Category: basic life sciences retractions

Does dose matter? Tumor killer paper thought so, now must retract

Molecular Medicine ReportsAfter questions from a reader, researchers took a second look at their data about the effects of a vitamin A metabolite on tumor cells, and realized their key finding was inaccurate.

They’re now retracting the paper, from Molecular Medicine Reports, because it originally reported that higher concentrations of retinoic acid (RA) were more effective in curbing the proliferation of brain tumor cells. But it seems that the RA dose made less of a difference than they originally believed, according to the retraction notice:

Continue reading Does dose matter? Tumor killer paper thought so, now must retract

Five more retractions for researcher who sued PubPeer commenters brings tally to 18

Fazlul Sarkar
Fazlul Sarkar

A cancer researcher who tried to sue PubPeer commenters for criticizing his work has earned five more retractions, bringing his total to 18. 

All of the new retractions for Fazlul Sarkar, formerly based at Wayne State University in Michigan, appear in the International Journal of Cancer. All cite an institutional investigation, and relate to issues with images.

With 18 retractions, Sarkar has now earned a spot on our leaderboard.

We first encountered Sarkar when he subpoenaed PubPeer to reveal the names of anonymous commenters that potentially cost him a job at the University of Mississippi. Earlier this month, a Wayne State spokesperson confirmed to us that Sarkar has now retired from the university. (To get up to speed, check out our timeline on the major events in this case.)

Here’s the first of the retraction notices, issued today: Continue reading Five more retractions for researcher who sued PubPeer commenters brings tally to 18

Journal blacklists authors for plagiarizing case report about hypersexuality in dementia

Advances in Human BiologyA biology journal has blacklisted authors from publishing their work after finding their case report about a dementia patient with hypersexuality was plagiarized from a previously published report.

The retraction notice, issued by Advances in Human Biology (AIHB) in June, recognizes the case as “scientific misconduct.” The journal launched an investigation after the plagiarism was flagged by the author of the original report, the editor-in-chief of the journal told us. Eventually, the journal retracted the report — and removed it entirely from their website.

Additionally, the journal posted this notice on their site, blacklisting the authors from publishing in AIHB again: Continue reading Journal blacklists authors for plagiarizing case report about hypersexuality in dementia

Author loses five papers, most for “compromised” peer review

PLOS OnePLOS ONE has retracted three papers after the first author admitted to submitting the manuscripts without co-authors’ consent, and an investigation suggested that two out of the three papers had received faked reviews.

Last August, the same author — Lishan Wang of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University — lost two more papers (one in Tumor Biology and the other in Gene), also after the peer review process was found to be compromised. All five papers — which share other authors in common — were originally published in 2013, and four list Wang as the first author. The retractions follow an investigation by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Here’s the retraction notice for two of the PLOS ONE papers, issued on July 26: Continue reading Author loses five papers, most for “compromised” peer review

Authors retract study with contaminated cell lines

MBoCAuthors of a molecular biology paper have pulled it after realizing that their cell lines were contaminated.

According to the notice in Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC), the contamination occurred by “unknown means” in the senior authors’ laboratory, who told us the mistake was a difficult one to catch. He added that they discovered the problem after other researchers published conflicting results.

He also noted that the contaminated cell lines were not used for experiments in any other papers.

Here’s the retraction notice, issued on August 1: Continue reading Authors retract study with contaminated cell lines

Journal flags two papers by prominent diabetes researcher, more questioned on PubPeer

DiabetesDiabetes has issued two expressions of concern (EOCs) for papers co-authored by leading diabetes researcher Kathrin Maedler, adding to her previous count of one retraction and three corrections.

Both papers were questioned on PubPeer, alongside several others co-authored by Maedler, who is based at the University of Bremen in Germany. As we previously reported, PubPeer comments have led to one retraction for Maedler in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), and corrections in various other journals.

One of those corrections has now earned an EOC from Diabetes, which also extends to the original paper. Here are the notices, which asks the University of Bremen to investigate further:  Continue reading Journal flags two papers by prominent diabetes researcher, more questioned on PubPeer

You’ve been dupe’d: Results so nice, journals published them twice

With so many retraction notices pouring in, from time to time we compile a handful of straight-forward retractions.

Once again, this list focuses on duplications — but unlike other duplications, these authors were not at fault. Rather, these retractions occurred because the publishers mistakenly published the same paper twice — the result of a transfer between publishers, for instance, or accidentally publishing the unedited version of the paper. We’re forced to wonder, as we have before, whether saddling researchers’ CVs with a retraction is really the most fair way to handle these cases.

So without further ado, here’s five cases where the journal mistakenly duplicated a paper, and had to retract one version: Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Results so nice, journals published them twice

Beg pardon? Researchers pull cancer paper because, well, um, you see …

dovepressWe’ve been writing about retractions for six years, and things tend to fall into easily recognizable categories — plagiarism, fabricated data, rigged peer review, etc.

So it’s always interesting to come across a notice sui generis, such as one that appeared in July in OncoTargets and Therapy, a Dove title, about a new way to detect tumor markers.

According to the retraction notice:

Continue reading Beg pardon? Researchers pull cancer paper because, well, um, you see …

Seven retractions for prominent cancer researcher brings total to 18

Bharat Aggarwal
Bharat Aggarwal

A cancer researcher has earned seven more retractions following an investigation into his work by his former employer, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, bringing his total to 18 retractions.

Bharat Aggarwal‘s name will be familiar to some readers, as he has threatened to sue Retraction Watch for reporting on his case.

All of the new retraction notices, issued by The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), stem from image-related issues. The now-retired Aggarwal has seven papers that have each been cited at least 1,000 times, and in 2015, he was on Thomson Reuters Web of Science’s list of The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. With these new notices, he also has made it to our leaderboard of individual researchers who’ve racked up the most retractions.

An MD Anderson spokesperson sent us this statement: Continue reading Seven retractions for prominent cancer researcher brings total to 18

More than half of plant toxicity paper isn’t original, journal says

Screen Shot 2016-04-20 at 8.07.37 PM

Plagiarism and duplication can be deadly to a paper in any dose. In the case of a study on the toxicity of nanoparticles to plants, the publisher has presented the precise amount of plagiarism and duplications that ultimately felled the paper.

Specifically, according to Nanomaterials, 56% of “Potential Impact of Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Exposure to the Seedling Stage of Selected Plant Species” was taken from other work.

Here are more details from the retraction notice, published last year:

Continue reading More than half of plant toxicity paper isn’t original, journal says