Category: basic life sciences retractions

Did an author retract a paper at company’s behest? Retraction notice says yes, author now says no

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The author of a paper whose retraction notice says it was pulled at the behest of a company now says that wasn’t the case.

It’s a bit difficult to get this story straight: Although the retraction notice says a company complained the 2006 paper was “giving business inputs to their competitors,” the corresponding author told us no one asked him to retract the paper. Instead, he said, he was concerned about the inclusion of plant materials that belong to a previous employer, and did a “poor job” of explaining the reason for retraction. But since the results of the paper remain valid, Santosh Rajput — now a plant breeder at Dryland Genetics LLC in Ames, Iowa — told us he regrets asking to retract it:

Continue reading Did an author retract a paper at company’s behest? Retraction notice says yes, author now says no

One patient, two case reports: Journal retracts the latter

Case Reports in Obstetrics and GynecologyA journal has retracted a case report after discovering it had already been reported.

The paper — about an “extremely rare” instance where a fetus was diagnosed with both a form of dwarfism and a chromosomal condition known as Klinefelter syndrome — was retracted from Case Reports in Obstetrics and Gynecology (CROG).

The first author of the paper told us the report was the result of a “big misunderstanding” between her and a former colleague, and she alerted the journal as soon as she noticed the case had already been reported in BMC Pediatrics.

Here’s the retraction notice for the paper: Continue reading One patient, two case reports: Journal retracts the latter

Unwitting co-author requests retraction of melatonin paper

Screen Shot 2016-06-08 at 10.54.58 PMNine years ago, a well-known pharmacologist hosted a researcher from another university in his lab. On a Saturday night last September, he learned while surfing Google Scholar that they had published a paper together.

Marco Cosentino, who works at the University of Insubria in Italy, know that Seema Rai, a zoologist at Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya in India, had collected data during during her six months in his lab, but had warned her they were too preliminary to publish. She published the data — on melatonin’s role in immunity — anyway, last summer in the Journal of Clinical & Cellular Immunology, listing Cosentino as the second author.

The day after he discovered the paper, Cosentino sent an email to the editor in chief of the journal, Charles Malemud, explaining why he did not approve of the publication:

Continue reading Unwitting co-author requests retraction of melatonin paper

1st retraction for biologist who doctored 40+ images, received funding ban

JBC CoverThe Journal of Biological Chemistry has retracted a paper that was one of eight flagged in a recent investigation by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). The investigation — which concluded that a biologist had falsified or fabricated more than 40 images — resulted in a five-year funding ban. 

In May, the ORI announced that John Pastorino, an erstwhile cell biologist at Rowan University in New Jersey, falsified and/or fabricated eight of his published papers (and one unpublished one). Nataly Shulga is a co-author on all eight papers. Six of those eight papers had already received expressions of concern (EOC).

The first retraction to result from the investigation is one of the two published papers that had not been tagged by an EOC. Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading 1st retraction for biologist who doctored 40+ images, received funding ban

“We were completely shocked:” Plant biologists issue mega-correction

Plant Cell cover

Plant biologists have issued a major correction (what we dub “mega“) after realizing a significant mistake in their experiment.

The 2014 paper shows that a protein known as RAP plays a key role in chloroplast biogenesis. But as Ludwig Maximilians University-based authors Alexandra-Viola Bohne and Laura Kleinknecht continued to do their research, they found an error in the design of primers they used to synthesize the RNA for their experiments — and told us they are concerned other researchers could run into the same problem.

Although the authors considered retracting the paper, since its main conclusion was unaffected, they issued a correction notice, published in April in Plant Cell:

Continue reading “We were completely shocked:” Plant biologists issue mega-correction

Authors pull Mol Cell paper for “inappropriate manipulation” of data

Molecular CellThe authors of a Molecular Cell paper have retracted it due to issues with multiple figures — including one with evidence of “intentional misconduct.”

