Guangwen Tang, a rice researcher at Tufts University, landed in hot water in 2012 after her team was accused of feeding Chinese children genetically modified Golden Rice without having obtained informed consent from the parents.
Now, she’s suing both Tufts and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which reportedly is retracting a paper, “ß-carotene in Golden Rice is as good as p-carotene in oil at providing vitamin A to children,” based on the federally funded research, claiming that the retraction would constitute defamation. (That retraction hasn’t happened yet.)
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard the retraction = defamation line. Readers might remember Ariel Fernandez, who threatened to sue us for writing about an expression of concern. Maybe a course on the Streisand Effect should be mandatory for PhD students?
Continue reading Rice researcher in ethics scrape threatens journal with lawsuit over coming retraction


Lawsuits are usually dry and boring, so it’s always fun to read one with a little life.
Researchers at Qingdao University have fully retracted a paper originally published in Molecular Medicine Reports with a clear, detailed outline of what went wrong and how they discovered the error.

Two papers on “novel techniques” have been retracted with what is unfortunately a very non-novel technique: an odd notice and silence when we asked for comment.
The authors of a paper showing a link between immune response and depression requested a retraction after they realized they’d merged two spreadsheets with mismatching ID codes.