Category: basic life sciences retractions

Plant scientist Voinnet’s correction count grows to 22

nature structure molecular biologyWe have found another correction for high-profile plant scientist Olivier Voinnet, bringing his total count to 22. Voinnet, who works at ETH Zurich, also has seven retractions, a funding ban, and a revoked award.

Voinnet’s most recent corrections involve problems with figures; the same issue is cited in this latest correction notice, for “Competition for XPO5 binding between Dicer mRNA, pre-miRNA and viral RNA regulates human Dicer levels.”

The correction notice in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, issued earlier this year, explains:

Continue reading Plant scientist Voinnet’s correction count grows to 22

Three HER2-cancer review papers tagged with expressions of concern

The Oncologist Her 2 expression of concern

The Oncologist has tagged three review papers that share a first author with an expression of concern. The three papers, which have together been cited more than 1,000 times, focus on HER2, a gene that can contribute to breast cancer.

Though the papers contain errors, the conclusions — about how the HER2 gene serves as a predictive factor for breast cancer, and a target for therapies — remain unchanged, according to the EOC. The editor of the journal notes that the conclusions of the papers have been confirmed by other publications. Two of the papers are more than 10 years old, and today many patients continue to be treated with medications that target HER2, such as Herceptin.

Here’s the expression of concern:

Continue reading Three HER2-cancer review papers tagged with expressions of concern

Cell Press flags two papers after author confesses to fraud

Screen Shot 2016-04-11 at 8.45.56 PMNormally, when we see disputes over fraud allegations, it’s one author accusing another — but an unusual case at Cell has recently crossed our desk.

The journal has flagged a paper after an author confessed to committing fraud himself — but the corresponding author is disputing that confession, citing concerns about the confessor’s “motives and credibility.”

Independent labs are repeating the experiments to determine if the third author on the paper did, as he so claims, manipulate experiments. In the meantime, Cell and Molecular Cell have issued expressions of concern (EOCs) for two papers on which Yao-Yun Liang was a co-author. The notices cite an inquiry at Baylor College of Medicine, where the work was done, which was inconclusive, and recommended the journals take no action about the papers.

The EOCs are pretty much the same (both journals are published by Cell Press). Here’s the EOC that appears on “PPM1A functions as a Smad phosphatase to terminate TGFbeta signaling,” published in 2006 by Cell and cited 251 times, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science:

Continue reading Cell Press flags two papers after author confesses to fraud

DC court allows part of lawsuit against GW to proceed

kumarA DC court has denied part of George Washington University’s motion to dismiss a $8 million lawsuit by a biologist who claims his employer mishandled an investigation into his work.

Last spring, GW filed a motion to dismiss the case, brought forward by Rakesh Kumar, who has three retractions.  A judge has allowed the case to proceed, honoring parts of the school’s motion to dismiss, but denying most of it.

The memorandum opinion gives the specifics:

Continue reading DC court allows part of lawsuit against GW to proceed

Cancer researcher earns 3 more retractions following NIH misconduct investigation

A researcher formerly based at the National Cancer Institute has earned three new retractions following an investigation that found she committed misconduct.

In May of last year, Stephanie Watkins, who now works at Loyola Medicine, earned one two retraction, which mentions a review by an investigation committee at the National Institutes of Health. Two of the new notes, published in Cancer Research, mention the review as well, and cite data falsification in a figure as the reason for retraction. Watkins is the only author that did not agree to those retractions.

There may be more changes to the literature — an editor at another cancer journal told us the journal is awaiting a decision from the Office of Research Integrity before deciding what to do with a paper by Watkins, given that she does not agree with the misconduct charges.

We’ll start with a retraction note from Cancer Research:

Continue reading Cancer researcher earns 3 more retractions following NIH misconduct investigation

Seven papers flagged earlier for fake reviews now retracted by Elsevier

elsevierElsevier has now retracted the seven papers it flagged in October as being affected by fake peer reviews.

If you’re not keeping track, we are: We have logged a total of about 300 retractions for fake peer review, in which some aspect of the peer-review process becomes compromised — for instance, in the case of the newly retracted papers, authors appear to have created fake email accounts in order to pose as reviewers and give the green light to their own papers.

The same retraction note applies to five of the recently retracted papers:

Continue reading Seven papers flagged earlier for fake reviews now retracted by Elsevier

Neuroscientist in Serbia set to notch 7th retraction amid investigation

Lidija Radenović

Amidst an ongoing investigation by the University of Belgrade in Serbia into allegations of duplication by neurobiologist Lidija Radenović, a journal is planning to retract another one of her papers.

Radenović has already racked up six retractions; Elinor Ben-Menachem, the chief editor of the journal, Acta Neurologica Scandinavica, confirmed her journal is planning to retract one paper co-authored by Radenović, but did not specify which one. After digging around on the journal’s website, we found only one paper co-authored by Radenović, which was a 2005 study about the molecular changes that follow stroke. 

Ben-Menachem, who is based the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said the retraction note for the paper is “not ready” yet, and declined to comment on the case in more detail, including the reason for retraction. Continue reading Neuroscientist in Serbia set to notch 7th retraction amid investigation

Image splicing, duplications, inversions kill paper for well-known longevity researcher and alum of lab

Gizem Domnez
Gizem Donmez

A well-known scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies longevity has retracted a paper for “numerous examples of unindicated splicing of gel lanes,” as well as other problems.

This is Leonard Guarente‘s second retraction. He shares both with Gizem Donmez, an alum of his lab who now has three retractions. Donmez left her post as a Tufts professor in 2014.

Guarente told us in March — when we reported that he’d published a mega-correction on another paper — that he had planned to address issues with the paper, “SIRT1 Protects against α-Synuclein Aggregation by Activating Molecular Chaperones,” published in the The Journal of Neuroscience. Now, a retraction note has appeared “at the request of the authors.” It explains:

Continue reading Image splicing, duplications, inversions kill paper for well-known longevity researcher and alum of lab

Does this scientific image look familiar? It’s from a catalog

cover (4)There’s something strange about a 2008 paper on the role of nicotine receptors in promoting lung cancer: One of the western blot analyses looks like a version of an image from a commercial catalog.

A commenter on PubPeer pointed out the similarities between an image in “Role of α7-nicotinic acetylcholine receptor in human non-small cell lung cancer proliferation,” which was published in Cell Proliferation, and one used to promote an enzyme sold by Cell Signaling Technology.

Unfortunately, if the images are indeed the same, we can’t tell for certain who copied from whom. But a representative of the company told us it generates its own images, and this one was likely created before the paper was published. The last author — for whom we’ve found three other retractions — denied that the paper copied the image.

Here’s the panel from the paper, which was published in 2008: Continue reading Does this scientific image look familiar? It’s from a catalog

Authors pull 14-year-old paper from PNAS over concerns of fabrication

13.coverAuthors have retracted a 2002 paper from PNAS because part of a figure “may have been fabricated,” and they no longer have the original data to prove otherwise.

The paper in question, “Deficient Smad7 expression: A putative molecular defect in scleroderma,” studied the signaling pathways that may underlie the autoimmune disease. It has been cited 198 times, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.

The authors, led by Pascal J Goldschmidt-Clermont, currently the Dean of the School of  Medicine at the University of Miami, have issued a retraction note, which appeared online yesterday: Continue reading Authors pull 14-year-old paper from PNAS over concerns of fabrication