According to the authors’ institution, IMIM in Barcelona, all co-authors are aware of the retraction. The penultimate author — Antonio García de Herreros — retracted three papers in May from the Journal of Biological Chemistry for reusing images to represent different experiments, and recently corrected multiple figures in a Journal of Cell Science paper over “possible duplications and/or splices.”

Here’s the newest retraction notice: Continue reading Authors pull Mol Cell paper for “inappropriate manipulation” of data

Genotyping mistake costs lab two papers and year of work

PNASResearchers are retracting two papers about molecular signalling in plants — including one from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) — after discovering some inadvertent genotyping errors. But that was only after they used the problematic plants for an entire year without realizing they’d made a mistake.

In a pair of refreshingly transparent and detailed notices, the authors explain that the transgenic plants used in the papers included genotyping errors, which invalidated their findings. According to the notices, first author Man-Ho Oh generated the problematic transgenic plants, while corresponding author Steven C. Huber, based at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), took responsibility for omitting some critical oversight.

Huber told us that there were only two papers that used the transgenic plants in question, so no other retractions will be forthcoming.

Here’s the notice in PNAS for “Autophosphorylation of Tyr-610 in the receptor kinase BAK1 plays a role in brassinosteroid signaling and basal defense gene expression:”  Continue reading Genotyping mistake costs lab two papers and year of work

Researcher committed misconduct “recklessly,” says investigation

American Journal of Physiology Renal PhsyiologyA physiology journal has retracted a paper after an institutional investigation found that portions of the work had been falsified by the first author.

According to the notice issued by the American Journal of Physiology – Renal Physiology (AJP), the last author initiated the investigation at the University of Houston in Texas, which found the first author — Mousa Abkhezr — to be guilty of falsifying and duplicating images. 

We’ve obtained a copy of the investigation report, which concluded that Abkhezr committed misconduct “recklessly,” and the paper must be retracted. Although the report noted that Abkhezr argued that the problems stemmed from an honest error, the investigation committee ruled that data from the retracted paper cannot be included in his doctoral thesis.

The last author told us there is a separate ongoing “academic honesty enquiry” into Abkhezr’s dissertation. 

Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Researcher committed misconduct “recklessly,” says investigation

Investigation raises questions about top cancer researcher’s work

Journal of Pathology

A prominent pancreatic cancer researcher has lost a meeting abstract and corrected a Nature paper following an institutional investigation.

Queen Mary University of London determined that, in an abstract by Thorsten Hagemann, “elements of the study summarised by this abstract are not reliable.” Hagemann has recently issued a correction to a 2014 Nature paper he co-authored, which also cited the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) investigation, noting there was “reason to question the provenance of the data.”

Hagemann is currently the medical director of Immodulon Therapeutics, and has long been recognized for his work in the field, including a three-year grant of £180,000 from the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund in 2013.

Here’s the retraction notice from the The Journal of Pathology, regarding an abstract from the 7th Joint Meeting of the British Division of the International Academy of Pathology and the Pathological Society of Great Britain & Ireland: Continue reading Investigation raises questions about top cancer researcher’s work

Authors pull Nature paper about DEET and flies

Nature CoverAuthors have retracted a Nature paper which identified neurons that render flies sensitive to a potent insect repellent, after losing confidence in the findings. The first author, however, said she does not agree with the retraction, noting that she continues to believe the data are correct.

According to the notice, the remaining authors say they no longer support the claim that certain neurons in the antennae of fruit flies are repelled by DEET, the active ingredient in many insect repellents. The last author told us some of the paper’s results are not in doubt; nevertheless, he added, the paper would not have been published in Nature without the key conclusion, so he and most of his co-authors have pulled the paper in its entirety.

Alongside the retraction, the journal has also published a Brief Communications Arising article by scientists who were unable to reproduce the paper’s findings.

Here’s the retraction notice, published today:
Continue reading Authors pull Nature paper about DEET and flies