Category: clinical study retractions

Correction restores confidence in results of confidence study

Strategic Management JournalA study that looked at how entrepreneurs’ confidence levels change depending on market conditions has been corrected to fix an error that flipped the results of one of the experiments.

The paper was published in 2013 by the Strategic Management Journal, and explored how entrepreneurs stay confident in difficult marketplaces by studying how people reacted to tasks of varying difficulty. In one experiment, participants were asked how well they thought they did on an easy quiz and how well they did on a hard quiz. Results showed that “participants underestimated their scores on the easy quiz” and “overestimated their performance on the difficult quiz.” However, authors wrote the opposite in the final paper.

Here’s the correction notice for “Making Sense of Overconfidence in Market Entry”:

Continue reading Correction restores confidence in results of confidence study

Cochrane withdraws criticized alcohol misuse report for “major errors”

Cochrane_LogoThe Cochrane Library has withdrawn a criticized 2014 meta-analysis about a technique to help young people avoid alcohol abuse, because of “major errors.” 

The review found that motivational interviewing, a form of counseling to help people change behaviors, showed some effects but had “no substantive, meaningful benefits” in preventing alcohol abuse among people 25 and younger. However, other researchers in the field, including some whose studies were included in the analysis, soon raised concerns about the review’s methods and data calculation, and the authors withdrew it. 

Here’s the brief notice for “Motivational interviewing for alcohol misuse in young adults:”

Continue reading Cochrane withdraws criticized alcohol misuse report for “major errors”

Surgery journal publishes — then retracts — response to letter that never appeared

Annals of Surgery

How’s this for confusing: A surgery journal is retracting researchers’ response to a letter about their paper, because the letter was never actually published.

According to the managing editor of the Annals of Surgery, the letter — about a 2011 analysis of IV fluids in trauma patients — was accepted, prompting the journal to ask for a response from the authors of the 2011 paper. But the letter-writers never supplied required forms, such as conflict of interest. After spending two years trying to track them down, the journal decided not to publish the letter.

In the meantime, however, the authors’ response to the letter was “inadvertently published,” forcing the journal to retract it. Continue reading Surgery journal publishes — then retracts — response to letter that never appeared

BMC investigating allegedly copied paper

logoBioMed Central is investigating a recent paper about a potential biomarker for liver cancer, which shows signs it was written using another article as a template.

According to Jeffrey Beall, who exposed the similarities between the two papers on his blog Scholarly Open Access yesterday, the paper in question is “obviously bogus,” and appears to have relied on the “template plagiarism” technique of creating a new article by modifying a previous paper’s text and data.

A spokesperson for BioMed Central, which published the allegedly “junk” paper, as Beall calls it, told us they are looking into the allegations: Continue reading BMC investigating allegedly copied paper

Authors retract second study about medical uses of honey

Journal of Clinical NursingA paper that tested the clinical value of honey on venous ulcers has been pulled by the Journal of Clinical Nursing after an investigation uncovered “errors in the data analysis.” Last year, the authors pulled another paper on the healing properties of honey on wounds. 

We just discovered this second retraction, which appears in the September 2015 issue of the journal, but was posted online last year.

The journal’s editor-in-chief, Debra Jackson, confirmed the dates and said that “a commercial company” brought the matter to their attention. After the journal asked a statistician to weigh in, they stated that a “substantial re-write would be required to correct the article,” and a retraction would be “the most suitable course of action.”

Although she said the authors initially sought to correct, not retract, the study, they eventually agreed with the decision.

Here’s the notice:

Continue reading Authors retract second study about medical uses of honey

Diederik Stapel retraction count updated to 57

stapel_npcWe’ve learned about two more retractions we missed for Diederick Stapel, the Dutch social psychology researcher who has now racked up a total of 57 retractions by our count.

Both retractions were issued after a committee released a report which established fraud in dozens of papers co-authored by Stapel.

Stapel is still #4 on our leaderboard.

Continue reading Diederik Stapel retraction count updated to 57

“Insufficient permission” from funder resects liver disease paper

HepatologyA study on chronic liver inflammation was pulled from the journal Hepatology because of “insufficient permission by the authors’ funding institution to submit and publish the manuscript.” 

The paper, which was published in July, looked into how steatosis, the abnormal retention of fat in the liver, turns into steatohepatitis, also known as fatty liver disease. Researchers found that Treg cells play a central role in controlling the disease.

Unfortunately, the journal’s managing editor didn’t provide any information about the nature of the permission problems, and the notice doesn’t give any details.

Here it is, in full:

Continue reading “Insufficient permission” from funder resects liver disease paper

Failure to reproduce key experiments retracts cancer study

Medical OncologyA group of Chinese cancer researchers has retracted a paper in Medical Oncology after they discovered that “several key experiments” were not reproducible.

The paper, “Decreased Warburg effect induced by ATP citrate lyase suppression inhibits tumor growth in pancreatic cancer,” was published in March. It found that suppressing the enzyme ATP citrate lyase could be used to treat pancreatic cancer.

However, the authors decided to pull the paper when some of the findings couldn’t be reproduced. 

Here’s the notice:

Continue reading Failure to reproduce key experiments retracts cancer study

Author appeals retraction for plagiarism in clinical research paper

Journal of Human Reproductive SciencesThe first author of a paper that discussed sample sizes in clinical research is appealing the journal’s decision to retract it for plagiarism, arguing the article is “entirely different.”

The  Journal of Human Reproductive Sciences‘s editor-in-chief told us that they first contacted the author about the allegations more than two years ago, and finally issued the notice in September, saying the paper “directly copied” from another article on randomization. “Thus owing to duplicity of text, the article is being retracted,” according to the notice.

That doesn’t jibe with first author K. P. Suresh, based at the National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics in India. He told us that the “two articles are entirely different concept.” In subsequent emails, he added Continue reading Author appeals retraction for plagiarism in clinical research paper

Journal mistakenly publishes Parkinson’s case report twice

Journal of Movement Disorders

A journal has retracted a duplicate version of a case report about a patient with Parkinson’s disease after mistakenly publishing the paper twice.

The Journal of Movement Disorders initially published the report — which detailed the case of an elderly woman with Parkinson’s disease whose symptoms worsened during drug treatment — in 2010. But it ended up printing it again in 2011 because of “a mistake of the editorial office and the publisher.”

The notice reads:

Continue reading Journal mistakenly publishes Parkinson’s case report twice