Category: basic life sciences retractions

Cancer researcher earns 9th retraction, for image duplication

Journal of Clinical InvestigationAlfredo Fusco, a researcher in Italy who has been under criminal investigation for scientific misconduct, has earned his ninth retraction.

Retraction number nine, by The Journal of Clinical Investigation, is for duplicating data from another publication — which has also faced questions on PubPeer about image manipulation, along with many other papers by Fusco.

The retraction note for “The RET/PTC-RAS-BRAF linear signaling cascade mediates the motile and mitogenic phenotype of thyroid cancer cells” explains that the journal is pulling the paper even though the authors claim that they can reproduce the data:

Continue reading Cancer researcher earns 9th retraction, for image duplication

Poop paper flushed due to possible sample contamination

cover (3)The authors of a paper on a new probiotic strain of bacteria found in pig feces have retracted it from Animal Science Journal after discovering some of the bacteria might have been contaminated.

Readers likely know by now how easy it is for this to happen, as we frequently report on retractions due to similar reasons. Like other instances of mistaken cell identity, the authors of this 2013 paper realized the mistake following further tests of the bacteria used in the experiment.

The retraction for “Isolation, characterization, and effect of administration in vivo, a novel probiotic strain from pig feces”

Continue reading Poop paper flushed due to possible sample contamination

Neuroscientist pleads guilty in court to fraud, gets two-year suspended sentence

Bruce Murdoch
Bruce Murdoch

A Parkinson’s researcher pleaded guilty to fraud in court this morning in Brisbane, Australia, and received a two-year suspended sentence.

Court sentences for fraud are rare, to say the least. This one follows an investigation by Bruce Murdoch‘s former employer, the University of Queensland, into 92 papers — resulting in the retraction of three papers co-authored by Caroline Barwood, also facing fraud charges. The investigation was unable to find any evidence that published research cited in court had been ever carried out.

The Australian reported this morning that Murdoch:

Continue reading Neuroscientist pleads guilty in court to fraud, gets two-year suspended sentence

Mystery conflict between authors fells molecular bio paper

mirna-journal-coverA journal has pulled a paper about tools to knock out a key transcription factor because of a conflict between the authors.

The retracted article is “Generation of Knock down Tools for Transcription Factor 7-like-2 (TCF7L2) and Evaluation of its Expression Pattern in Developing Chicken Optic Tectum,” published just last year in MicroRNA.

We’ll get right to the reason — the retraction note provides one short one:

Continue reading Mystery conflict between authors fells molecular bio paper

Neuroscience journal retracts paper for lack of “scientific soundness”

Screen Shot 2016-03-03 at 9.21.12 AMAn unusual article that considered the concept of change from a systems perspective — including change in medicine, economics, and decision-making, for instance — has, well, changed from “published” to “retracted.”

After commenters on PubPeer called the 2014 paper “gibberish” and even suggested it might be computer-generated, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience retracted it, noting it “does not meet the standards of editorial and scientific soundness” for the journal, according to the retraction notice. The paper’s editor and author maintain there was nothing wrong with the science in the paper.

Here’s the full note for “Sensing risk, fearing uncertainty: systems science approach to change:” Continue reading Neuroscience journal retracts paper for lack of “scientific soundness”

NFL and NYT collide: Did studies on concussion rates leave out necessary data?

National Football LeagueThe National Football League failed to include data from diagnosed concussions in peer-reviewed studies, making the sport look safer than it is, allege the results of an investigation published yesterday in the New York Times. Now, the paper and the NFL are arguing over whether the studies were supposed to include every instance of head injury.

Early studies on concussion rates published in the journal Neurosurgery left out at least 100 instances of of concussions, the Times reported. The Times and the NFL disagree on the implications of studies based on an incomplete data set: Sources told the Times that it’s bad science, while the NFL explains that the studies were “necessarily preliminary.”

Yesterday afternoon, the sports league published a statement saying that the Times story “is contradicted by clear facts” and “sensationalized.” The statement argued that:  Continue reading NFL and NYT collide: Did studies on concussion rates leave out necessary data?

Antifungal drug paper didn’t have institution’s approval

Authors have pulled a paper on an antifungal drug that is potentially toxic because it lacked final approval from their institution.

The study describes a patient who had experienced liver toxicity after taking voriconazole. During the study, the authors re-administered the drug to the patient using “a slow dose titration.” But their institution didn’t approve the study before it was published online.

Here’s the retraction note for “Successful Rechallenge with Voriconazole following Medication-Induced Hepatotoxicity,” published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.  Continue reading Antifungal drug paper didn’t have institution’s approval

Duplicate publication uprooted from plant journal

AJPS2015012714522401The American Journal of Plant Sciences has retracted a duplicate publication — and is considerately describing what happened in a checklist that accompanies the retraction note.

The checklist is similar to one that friend of Retraction Watch Hervé Maisonneuve has proposed to the Committee on Publication Ethics.

The retracted paper shares one author with the paper that it duplicated from: Irfan Talib, whose affiliation is listed on the retracted paper as the University of Agriculture in Pakistan.

Here are the relevant fields on the checklist for “Study of Genetic Diversity in Germplasm of Upland Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) in Pakistan” (a PDF on this page includes the checklist and the original paper):

Continue reading Duplicate publication uprooted from plant journal

Sperm paper impaired by “corporate company” analysis

2.coverWithout a certain protein, mouse sperm have motility disorders. That’s the conclusion of a paper that has itself been stopped — by errors in the data analysis, carried out by a third-party company.

The retraction note pins the analysis, which led to faulty data, on a “corporate company.” Aside from the companies that sell the kits used for substrates, assays, and detection, there’s only one company mentioned in the paper:

Generation of the mouse model was performed by the Cyagen Company (Guangzhou, China)

However, a representative of Cyagen says it does not offer the type of analysis described by the retraction note.

Here’s the full retraction note for the 2015 paper in Biology of Reproduction (which is paywalled — tsk, tsk):
Continue reading Sperm paper impaired by “corporate company” analysis

Fake email address — for author, not reviewer — fells another paper

Screen Shot 2016-02-22 at 10.19.43 AMWe’ve seen many cases of researchers creating fake email addresses to impersonate reviewers that usher their paper to publication.

But in the latest fake email incident, a journal is retracting a paper on liver cancer after the first author created a phony address for the last and corresponding author. Both are researchers at Zhengzhou University in China.

This isn’t the first time that an author has worked around the corresponding author: there’s a case from a few years ago in which the corresponding author didn’t know that the paper was being published at all. Recently, we also wrote about a doctor who was suspended in the UK after submitting papers without her co-authors’ knowledge, including creating a fake email for one of them.

This latest paper had another problem, too: plagiarism. Here’s the retraction note for “The influence of TLR4 agonist lipopolysaccharides on hepatocellular carcinoma cells and the feasibility of its application in treating liver cancer,” published in OncoTargets and Therapy:

Continue reading Fake email address — for author, not reviewer — fells another paper