Category: basic life sciences retractions

Trouble with data proves toxic for a pair of toxicology papers

logoA pair of papers about the risks of titanium dioxide nanoparticles that share many of the same authors has been retracted from a toxicology journal following an investigation at Soochow University in China.

Particle and Fibre Toxicology is retracting the papers for problems with the statistical methods and missing data, as well as for sharing figures.

Here’s the note for “Intragastric exposure to titanium dioxide nanoparticles induced nephrotoxicity in mice, assessed by physiological and gene expression modifications:”

Continue reading Trouble with data proves toxic for a pair of toxicology papers

Gold nanoparticle paper crushed by “deliberate and fraudulent use of data”

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Biotechnology Letters has retracted a paper on a new gene delivery technique due to “the deliberate and fraudulent use of data in the paper that had previously appeared in other papers of these two authors.”

The journal’s Editor in Chief Colin Ratledge told us that someone tipped him off that one of the authors, University of Kalyani microbiologist Keka Sarkar, had been self-plagiarizing:

I can say that a person who was familiar with the work of Dr Sarkar got in touch with about their concerns about her publications and, in particular, her paper published in Biotechnology Letters.  They supplied a dossier of her publications showing the obvious duplications of figures and that she had been using the same figures in different papers to illustrate the results from supposedly different experiments.

He found that, indeed, multiple figures in the Biotechnology Letters had appeared in other publications of Sarkar’s, some prior to the paper’s October 2013 publication, and one after. The details are in the whole retraction note:
Continue reading Gold nanoparticle paper crushed by “deliberate and fraudulent use of data”

Eighth retraction published for former physiology researcher

International Journal of CancerA lung cancer paper in the International Journal of Cancer has been retracted because of “serious errors related to image duplication.” This marks the eighth retraction for first author, ShouWei Han.

The decision was made by the journal’s editor-in-chief, the publisher Wiley and co-author Jesse Roman (a co-author on Han’s other retracted papers). According to the notice, Han didn’t respond “to requests by the journal or the co-author.”

In 2011, Han was the target of an investigation by his former employer, the University of Louisville in Kentucky. Papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology and American Journal of Physiology: Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology have been retracted.

Here’s the full retraction notice for the latest retraction:

Continue reading Eighth retraction published for former physiology researcher

Authors withdraw immunology study, no reasons given

Journal of Biological Chemistry1Researchers have withdrawn a 2010 article in the Journal of Biological Chemistry about an immune regulator.

The paper was pulled without any explanation (in standard JBC style). Here’s the complete notice:

This article has been withdrawn by the authors.

The study’s authors were based out of Shandong University Medical School, Jinan General Hospital of Jinan Command and Duke University Medical Center.

Two of the authors have had previous papers retracted.

Continue reading Authors withdraw immunology study, no reasons given

The worm has turned: Nematode study retracted for misidentification

toxicol patholThe authors of a paper on parasitic nematodes have retracted the article because they misidentified the organism in question, so “the possibility of misleading readers was high.”

The paper, “Histopathological features of Capillaria hepatica infection in laboratory rabbits,” appeared in Toxicologic Pathology in 2009 and came from a lab at Huntingdon Life Sciences, in Cambridgeshire, England.

According to the abstract: Continue reading The worm has turned: Nematode study retracted for misidentification

Paper on natural ways to fight cancer stem cells nixed for plagiarism

cover (1)Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents has retracted a 2015 review article about natural fighters of cancer stem cells for reproducing “content to a high degree of similarity without appropriate attribution or acknowledgement” from a handful of papers.

Although the editor and publisher pulled the paper, they did so with the cooperation of the authors, according to the retraction note: Continue reading Paper on natural ways to fight cancer stem cells nixed for plagiarism

Fruit fly paper retracted when gene turns out not to code for a protein as claimed

1.cover-sourceThe Journal of Insect Science is retracting a paper on the genetics of a fruit fly after discovering one of the genes the authors sequenced doesn’t appear to code for a protein.

The paper, “Molecular phylogeny and identification of the peach fruit fly, Bactrocera zonata, established in Egypt” was published in 2011, and compared sequences of the Egyptian species to those from species in other regions. It has not yet been cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Phyllis Weintraub, the editor-in-chief of the journal, told us she thinks that the paper’s fatal mistake stemmed from “bad science instead of deliberate falsification.”

The retraction notice should go live on the site today, according to Lisa Junker, director of publications and communications for the Entomological Society of America, which publishes the journal. Here’s the text:

Continue reading Fruit fly paper retracted when gene turns out not to code for a protein as claimed

“We copied verbatim”: Authors insist on retraction for their own spider paper

Journal of ArachnologyThe authors of a 2015 paper about non-native spider populations in Chile are retracting it from the Journal of Arachnology because they copied the introduction of a 2011 paper verbatim.

The retraction was triggered by the first author, who “insisted on a full retraction in lieu of milder remedies,” according to the journal’s editor-in-chief.

The paper, “Alien spiders in Chile: evaluating Darwin’s naturalization hypothesis,” tested Darwin’s hypothesis that introduced species that are phylogenetically distant from native animals are more likely to thrive. It was published in April. Authors Andrés Taucare-Ríos and Ramiro O. Bustamante are both based at the University of Chile in Santiago.

The notice reads:

Continue reading “We copied verbatim”: Authors insist on retraction for their own spider paper

Serbian journal cleans house with 16 retractions and 2 corrections after investigation

Archives of Biological SciencesEditors at the Archives of Biological Sciences, the official journal of Serbian Biological Society, have unleashed a flood of retractions and corrections as part of an effort to fix the mistakes of the former editorial board.

The fixes – 16 retractions and two corrections, by our count – are in response to a formal investigation that took place last year, and ended with a call for a two-year suspension of the journal’s funding and the resignation of key management figures, including the editor-in-chief, Božidar Ćurčić (who resigned after the announcement).

Goran Poznanović, the new editor-in-chief at ABS, told us that the journal is invested in cleaning up past mistakes and will investigate every request.

Continue reading Serbian journal cleans house with 16 retractions and 2 corrections after investigation

Investigation triggers retraction for biochem paper

PLOS BiologyA paper has been retracted from PLOS Biology for duplicating lanes and incorporating others that “came from an unrelated experiment that had already been published.”

According to the retraction notice, first author Laura Cerchia says that the mistakes came “as a consequence of incorrect incorporation of representative blots.” Cerchia — along with her supervisor, study author Vittorio de Franciscis — “apologizes for this.” None of the other authors were “involved in the preparation of these figures, and there is no concern about the results that they contributed.”

Cerchia maintains that the paper’s conclusions are still valid, but the remaining authors write that the issues undermines their confidence in the results. According to the notice, the retraction is a result of “an institutional inquiry” at the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) in Rome, where Cerchia and de Franciscis are both based.

The notice tells the rest of the story:

Continue reading Investigation triggers retraction for biochem paper