Category: basic life sciences retractions

Intellectual property issues sink cancer paper in JACS

176 spine minimum. full size. Editor: Lingling JEM: Leslie RTP: Michael ReidThe authors of a paper on a mechanism for potential cancer therapies are retracting it after realizing they published some proprietary findings “without permission and agreement from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.”

According to the retraction note in Journal of the American Chemical Society, the authors included an X-ray crystal structure and data that were gathered at St. Jude’s and considered the hospital’s intellectual property. On the paper, the last author, Zhengding Su, listed an affiliation at St. Jude and Hubei University of Technology in China, along with Amersino Biodevelop Inc., based in Waterloo, Canada.

Here’s the note for “Efficient Reactivation of p53 in Cancer Cells by a Dual MdmX/Mdm2 Inhibitor:”  Continue reading Intellectual property issues sink cancer paper in JACS

“Most responsible course of action is to retract:” Duplicated images fell prostate cancer paper

International Journal of CancerA study on the cellular interactions underlying prostate cancer has been retracted after a whistleblower pointed out duplicated images in one of the paper’s figures that were “erroneously presented as unique.”

The International Journal of Cancer posted the notice in June. The authors backed the paper’s conclusions but agreed, “the most responsible course of action is to retract.”

The notice reads:

Continue reading “Most responsible course of action is to retract:” Duplicated images fell prostate cancer paper

Authors withdraw two papers from JBC — and that’s all we know

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Two sets of authors have withdrawn their papers from the Journal of Biological Chemistry. We’re telling you about the both together because, true to JBC form, there’s not too much to say.

The retraction notices for both papers — about the molecular underpinnings of cardiac fibroblasts and melanoma cells — are identical:

Continue reading Authors withdraw two papers from JBC — and that’s all we know

Mega-correction to several images in gastric cancer study

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A journal has issued a rather large correction — what we call “mega-correction” — to a 2014 paper on a gastric cancer biomarker that fixes problems with several of the study’s figures.

The authors write that despite the corrections, “the results and conclusions put forth in the article remain unchanged.”

The paper, “TMEFF2 Deregulation Contributes to Gastric Carcinogenesis and Indicates Poor Survival Outcome” explored the role of TMEFF2 in gastric cancer. The researchers found that the protein acts as a tumor suppressor, and low levels can indicate the presence of cancerous cells.

Here’s the full correction notice, published by Clinical Cancer Research in August:

Continue reading Mega-correction to several images in gastric cancer study

University revokes PhD of first author on retracted STAP stem cell papers

800px-Waseda_University_Logo.svgWaseda University has revoked the doctorate degree of the first author on the now-retracted Nature papers about a technique to create stem cells.

The technique — which claimed to provide a new way to nudge young cells from mice into pluripotency — was initially described in two 2014 Nature papers, both first-authored by Haruko Obokata. However, the papers were soon mired in controversy, corrected, then retracted later that year due to “several critical errors,” some of which were categorized by a RIKEN investigation as misconduct.

Shortly after Nature retracted the two papers, Waseda revoked Obokata’s doctorate degree — on a probationary basis, according to the university: Continue reading University revokes PhD of first author on retracted STAP stem cell papers

Cholesterol paper duplicated; “The authors believed that they had taken the necessary steps to withdraw.”

Biological Reviews

A review journal is pulling a 2013 article about advances in researchers’ understanding of cholesterol after seeing the same article in another journal.

Although the retracted paper appeared first — online in Biological Reviews in February, 2013 — the journal decided to retract it after learning the authors had initially submitted it elsewhere. The first submission was eventually published (with the exception of one author) in 2014 in Frontiers in Bioscience. 

The authors say they “believed that they had taken the necessary steps to withdraw their paper from Frontiers in Bioscience before they submitted to Biological Reviews in June 2012.” Here’s more from the retraction notice:

Continue reading Cholesterol paper duplicated; “The authors believed that they had taken the necessary steps to withdraw.”

“Dual submission issues” retract both copies of ovarian cancer paper

Journal of Cellular PhysiologyAuthors of a study on a potential biomarker for ovarian cancer have been hit with two retractions after the results were published twice.

We don’t usually see both copies of a duplicated paper retracted, but this is a somewhat unusual case. In November 2011, a group of authors submitted the paper to Gynecologic Oncology. But two months’ prior, the first author had decided to also submit the paper to the Journal of Cellular Physiology, without listing three of the other researchers, including the primary author on the paper. It was published by the Journal of Cellular Physiology first, then by Gynecologic Oncology, both in July, 2012. 

Jie Chen, first author on both articles, “takes full responsibility for the dual submission” and “other co-authors should be exempted from all responsibilities,” as the retraction notice from Gynecologic Oncology explains. 

Continue reading “Dual submission issues” retract both copies of ovarian cancer paper

Authors retract two neuroscience papers for duplication and plagiarism

Journal of NeurosurgeryA tipster’s complaints have led to the retraction of two papers in the Journal of Neurosurgery for “plagiarism, duplicate publication, and copyright infringement.”

The corresponding author for both papers, Hung-Chuan Pan of Taichung Veterans General Hospital, had contacted the journal about publishing an erratum for one of the articles when the journal was tipped off by an email pointing out deeper problems in the two retracted papers.

The tipster provided evidence that alleged “a violation of ethics on the part of the authors,” according to the communications manager at the JNS Publishing Group, Jo Ann Eliason.

Both retraction notices, published October 2, detailed a number of “similarities” and “overlaps” in the papers.

Continue reading Authors retract two neuroscience papers for duplication and plagiarism

Duplicated data, “careless errors” expire lung cancer paper

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A paper about the molecular details of lung cancer is being retracted for repeating datasets and “careless errors” in a pair of figures.

According to the note, the editor of Carcinogenesis wouldn’t have known about the problems if he hadn’t been tipped off that the paper by first author, XiaoJuan Sun — a researcher at Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital in China — shared “significant similarities” with another one of Sun’s papers that was retracted years ago. After the journal investigated the paper, it discovered that the authors had reported the same data as in the retracted paper “without significant additions or amendments,” along with some errors and inconsistencies.

Here’s the detailed note for “The EDA-containing cellular fibronectin induces epithelial mesenchymal transition in lung cancer cells through integrin α9β1-mediated activation of PI3-K /Akt and Erk1/2:”

Continue reading Duplicated data, “careless errors” expire lung cancer paper

Journal retracts — and republishes — small study on gamma rays for OCD

Screen Shot 2015-10-28 at 8.40.00 PMJAMA Psychiatry has retracted and republished a paper on a cutting-edge procedure for patients with obsessive compulsive disorder.

In the original paper, the authors claimed that three out of eight patients who underwent a procedure that used gamma rays to kill brain cells showed improvements 12 months later (versus zero in the group who underwent a “sham” procedure). But after a reader noticed an “inadvertent” error in the calculation of how many patients had improved, the authors realized that only two of the patients had responded meaningfully to the procedure.

The new results “did not reach statistical significance,” the authors write in a “Notice of Retraction and Replacement.”  JAMA Psychiatry published it yesterday, along with a new version of the article, a letter from psychiatrist Christopher Baethge pointing out the error, and an editorial. The original article is available in the supplemental material of the new version, with the errors highlighted.

Here’s the note in full for “Gamma ventral capsulotomy for obsessive-compulsive disorder: a randomized clinical trial,” which explains the error:

Continue reading Journal retracts — and republishes — small study on gamma rays for OCD