Category: Plant biology

‘Regrettably it took too long to investigate and retract this paper.’

Figure 2 of the paper

A journal has expressed regret over its sluggish response to image hijinx in a 2017 paper on the antimalarial properties of a kind of pea plant.

The article, “Antimalarial efficacy of Pongamia pinnata (L) Pierre against Plasmodium falciparum (3D7 strain) and Plasmodium berghei (ANKA),” was written by P. V. V. Satish and K. Sunita, of the Department of Zoology and Aquaculture at Acharya Nagarjuna University. 

The paper drew scrutiny on PubPeer four years ago, where commenters noted issues with the figures. 

Time passed, and the paper was cited six times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. Now, according to the retraction notice:

Continue reading ‘Regrettably it took too long to investigate and retract this paper.’

What is a figure about budgies doing in four different plant papers?

via Scientific Reports

As Antonella Longo was peer-reviewing a study for the journal Plant and Soil, she became “alarmed by one figure.” The figure’s title — ”Level2 GO terms of Melopsittacus_undulates” — seemed to be a misspelled reference to a bird species called Melopsittacus undulatus. 

More commonly known as a budgie or parakeet, undulatus is a vibrantly colored parrot found in scattered parts of Australia. So what was a figure about a bird doing in a study about plants?

Concerned, Longo, of the BioDiscovery Institute at the University of North Texas, searched the internet for words used in the figure, “GO terms of Melopsittacus undulates.” She identified at least three additional studies that contained an image similar to the one in the study she was peer-reviewing, each with an identical title and color scheme, but with varying data. None of the studies are about birds.

Continue reading What is a figure about budgies doing in four different plant papers?

Almond, no joy: Plant geneticist in Iran up to at least six retractions

A plant geneticist in Iran is up to at least six retractions for misuse of figures and other material from previously published papers. 

The newest retraction involves a 2017 paper in Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature publication, titled “Comparison of traditional and new generation DNA markers declares high genetic diversity and differentiated population structure of wild almond species.” PubPeer commenters have been discussing it for some seven months.

According to the notice: 

Continue reading Almond, no joy: Plant geneticist in Iran up to at least six retractions

Caught Our Notice: Voinnet co-author issues another correction

Title: AtsPLA2-α nuclear relocalization by the Arabidopsis transcription factor AtMYB30 leads to repression of the plant defense response

What Caught Our Attention:  A previous collaborator with high-profile plant biologist Olivier Voinnet (who now has eight retractions) has issued an interesting correction to a 2010 PNAS paper. Susana Rivas is last author on the paper, the correction for which notes some images were duplicated, and others were “cropped and/or stretched to match the other blots.” Rivas is currently a group leader at The Laboratory of Plant-Microbe Interactions (LIPM), “a combined INRA-CNRS Research Unit.” Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Voinnet co-author issues another correction

Caught Our Notice: Oops, wrong species

Title: Virulent Diuraphis noxia Aphids Over-Express Calcium Signaling Proteins to Overcome Defenses of Aphid-Resistant Wheat Plants

What Caught Our Attention: Sadly, it’s not uncommon for researchers to mistake the identity of what they’re working with — but not everyone comes clean and works to transparently correct the record. So it’s nice to see some authors among a group based in the US and India take the initiative to retract their paper after realizing they had based some of their conclusions on the wrong species of aphid. Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Oops, wrong species

Caught Our Notice: Doesn’t anyone do a literature review any more?

Via Wikimedia

Titles: (1) Whole-Genome De Novo Sequencing of the Lignin-Degrading Wood Rot Fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium (ATCC 20696)

(2) Structure revision of aspergicin by the crystal structure of aspergicine, a co-occurring isomer produced by co-culture of two mangrove epiphytic fungi

What Caught Our Attention: Two articles by different groups of authors recently suffered from the same (fatal) flaw: A poor literature review. The article, “Whole-Genome De Novo Sequencing of the Lignin-Degrading Wood Rot Fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium (ATCC 20696),” claimed to have sequenced a strain already sequenced in 2004 and published in a well-cited article.  According to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, the 2004 article was cited 474 times before the now-retracted article was published. And that 2004 article appeared in a highly-cited journal, Nature Biotechnology. Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Doesn’t anyone do a literature review any more?

A journal retracted a paper when authors couldn’t pay. Then it retracted the retraction.

Oops.

A plant journal recently retracted a 2017 paper, saying the authors couldn’t pay the page charges ($110/page). The notice has since disappeared, and the journal announced on Twitter Thursday it was issued in error. The paper is now intact on the journal’s site.

This isn’t the first time the journal has withdrawn a statement that authors couldn’t pay the page charges — we’ve discovered the journal removed a line to that effect from a 2015 retraction notice (although in that case, it left the retraction intact). Page charges, often required by traditional publishers, typically cover printing costs; they differ from article processing charges (APCs) levied by open-access journals, which cover the cost of publishing the paper and making it freely available.

We’ve contacted editors at the journal and its publisher, Taylor & Francis, to try to find out why there are mixed messages about author page charges. A spokesperson for the publisher said it was unable to respond before deadline, but it was looking into the matter:

I can confirm that we are committed to following [Committee on Publication Ethics] guidelines and that we are taking this issue seriously.

In the meantime, here’s what we know.

Continue reading A journal retracted a paper when authors couldn’t pay. Then it retracted the retraction.

Authors retract plant biology paper after they realized sample was contaminated

Plant biologists from China have retracted a 2013 paper in The Plant Cell after discovering that some of the plant material used was “inadvertently contaminated.”

According to the retraction notice, the authors believe the contamination affects the main conclusion of their paper. Continue reading Authors retract plant biology paper after they realized sample was contaminated

Authors retract two plant biology papers over duplicated images

Plant scientists have issued two retractions after noticing several images had been duplicated within and across the papers.

The papers both appeared in March 2002 in The Plant Cell and The Plant Journal.

The last author on both papers — Jonathan Jones, a professor and group leader at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK — took responsibility for the duplications. He told us:

As last author I was responsible for checking the papers but did not notice the similarities between figures in the different papers.  I regret this and took action as soon as I realized there was an issue. Both papers went through peer review and the issue was not picked up at that point either.

Susana Rivas, the first author on both papers, has collaborated with beleaguered plant scientist Oliver Voinnet — and was a second author on one of his eight retractions (which we covered here).

The editor-in-chief of TPJ Christoph Benning said that, after the authors contacted them, the journals looked into the issue, confirmed the duplications and then retracted the papers: Continue reading Authors retract two plant biology papers over duplicated images

“There is an injustice in this article”

The editors of a plant biology journal have retracted a 2007 paper because of “an injustice.”

According to the notice, the editors of Cytologia found evidence of “apparent figure manipulation,” and decided to retract the paper.

This marks the 10th retraction for plant biologist Dibyendu Talukdar.

Talukdar, who is first and corresponding author on the 2007 paper and listed at the University of Calcutta in West Bengal, India, received his first retraction last July, which also cited suspected figure manipulation. Earlier this year, Talukdar received eight more retractions in seven different journals, all describing concerns over potential image duplication and manipulation.

Here’s the most recent retraction notice in Cytologia: Continue reading “There is an injustice in this article”