in particularon the synthesis of the dye-labeled metabolites that are centralto the microarray technique. In addition, the spectroscopicdata the authors cite in support of their claim were not postedto the Bangor University School of Biological Sciences Web siteat the time of publication, despite the authors’ indicationin the Supporting Online Material that the data would be soposted. In response to inquiries from Science, the authors haveprovided new descriptions of the synthetic methods that differsubstantially from those in their published article. Based onour original concerns and the authors’ response, Science hasrequested evaluation of the original data and records by officialsat the authors’ institutions: These officials have agreed toundertake this task.

That evaluation, reported late last month by Nature, concluded Continue reading Science wants “reactome array” enzyme chip authors to retract paper

2005 PNAS Arabidopsis cold sensitivity gene paper retracted

There’s a retraction this week from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of a paper that first appeared online on July 1, 2005 (and which is still available, but notes under “this article” that “a retraction has been published”). The paper reports on a study that allegedly found a gene that made Arabidopsis plants — a favorite model of molecular biologists — “extremely sensitive to freezing temperatures, completely unable to acclimate to the cold,” and very sensitive to salt.

In other words, the Arabidopsis version of our relatives in Florida.

From the retraction:
Continue reading 2005 PNAS Arabidopsis cold sensitivity gene paper retracted