We have an update on the case of Pankaj Dhonukshe, a scientist about whom we reported in November. Utrecht University has found that Dhonukshe, a former researcher at the Dutch university, committed “a violation of academic integrity” in work that led to a number of papers, including one published in Nature and once since retracted from Cell.
Here’s the university’s statement: Continue reading Utrecht University finds “violation of academic integrity” by former researcher
A 2013 article in Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Journal of Microbiology has been retracted for a few reasons.
Here’s the notice for “The effects of each beta-glucosidase gene deletion on cellulase gene regulation in Neurospora crassa:” Continue reading “Inconsistent errors” and unknowing authors force retraction of microbiology paper
A pair of researchers at the University of Maryland have retracted a paper in Cell Death & Differentiation after it became clear that one of the figures had been duplicated from an earlier paper.
Here’s the notice, dated December 13, 2013, for “INrf2 (Keap1) targets Bcl-2 degradation and controls cellular apoptosis,” by Suryakant Niture and Anil Jaiswal: Continue reading Figure duplication kills cell death paper
A group of researchers at Emory has retracted a highly regarded paper after being unable to reproduce its key results.
Here’s the notice from Nature Chemical Biology: Continue reading Failure to reproduce leads to retraction of Nature Chemical Biology herbicide paper
Blood has retracted two 2013 illustrations of red cells by researchers from South Africa and the United States because, somewhat confusingly, they didn’t conform to the journal’s criteria for publishing such material.
Here’s the notice for one of the images, “Red blood cell and platelet interactions in healthy females during early and late pregnancy, as well as postpartum”: Continue reading Blood retracts two red cell illustrations that “could have misled” readers
Shigeaki Kato has two more retractions, both in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Here’s one of the notices: Continue reading Shigeaki Kato notches retractions 16 and 17, in PNAS
We have a second retraction from a group of neuroscience researchers in Belgium who discovered fatal errors in their work on how the brain sets about the task of reading written language. Spoiler alert: Turns out those errors weren’t errors after all.
As we reported back in May, the group, from the University of Leuven, was unable to replicate certain fMRI findings in a November 2012 article in Neuroscience. At the time, Hans P. Op de Beeck, who led the group, told us: Continue reading Fraud topples second neuroscience word processing paper
A group of researchers in the Netherlands has retracted a paper once they realized that the findings weren’t reproducible and that there had been an error in the experiments.
Here’s the notice for “Ubiquitin‐specific protease 4 is inhibited by its ubiquitin‐like domain,” by MP Luna‐Vargas, AC Faesen, WJ van Dijk, M Rape, A Fish, and TK Sixma: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Authors retract protein paper after finding experimental errors
A team of neuroscientists from Sweden has retracted their 2013 paper in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity after discovering that they’d made a mistake while merging their data.
According to the abstract, the study, “Lower CSF interleukin-6 predicts future depression in a population-based sample of older women followed for 17 years,” purported to find that: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Team finds data merge error in depression paper, retracts
A group of Swiss neurologists have lost their 2013 article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience after reporting that their data were rendered null by coding errors.
The article, “Spontaneous pre-stimulus fluctuations in the activity of right fronto-parietal areas influence inhibitory control performance,” purported to find that: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Authors retract brain paper with “systematic human error in coding”