Category: by subject

Authors retract paper claiming antidepressants prevent suicide

The authors of a study allegedly showing that antidepressants prevent suicide have retracted it over unspecified errors. Here’s the notice:

At the request of the authors and in agreement with the Editor-in-Chief and Wiley-Blackwell, the following article “Antidepressant medication prevents suicide in depression”. Acta Psychiatr Scand 2010;122:454–460 has been retracted. The retraction has been requested and agreed due to unintentional errors in the analysis of the data presented.

The original paper linked “data on the toxicological detection of antidepressants in 18 922 suicides in Sweden 1992–2003” to “registers of psychiatric hospitalization as well as registers with sociodemographic data.” It found: Continue reading Authors retract paper claiming antidepressants prevent suicide

A non-unanimous retraction in PNAS after authors are “unable to reproduce the data”

A group of authors has retracted a 2009 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) after subsequent experiments suggested their original results weren’t holding up.

According to the notice for the paper, which has been cited 8 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading A non-unanimous retraction in PNAS after authors are “unable to reproduce the data”

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

Society error leads to published — then retracted — Alzheimer’s abstract from top group

Alzheimer’s & Dementia has retracted a meeting abstract the journal published without the OK of the researchers, a top group from Harvard, who submitted it but withdrew the work before the conference.

That, as they say, might require some unpacking. Maybe this will make things clearer.

Raj Hooli, a graduate student in the lab of Rudolph Tanzi, a leading neuroscientist at Harvard — where he holds the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy endowed chair of neurology — had submitted the abstract, “Genome-wide assessment of copy number variations in early-onset Alzheimer’s disease,” for consideration at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease (ICAD).

As Tanzi explains: Continue reading Society error leads to published — then retracted — Alzheimer’s abstract from top group

Five papers by prominent cardiologist Hiroaki Matsubara subject to Expression of Concern

Hiroaki Matsubara

The American Heart Association, which publishes a number of journals, has issued an Expression of Concern about five papers in three of their publications, following allegations of image manipulation. All of the papers include Hiroaki Matsubara, of Kyoto Prefectural University, as a co-author.

The notice begins:

It has come to the attention of the American Heart Association (AHA), in a public manner, that there are questions concerning a number of figures in several AHA journals’ articles…

The “public manner” was three posts last year on the Abnormal Science blog, available here, here and here, alleging that images were manipulated in the manuscripts, and that histology slides were reused.

The notice continues: Continue reading Five papers by prominent cardiologist Hiroaki Matsubara subject to Expression of Concern

Update on Fujii: Anesthesia journal finds overwhelming statistical evidence of data fabrication

There’s a bit more this afternoon on the story of Yoshitaka Fujii, the Japanese anesthesiologist accused of fraud and other misconduct that we reported on yesterday.

The British journal Anaesthesia, which has been looking into Fujii’s research record, has posted four articles and editorials about the case and related issues on its website. One in particular is remarkable for its conclusions. Written by a UK anesthesiologist named John Carlisle, the article claims to have analyzed 169 randomized controlled trials that Fujii conducted between 1991 and 2011.

According to the abstract (which we formatted for readability, and which should be online shortly, we’re told): Continue reading Update on Fujii: Anesthesia journal finds overwhelming statistical evidence of data fabrication

Journal yanks anemia paper over duplicate data

Blood Cells, Molecules, and Diseases (that’s one title) has retracted a 2011 paper, “Comparative proteomics reveals deficiency of NHE-1 (Slc9a1) in RBCs from the beta-adducin knockout mouse model of hemolytic anemia,” after learning from a reader that the data it contained were previously published by a competing publication.

As the notice explains: Continue reading Journal yanks anemia paper over duplicate data

Major fraud probe of Japanese anesthesiologist Yoshitaka Fujii may challenge retraction record

We have learned that a widely published Japanese anesthesiologist is under investigation by his university over concerns that he engaged in repeated fraud for decades that has tainted roughly 180 articles—many of which may be retracted as a result.

In a related move, the journal Clinical Therapeutics is retracting papers by the researcher, Yoshitaka Fujii, most recently of Toho University, in Tokyo. Judy Pachella, managing editor of the journal, confirmed the retractions but would not state how many papers were affected. Clinical Therapeutics published 17 articles by Fujii, between 2003 and 2010.

Continue reading Major fraud probe of Japanese anesthesiologist Yoshitaka Fujii may challenge retraction record

Another withdrawal by MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, again for unclear reasons

Bharat B. Aggarwal, the MD Anderson researcher under investigation at his institution over concerns of image manipulation, has withdrawn a second paper, although you’d never know why from the statement.

The notice for the article, “Evidence for the critical roles of NF-κB p65 and specificity proteins in the apoptosis-inducing activity of proteasome inhibitors in leukemia cells,” is pretty minimal: Continue reading Another withdrawal by MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, again for unclear reasons

Author who took responsibility for errors in retracted PNAS paper cites it…in error

via Wikimedia

One of the issues we’ve touched on at Retraction Watch is what happens once papers are retracted. A few studies have found that other authors continue to cite those studies anyway, without noting their withdrawal from the literature. A more recent paper found that retractions are linked to a dramatic decline in citations (see last half of post). And we’ve reported on one case in which the authors of a retracted study decided not to cite it at all when they republished their findings elsewhere.

But it seems unusual for an author to cite his or her own retracted work without noting it had been retracted. That’s what happened in a recently published PLoS ONE paper, “Loss of Secreted Frizzled-Related Protein 4 Correlates with an Aggressive Phenotype and Predicts Poor Outcome in Ovarian Cancer Patients.” The second to last paragraph of that paper ends: Continue reading Author who took responsibility for errors in retracted PNAS paper cites it…in error