Category: basic life sciences retractions

Genetics journal isn’t down with O.P.D. – stealing other people’s data

GMR logoGenetics and Molecular Research, an online-only journal, has retracted two articles about gastric cancer by a group of Iranian researchers who appear to have put their own names on other people’s data.

Both articles were published in 2014. One was titled “Absolute quantification of free tumor cells in the peripheral blood of gastric cancer patients;” the other, “ZNF797 plays an oncogenic role in gastric cancer.” The list of authors on the two papers isn’t identical, but both papers share a few in common, including the same two last authors: F. Ghasemvand and S. Heidari-Keshel.

It turns out, Saeed Heidari-keshel wasn’t down with other people’s data, and alerted the journal to the problem.

Here’s more from the retraction notice for the first article, which was found to be “substantially equal” to another paper: Continue reading Genetics journal isn’t down with O.P.D. – stealing other people’s data

Authors retract PNAS Epstein-Barr virus paper for “anomalous and duplicated” figures

pnas 2515PNAS has retracted a paper on the cancer-causing Epstein-Barr virus just two months after publication, in a notice that fingers a now-former graduate student for manipulating figures.

The paper tries to explain how Epstein-Barr virus blocks the immune system’s attempts to destroy it. According to the notice, the three “nonexperimentalist authors” – identified in the paper as two P.I.’s from University of Texas at Austin and one from the University of California, San Francisco – didn’t know the figures “were not reflective of original Northern blot and immunoblot data.”

That leaves UT Austin PhD student Jennifer Cox under the bus. Her LinkedIn says she pursued a PhD from 2010-2015, though it’s unclear if she’s received a degree. Cox’s name is at the top of P.I. Christopher Sullivan’s list of past lab members, and she’s the only one on the page whose name doesn’t hyperlink to additional information, such as a contact.

The school issued a press release about the study that quoted Cox, which has been removed from the UT site but is still available on Science Daily: Continue reading Authors retract PNAS Epstein-Barr virus paper for “anomalous and duplicated” figures

Cell biologists in South Korea retract two papers

jbcA group of researchers at two universities in South Korea have retracted two cell biology papers featuring retinoic acid.

The most recent retraction appears in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Although, in typical JBC fashion, the reason for it is anyone’s guess.

Here’s the unhelpful notice for “ASXL1 represses retinoic acid receptor-mediated transcription through associating with HP1 and LSD1:” Continue reading Cell biologists in South Korea retract two papers

Second cell bio retraction from UPitt investigation of tweaked images

Journal of Cellular Physiology: Volume 229, Number 10, October 2Two researchers, Tong Wu and Chang Han, have lost a second paper as the result of a University of Pittsburgh investigation into image manipulations.

The first retraction, in Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, went live in February. The researchers, currently based at Tulane University, were originally tapped by pseudonymous tipster Juuichi Jigen, who created a website in 2012 to chronicle the allegations.

The blog lists six papers by the pair with supposedly questionable figures. According to Jigen, this latest retraction, in the Journal of Cellular Physiology, contains a figure (2A) that appears to reuse data from another paper, and another figure (3) where the data appear to be manipulated.

Continue reading Second cell bio retraction from UPitt investigation of tweaked images

SfN journal retracts paper, bans UPenn researchers over “data misrepresentation”

journal of neuroscienceThe Journal of Neuroscience has yanked an Alzheimer’s paper and banned three University of Pennsylvania authors from publishing there temporarily, following conflicting investigations by the university and the publisher, the Society for Neuroscience, into the data.

The 2011 paper looked into the cellular makeup of the characteristic plaques that develop in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s been cited 64 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

While the notice states that Penn’s investigation “supports the journal’s findings of data misrepresentation,” last author Virginia Lee said she asked the journal to simply issue a correction of the faulty data, since the findings are “extremely important” for the field and have been affirmed by a later paper. According to author John Trojanowski (who is married to and publishes regularly with Lee), he and Lee have been barred from publishing in Journal for Neuroscience for several years. Senior Co-author Edward Lee is out for a year [see update at the bottom of this post].

