Over the past week, there have been a number of comments on PubPeer — a site of which we’re big fans — about a 2007 paper in Oncogene.
The comments suggested that the figures in the paper had problems. Some bands seemed to be duplicated, and one of the images looked very much like that of another paper.
Then, today, first author Eriko Suzuki left this comment: Continue reading Brutal honesty: Author takes to PubPeer to announce retraction — and tells us she’ll lose PhD, professorship
The authors of a 2013 Journal of Neuroscience study suggesting that “elevation of brain magnesium…may have therapeutic potential for treating [Alzheimer’s disease] in humans” have retracted it after finding errors in the work.
Here’s the original abstract:
Continue reading Authors retract study suggesting magnesium prevents Alzheimer’s in mice
Almost two years ago, we brought you — with the help of Trevor Stokes — the story of a stem cell researcher in Korea whose publication record, and career, unraveled after evidence of image manipulation surfaced in her work.
We’ve reported on four retractions, all in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, by Soo-Kyung Kang, formerly of Seoul National University resulting from the efforts of a whistleblower. There has been another in Human Gene Therapy: Continue reading Stem cell researcher in Korea up to half a dozen retractions
The Journal of Biological Chemistry has an illuminating retraction notice — we’re happy to be able to say — about a 2001 article from a group of researchers at the National University of Singapore.
The paper, “Intracellular acidification triggered by mitochondrial-derived hydrogen peroxide is an effector mechanism for drug-induced apoptosis in tumor cells,” was written by Jayshree L. Hirpara, Marie-Véronique Clément and Shazib Pervaiz.
It has has been cited 110 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Data highjinx forces retraction of tumor paper in JBC
Age has retracted a 2012 article by a group of scientists from the National Institutes of Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston after an NIH inquiry turned up evidence of data manipulation in the work.
The article, “Aging decreases rate of docosahexaenoic acid synthesis-secretion from circulating unesterified α-linolenic acid by rat liver,” came from the lab of Stanley Rapoport, chief of the brain physiology and metabolism section of the National Institute on Aging.
As the abstract explained: Continue reading NIH/Harvard team loses aging study to manipulated data
A new paper in Intelligence is offering some, well, intel into the peer review process at one prestigious neuroscience journal.
The new paper is about another paper, a December 2012 study, “Fractionating Human Intelligence,” published in Neuron by Adam Hampshire and colleagues in December 2012. The Neuron study has been cited 16 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Richard Haier and colleagues write in Intelligence that Continue reading Anonymous blog comment suggests lack of confidentiality in peer review — and plays role in a new paper
Last year, we reported on a Nature correction of a paper for what a McGill University committee had earlier called “intentionally contrived and falsified” figures. It turns out that the correction — like the original paper — left some Nature readers puzzled, so the journal has run a correction of the correction: Continue reading Nature corrects a correction
In 2011, a group of researchers at Columbia University reported in Cell that they had been able to convert skin cells from patients with Alzheimer’s disease into functioning neurons — a finding that raised the exciting prospect of “made to order” brain cells for patients with the degenerative disease. As one researcher not involved with the study, led by Asa Abeliovich, put it:
“[This is] simply a remarkable and complete piece of work which will now set a standard for stem cell work in neurological disease. The standard of the characterization of the neuronal cultures is very high,” John Hardy at University College London, U.K., wrote to [Alzforum]. He was not involved in the work but is taking a similar approach in his own lab.
According to the abstract of “Directed Conversion of Alzheimer’s Disease Patient Skin Fibroblasts into Functional Neurons:”
Continue reading Fraud fells Alzheimer’s “made to order” neurons paper in Cell
It’s not unusual to hear authors bemoan the fact that a new paper doesn’t cite their work that set the stage for a scientific advance. “The journal limited me to [a seemingly abitrary number of] references,” authors sometimes shrug, with or without apology. This week, however, we found a case of that which seems to have been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.
The authors of a September 2013 article in Nature Communications have issued a correction for the piece, which failed to cite the source of a key step in their experiment.
The article, “Val66Met polymorphism of BDNF alters prodomain structure to induce neuronal growth cone retraction,” came from the lab of William “Clay” Bracken, a biochemist at Weill Cornell Medical College. According to the abstract: Continue reading Lack of citation prompts correction in Nature journal
Waseda University in Japan says it will be vetting every doctoral dissertation it awards its graduate-level students in Advanced Science & Engineering* for signs of plagiarism, according to a report in the Japan News, a site of the Yomiuri Shimbun. The paper reports that: