Category: clinical study retractions

Editor on retraction details: “I do not think this is the business of anyone but our journal, please”

early education developmentWhose business are the reasons behind a retraction?

Our readers will no doubt know by now that we think they’re basically everyone’s — at least if journals want us to believe that they’re interested in maintaining the integrity of the scientific record. But not all editors seem to agree. Hank Edmunds, for example, didn’t in early 2011, telling us, “It’s none of your damn business.” A chemistry journal editor said, in a similar vein, “the purpose of keeping these retraction notices slim is not to produce too much detail.”

Now, a psychology journal editor joins those ranks. Here’s the notice in question: Continue reading Editor on retraction details: “I do not think this is the business of anyone but our journal, please”

Update: Lewandowsky et al paper on conspiracist ideation “provisionally removed” due to complaints

frontiersLast week, we covered the complicated story of a paper by Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues that had been removed — or at least all but the abstract — from its publisher’s site. Our angle on the story was how Frontiers, which publishes Frontiers in Personality Science and Individual Differences, where the study appeared, had handled the withdrawal. It happened without any notice, and no text appeared to let the reader know why the paper had vanished.

Today, Frontiers posted a note to readers on top of the paper’s abstract: Continue reading Update: Lewandowsky et al paper on conspiracist ideation “provisionally removed” due to complaints

Why publishers should explain why papers disappear: The complicated Lewandowsky study saga

frontiersLast year, Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues posted a paper, scheduled for an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, with a, shall we say, provocative title:

NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax

An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science

In an interview last year with Lewandowsky, NPR gathered some of the reactions to the paper — which was formally published two days ago — from those it profiled: Continue reading Why publishers should explain why papers disappear: The complicated Lewandowsky study saga

Orangutan-Ebola link in PLOS ONE paper under scrutiny

plosonePLOS ONE has issued a fascinating expression of concern about data collection in a paper it published late last year on the possible spread of deadly viruses among Indonesian orangutans. The case has been brought to the attention of the Indonesian government, but more on that in a moment.

The article, published last July by an international group of primate scientists led by Chairul Nidom, a virologist at Indonesia’s Airlangga University, sounded an alarm about “wild” orangutans in Borneo: Blood tests of 353 “healthy” animals showed antibodies for viruses akin to Ebola. What’s more, the filoviruses viruses to which the antibodies responded, as New Scientist and other outlets reported when the original paper came out, included strains not previously seen outside Africa (as well as Marburg, another deadly infection).

The article immediately prompted two comments. The first, by a poster called orangutanborneo, raised questions about the scale and logistics of the project: Continue reading Orangutan-Ebola link in PLOS ONE paper under scrutiny

Image problems lead to demise of paper on ginseng for heart attack

JMM march13coverA group of researchers from Shangdong, China, has retracted their 2011 paper in the Journal of Molecular Medicine on the heart-protective properties of a substance in ginseng because the article contained dodgy figures.

The article, “Ginsenoside-Rg1 enhances angiogenesis and ameliorates ventricular remodeling in a rat model of myocardial infarction,” purported to show that ginsenoside: Continue reading Image problems lead to demise of paper on ginseng for heart attack

Flu paper duplication earns Expression of Concern

influenzaA six year-old review on bird flu that failed to credit some content from another six year-old review of bird flu is now stamped with an Expression of Concern.

Here’s the notice, from Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses: Continue reading Flu paper duplication earns Expression of Concern

Cardiologist accused of misconduct strikes back in a journal

EBPOM_00219_M3Retraction Watch readers may recall the case of Don Poldermans, a prominent Dutch cardiology researcher who left a research position in late 2011 amid an investigation into his work. In a letter in the American Journal of Medicine titled “Scientific Fraud or a Rush to Judgement?” Poldermans — three of whose papers are subject to Expressions of Concern — tries to set the record straight, something he has tried to do before.

Poldermans is responding to an editorial by Vineet Chopra and Kim Eagle, “Perioperative Mischief: The Price of Academic Misconduct,” which Chopra and Eagle based on a November 2011 press release: Continue reading Cardiologist accused of misconduct strikes back in a journal

The “unintentionality” of being leads to nothingness for paper on protein’s role in cancer

empcoverA group of cancer researchers in Argentina has retracted a paper on the p300 protein in breast cancer that appeared in Experimental and Molecular Pathology.

The article, titled “Intracellular distribution of p300 and its differential recruitment to aggresomes in breast cancer,” was published in 2010 by Maria E. Fermento and colleagues. It has been cited 11 times since, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading The “unintentionality” of being leads to nothingness for paper on protein’s role in cancer

Another win for transparency: JBC takes a step forward, adding details to some retraction notices

jbc 3115Retraction Watch readers may recall that we have been frequent critics of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) — published by the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (ASBMB) — for their opaque retraction notices. Such notices often read simply “This article has been withdrawn by the authors.”

But we are — despite what some might say is evidence to the contrary — eternal optimists, so when the ASBMB announced they were hiring a manager of publication ethics late last year, we cheered. (Patricia Valdez, a former NIH staff scientist, has since filled that position.) And today, we have another reason to say “Hurrah!”: JBC retraction notices will now include “additional details provided by official [Office of Research Integrity] ORI or institutional reports,” the journal tells us.

Here, for example, are five retractions in the March 1, 2013, issue by former University of Kentucky scientist Eric J. Smart, whom the ORI found to have faked dozens of images: Continue reading Another win for transparency: JBC takes a step forward, adding details to some retraction notices

More HeLa problems: For decades, a widely used bladder cancer line hasn’t been what scientists thought

jurolAbout a year ago, we wrote about the retraction of a paper in Oral Oncology that highlighted a big issue in oncology research: Widespread contamination of cancer cell lines by other lines, making findings difficult to interpret.

One of the common contaminants is HeLa cells. HeLa, of course, stands for Henrietta Lacks, the subject of Rebecca Skloot’s bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. As we noted last year, Continue reading More HeLa problems: For decades, a widely used bladder cancer line hasn’t been what scientists thought