Lee provided us with a letter Vice Dean of Research Glen Gaulton sent to the journal (click here to read), in which he says an investigation found “no evidence of research misconduct” and the “errors…do not detract from or otherwise alter the conclusions of the manuscript.”

Continue reading SfN journal retracts paper, bans UPenn researchers over “data misrepresentation”

Neuro journal pulls comatose brain abstract due to “several mistakes”

clinical neurophysiologySwiss researchers have retracted an abstract in Clinical Neurophysiology because only one of them actually knew about the paper — and what he submitted had “several mistakes.”

The abstract, about electric impulses in the brain of comatose patients, originally appeared as a poster at the June 2014 joint meeting of multiple Swiss neuroscience societies. It was submitted by first author Alexandre Simonin, who lists his affiliation as the University Hospital of Lausanne, a Swiss hospital.

The meeting proceedings ran in the October issue of Clinical Neurophysiology. Besides the issues of authorship and errors, the notice also says the abstract “potentially conflicts with another publication,” suggesting the data might have already appeared in a paper.

Here’s the notice for “P02. Predicting the outcome of post-anoxic comatose patients based on single-trial EEG analysis”: Continue reading Neuro journal pulls comatose brain abstract due to “several mistakes”

Are retractions more frequent in stem cell research?

sci eng ethicsThere are a number of fields that seem to punch above their weight on Retraction Watch: Anesthesiology, home to the world record holder (and runner-up), and psychology, home to Diederik Stapel and others. But the red-hot field of stem cell research is another that makes frequent appearances, last year’s STAP controversy being particularly prominent.

There’s an interesting (but unfortunately paywalled) recent paper in Science and Engineering Ethics, “The Acid Test for Biological Science: STAP Cells, Trust, and Replication,” by Cheryl Lancaster, a small part of which tries to answer that question.

Lancaster applies the same methods Fang, Steen, and Casadevall used to broadly measure the causes of retractions in all life science and biomedicine to the specific field of stem cell research: Continue reading Are retractions more frequent in stem cell research?

Journal runs retraction, editorial over duplicate submission of pathology paper

WebCurrentCoverThe International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine has taken a hard stance against overlapping publications in a recent retraction note and editorial.

Shortly after publishing a paper about the glycosylation patterns of endothelial cells in usual interstitial pneumonia, IJOEM editors discovered that it had been accepted by the Scholarly Journal of Biological Science two weeks before it was submitted to the IJOEM.

According to two authors we reached via email, Abolfazl Barkhordari and Carolyn Jones, SJBS requested a $300 publication fee, which Barkhordari (a corresponding author) was unable to pay due to economic sanctions against Iran, where he is based.

Barkhordari provided us with an email from the SJBS stating that the paper would not be published until $300 was transferred into a Nigerian bank account. The Nigeria-based publisher, Scholarly Journals, is on Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory open access publishers.

Barkhordari and Jones assumed the SJBS was a dead end, so submitted the paper elsewhere.

Continue reading Journal runs retraction, editorial over duplicate submission of pathology paper

Rebirth of ovary article prompts retraction from OB lit

ejoglogoThe European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology has retracted a 2014 paper on polycystic ovary syndrome for self-plagiarism.

In the notice, the journal states that “significant portions” of the findings in “Association of anti-Mullerian hormone and small-dense low-density lipoprotein cholesterol with hepatosteatosis in young lean women with and without polycystic ovary syndrome” already appeared in another paper. Three authors appear in both publications, all based at the University of Ufuk (don’t think too hard about that name) in Ankara, Turkey. Continue reading Rebirth of ovary article prompts retraction from OB lit

Matlab mixup sinks Journal of Neuroscience paper

journal of neuroscienceA team of neuroscientists at University of Oregon and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have retracted a paper from The Journal of Neuroscience after realizing their analytic code contained an error.

The authors state in the notice that their conclusion remains accurate after correcting the mistake in the program Matlab. However, the paper — which examined the role of neuronal oscillations in working memory — still contained “some findings that we no longer believe to be robust.”

It’s a very useful notice: Continue reading Matlab mixup sinks Journal of Neuroscience paper