PLOS One has retracted a paper that links the most commonly used herbicide to ADHD, after it was “published in error.”
According to the note, the paper was “editorially rejected following peer review and consultation with the Editorial Board,” but ended up going through the production process anyway.
When we contacted the authors, they filled us in with more details.
Continue reading A mess: PLOS mistakenly publishes rejected ADHD-herbicide paper, retracts it
A former graduate student at Wake Forest School of Medicine “presented falsified and/or fabricated data” in a government-funded drug study, according to findings released by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity earlier today.
The report was released in the wake of an investigation conducted by the university and the ORI. Investigators found that although Brandi Blaylock recorded responses of a dozen laboratory monkeys after giving them anti-abuse drugs, she hadn’t given them the compounds “per protocol.”
Blaylock then presented the data at “two poster presentations, several laboratory meetings, and progress reports.”
Some of her research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, “Dopamine D2 Receptors In Primate Models of Cocaine Abuse,” which examined the effects of novel dopamine D3 receptor compounds on drug addiction on monkeys.
However, according to the report, Blaylock presented the falsified responses from a dozen monkeys: Continue reading Former Wake Forest grad student fudged data for drug study
A 2003 paper may have left out potentially “significant” data on the long-term side-effects of an antipsychotic drug used in children, according to a former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
As reported by the Toronto Star, David Kessler is alleging that Janssen, the maker of Risperdal (and owned by Johnson & Johnson), omitted data about the risks of the drug: In particular, that boys who use it over a long period may be at risk of growing breasts.
There’s anecdotal evidence of the side effect. One family claimed the drug had caused their son to grow a pair of 46 DD-sized breasts in a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson, reported the Wall Street Journal in February. They won, to the tune of $2.5 million. The suit is apparently just one of 1,200 like it.
The abstract of the paper, “Prolactin levels during long-term risperidone treatment in children and adolescents,” published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, suggests that levels of a key hormone aren’t a problem in the long term:
Continue reading Drugmaker accused of omitting side effect data from 2003 Risperdal paper
The Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology has retracted a 2011 paper on depersonalization disorder by a pair of authors in Azerbaijan who got a bit too familiar with their source material without proper attribution. And the journal has offered its readers a handy — if depressingly obvious — admonition about publication ethics.
The article, “Lamotrigine in the immediate treatment of outpatients with depersonalization disorder without psychiatric comorbidity. Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study,” by researchers at the Central Mental Clinic for Outpatients of Baku City, purported to find that: Continue reading Psych paper falls afoul of journal’s plagiarism policy (hint: don’t plagiarize)
Want bogus data, million-dollar fraud allegations and a scientist on the lam? We give you Alain Malafosse.
The British Journal of Psychiatry has retracted a June 2013 paper by Malafosse and his colleagues on the genetics of bipolar disorder in children because Malafosse allegedly fabricated key data in the study.
The article, “Childhood maltreatment and methylation of the glucocorticoid receptor gene NR3C1 in bipolar disorder,” purported to find that people with bipolar disorder who had experienced more, and more severe, abuse early in life were more likely to show epigenetic changes. According to the abstract:
Continue reading Retraction appears for psychiatrist sought for arrest in alleged fraud scheme
The title of this post isn’t exactly how the one-sided conversation between the editors of Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment and a group of researchers went. But it seems likely it was pretty close.
Here’s an expression of concern for “A cross-sectional study on perception of stigma by Chinese schizophrenia patients:” Continue reading “Authors, please call us. Pretty please? OK, we’re going to retract your paper!”
We’ve been following the case of Amine Bahi, a neuroscience researcher in the United Arab Emirates who has managed something unusual in the annals of Retraction Watch: Three different retractions for three completely different reasons. One was for “legal issues,” another was for lack of IRB approval, and the third was for using RNAs from the wrong species.
Now, Bahi’s co-authors have repeated the last of those studies with the right RNAs, and have republished their paper in the same journal, Biological Psychiatry — but without Bahi.
The retraction notice for “Blockade of Protein Phosphatase 2B Activity in the Amygdala Increases Anxiety- and Depression-Like Behaviors in Mice” now includes this final paragraph: Continue reading Researchers repeat retracted study, republish in same journal sans first author
Last month, we brought readers the story of a retraction in December from Psychiatric Times, of an essay by Richard Noll that included this passage:
Despite the discomfort it brings, we owe it to the current generation of clinicians to remember that an elite minority within the American psychiatric profession played a small but ultimately decisive role in the cultural validation, and then reduction, of the Satanism moral panic between 1988 and 1994. Indeed, what can we all learn from American psychiatry’s involvement in the moral panic?
That essay was republished on March 19, along with an editor’s note:
Continue reading Psychiatric Times reinstates retracted essay on “satanic ritual abuse”
Some Retraction Watch readers may recall this episode, recounted in a recent op-ed by Lew Powell:
During the 1980s and early ’90s a wave of nonexistent “satanic ritual abuse” claims shut down scores of day cares such as Little Rascals, McMartin in California and Fells Acres in Massachusetts. In virtually every instance the charges lacked any basis in fact. Today no reputable psychologist or other social scientist will argue otherwise. The defendants were innocent victims of a “moral panic” that bore striking similarities to the Salem witch hunts 300 years earlier.
Psychologist Richard Noll found the charges troubling too, so he wrote a piece last year for Psychiatric Times because: Continue reading Psychiatric Times retracts essay on “satanic ritual abuse”
A group of psychiatric researchers in Norway has lost their 2013 paper in BMC Research Notes on the effects of antipsychotic medications on the brain after discovering that they’d botched their imaging analyses.
The article, “Does changing from a first generation antipsychotic (perphenazin) to a second generation antipsychotic (risperidone) alter brain activation and motor activity? A case report,” came from a trio of scientists at the University of Bergen and Haukeland University Hospital, also in Bergen. According to the abstract of the paper, which was published last May:
Continue reading When 1 equals 2, the result is a retraction