Category: pathology

Head of major diagnostic lab in Canada steps down amid investigation

AJPA_v185_i7_COVER.inddA prominent endocrinologist pathologist has resigned from running the largest hospital diagnostic laboratory in Canada following an investigation that has uncovered evidence of falsified data in two papers, Retraction Watch has learned.

Sylvia Asa was the Program Medical Director of the Laboratory Medicine Program at the University Health Network, affiliated with the University of Toronto, until this past spring when she stepped down, according to UHN spokesperson Gillian Howard:

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“Values were outside expected ranges”: Toxicology paper spiked after audit

Toxicological PathologyResearchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences have retracted a 2014 article after a review unearthed unresolved problems with the study’s control material.

The retracted paper, “Effect of Temperature and Storage Time on Sorbitol Dehydrogenase Activity in Sprague-Dawley Rat Serum and Plasma,” looked to test the durability and stability of sorbitol dehydrogenase, an enzyme used to detect cancerous liver damage in rats.

Here’s the complete retraction notice from Toxicologic Pathology :

Continue reading “Values were outside expected ranges”: Toxicology paper spiked after audit

“Evidence of data duplication” infects lung inflammation paper from Harvard and Yale

IAIA team of Harvard and Yale biologists have retracted an Infection and Immunity paper due to data duplication.

After the duplication came to light, the erroneous figures were corrected using original data, but the results affected “some of the manuscript’s conclusions.” An ethics panel subsequently recommended retraction, according to the journal, and the authors agreed.

The paper, “NOD2 Signaling Contributes to Host Defense in the Lungs against Escherichia coli Infection,” analyzed the role of the gene NOD2 in the lung inflammatory response against the bacteria Escherichia coli. It has been cited by 15 other papers, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Figure 2B of the paper was previously corrected in 2012, but the retraction is for data duplication in figures 5F and 6A. Here’s the full retraction note: Continue reading “Evidence of data duplication” infects lung inflammation paper from Harvard and Yale

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