Category: oncology retractions

Skin in the game: Derm journal retracts identical cancer case study submitted by two groups at the same facility

It seems the faculty at Myongji Hospital, in Goyang, Korea, have some ‘splainin to do.

Two groups of physicians from the hospital, part of Kwandong University College of Medicine, published case reports on a rare form of basal cell carcinoma. Turns out they were writing about the same patient.

According to a retraction notice in the Annals of Dermatology, a publication of the Korean Dermatological Association and the Korean Society for Investigative Dermatology: Continue reading Skin in the game: Derm journal retracts identical cancer case study submitted by two groups at the same facility

Surgery journal retracts cancer paper for duplication after “naive” response from authors

The Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England has an informative retraction notice about a recent paper it published that was marred by self-plagiarism. The article, “Current concepts of surveillance and its significance in head and neck cancer,” from a group of researchers at Grant Medical College, in Mumbai (which is known to this blog) and Royal Marsden Hospital in London, appeared last November. It soon was found to be awfully similar to a 2009 article by the same group of authors (sort of) in a different journal.

Here’s what the Annals had to say: Continue reading Surgery journal retracts cancer paper for duplication after “naive” response from authors

The HeLa problem: What a retraction says about whether cancer researchers can trust their cell lines

Retraction Watch readers who’ve read Rebecca Skloot’s bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks may remember that decades ago, scientists began realizing that Lacks’s cells, now known as the HeLa cell line and used in labs around the world, were so good at proliferating that they had taken over many other cell lines researchers use to study human disease.

Such readers would have been nodding their heads at a front-page Wall Street Journal on Saturday. As Amy Dockser Marcus (no relation to Adam) reports: Continue reading The HeLa problem: What a retraction says about whether cancer researchers can trust their cell lines

Whistling the same Tunisia: Serial plagiarists plague the oncology literature

A group of cancer researchers from Tunisia has been seeding the oncology literature with plagiarized articles that steal liberally — both text and data — from the work of others.

The group has one retraction, in the journal Obesity — whose splash page has the jaunty, if disconcerting, invite: “Welcome to Obesity!” — and at least two withdrawn papers. However, we have been alerted to at least one other case of apparent plagiarism involving an article in the Annals of Saudi Medicine that ought to receive careful scrutiny. Continue reading Whistling the same Tunisia: Serial plagiarists plague the oncology literature

Group investigated by University of Louisville corrects lung cancer paper after retracting six others

A group of researchers whose work has been under investigation at the University of Louisville has issued a correction for a paper in the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology (AJRCMB).

The correction follows three retractions each in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the AJRCMB, the latter of which made it clear that lab member ShouWei Han was responsible for the manipulations and duplications that brought down the papers. Here’s the new notice, which appeared in the March 1, 2012 issue of the journal: Continue reading Group investigated by University of Louisville corrects lung cancer paper after retracting six others

Back in the saddle: After more than 30 retractions, Naoki Mori publishing again

Naoki Mori

Perhaps it’s appropriate given the Easter season, but we have learned that Naoki Mori, the Japanese cancer researcher who received a 10-year publishing ban from the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) for imagine manipulation, has published a new paper.

Mori, who was fired and then rehired by the University of the Ryukyus over the scandal, is listed as the senior author on the paper, “Honokiol induces cell cycle arrest and apoptosis via inhibition of survival signals in adult T-cell leukemia,” which appears in the March issue of Biochimica et Biophysica Acta. The journal, an Elsevier title, is an umbrella for nine publications in the biosciences.

Two of Mori’s retracted articles appeared in the Elsevier journals Leukemia Research and Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. Continue reading Back in the saddle: After more than 30 retractions, Naoki Mori publishing again

JCO expresses concern over images from Spanish group that had aroused earlier concern

The Journal of Clinical Oncology has issued an expression of concern about a 2003 article by a group of researchers in Spain who appear to have had recurrent problems with images.

The paper has been cited 56 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the notice:

It has been brought to our attention, regarding Figure 1, Part A, that similarity exists between bands 3, 4, and 5 of the top row and bands 1, 2, and 3 of the bottom row, including the presence of artifacts, in the April 15, 2003 article by [Jose] RomanGomez et al, entitled, “Cadherin-13, a Mediator of Calcium Dependent Cell-Cell Adhesion, Is Silenced by Methylation in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia and Correlates With Pretreatment Risk Profile and Cytogenetic Response to Interferon Alfa” (J Clin Oncol 21:1472-1479, 2003).  This similarity has raised concerns about whether these rows represent independent data. We alerted the corresponding author, Dr. Roman-Gomez, of this concern, and he has repeated the experiment shown in the original Figure 1, with the results below. Although the results of the figure appear to be unchanged, we wish to inform the readers of this issue, so that they may make their own independent assessment.

Continue reading JCO expresses concern over images from Spanish group that had aroused earlier concern

A “retraction in part” for Anil Potti and colleagues, in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics

A partial retraction has joined the ten retractions and five corrections of Anil Potti’s papers, this one of a 2008 paper in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. The move comes 14 months after the retraction of the Nature Medicine paper upon which much of the Molecular Cancer Therapeutics paper was based.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading A “retraction in part” for Anil Potti and colleagues, in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics

Rheumatology retracts lupus-cancer meta-analysis over multiple errors

Rheumatology has retracted a 2011 paper with too many errors to correct.

According to the notice, the article, titled “Meta-analysis of systemic lupus erythematosus and the risk of cervical neoplasia’, by Hongli Liu and colleagues at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, seems to have been deeply flawed: Continue reading Rheumatology retracts lupus-cancer meta-analysis over multiple errors

Journal pulls four breast cancer papers for duplication

The journal Breast Cancer: Targets and Therapy, a Dove Medical Press title, has retracted four articles from a group of Indian researchers over what it said were “unacceptable levels” of duplication with other published work. (Such a construction leaves us wondering what might constitute “acceptable levels” of duplication, but that’s for a different post.)

The articles were submitted by Rajeev Singhai, who is listed as being with Grant Medical College and the Sir J J Group of Hospitals, in Mumbai. According to his After College page, Singhai received his PhD in 2011 and is now a research fellow.

As the notice states: Continue reading Journal pulls four breast cancer papers for duplication