Whether it’s a one-off or a sign of things to come, Bharat Aggarwal
, the MD Anderson scientist at the center of a blogospheric storm—and an institutional investigation—over the validity of his data, has had a paper withdrawn by the journal Cancer Letters. Continue reading MD Anderson researcher Aggarwal loses paper in Cancer Letters
Category: by subject
Duplication forces retraction of paper by group whose work is used to justify prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing
A dozen years might seem like a publishing eternity, but the European Journal of Cancer
has decided to purge a duplicate paper from 2000. The article, on the utility of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test for detecting prostate cancer, comes from a group whose work in this area has been widely cited as evidence for the benefits of the highly controversial screening tool.
“Prostate cancer screening in the Tyrol, Austria: experience and results,” by a group of Austrian researchers, has a rather complicated past. It’s been cited 42 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the notice, which appeared in a recent issue of the journal: Continue reading Duplication forces retraction of paper by group whose work is used to justify prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing
Anesthesia journal editor says “if you blow us off, it will be retracted,” and sticks to his word
The Journal of Clinical Anesthesia has retracted a paper by a group of Israeli authors whose study may not have had appropriate ethical approval — or even collected the reported data.
The article, “Accidental venous and dural puncture during epidural analgesia in obese parturients (BMI > 40 kg/m2): three different body positions during insertion,” was published in 2010 by a team from Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, in Zerifin, one of the country’s largest hospitals and an affiliate of Tel Aviv University. Dural puncture is an infrequent but potentially serious complication of labor anesthesia, causing severe headaches and, in rare cases, death if untreated.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Anesthesia journal editor says “if you blow us off, it will be retracted,” and sticks to his word
Anil Potti and colleagues retract ninth paper, this one in JCO
Former Duke oncology researcher Anil Potti has retracted another paper, marking his ninth withdrawal. The notice in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) reads:
“An Integrated Genomic-Based Approach to Individualized Treatment of Patients With Advanced-Stage Ovarian Cancer” by Holly K. Dressman, Andrew Berchuck, Gina Chan, Jun Zhai, Andrea Bild, Robyn Sayer, Janiel Cragun, Jennifer Clarke, Regina S. Whitaker, LiHua Li, Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey Marks, Geoffrey S. Ginsburg, Anil Potti, Mike West, Joseph R. Nevins, and Johnathan M. Lancaster (J Clin Oncol 25:517-525, 2007)
The majority of the authors wish to retract this article because Continue reading Anil Potti and colleagues retract ninth paper, this one in JCO
Cell runs a lengthy correction, rather than retraction, for image problems
The journal Cell has an interesting — and somewhat puzzling — correction this month that we’ll add to our “mega-correction” file.
At issue is a paper, published in October, from the lab of Harvard’s Stephen Elledge, a noted genetics researcher, whose first author is a post-doc there named Michael Emanuele.
According to the notice, Emanuele (singled out, we note) seems to have been rather careless with the images used in the article, titled “Global Identification of Modular Cullin-RING Ligase Substrates”: Continue reading Cell runs a lengthy correction, rather than retraction, for image problems
Rabies paper retracted for plagiarism, and more from the Journal of Clinical Pathology
A cardinal (if oft-broken) rule of headline writing is to avoid the use of question marks. We think it’s particularly important to do so when the potential for ironic misadventure lurks.
To wit: The Journal of Clinical Pathology (JCP) has withdrawn/retracted a 2008 paper by a group of Indian authors (from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, at Deemed University) whose cliff-hanging title asks the question “Tracking the footprints of the rabies virus: are we any closer to decoding this elusive virus?” Continue reading Rabies paper retracted for plagiarism, and more from the Journal of Clinical Pathology
No small matter: ACS Nano journal growing alarmed by self-plagiarism
Is self-plagiarism — perhaps best referred to as duplication of your own work — a big problem in nanotechnology research?
The American Chemical Society (ACS) Nano journal retracted a study, “Retraction of Nanoembossing Induced Ferroelectric Lithography on PZT Films for Silver Particle Patterning,” late last month because of such duplication:
This article was withdrawn at the request of the Editor-in-Chief, with agreement by the authors, due to unacceptable redundant text and figures with a previously published article by the same authors (Langmuir 2011, 27, 5167-5170. DOI: 10.1021/la200377b).
This wasn’t the first such retraction for the journal. In May, they retracted “Conductance Preservation of Carbene-Functionalized Metallic Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes for the same reason:” Continue reading No small matter: ACS Nano journal growing alarmed by self-plagiarism
Second retraction for former SUNY Upstate department chair found guilty of misconduct
Last week, we covered the case of Michael W. Miller, a former department chair at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate who was forced to retract a paper in the Journal of Neurochemistry after a university investigation found he had committed misconduct.
We figured more retractions might be on the way, so we weren’t surprised when a commenter informed us earlier today of “very interesting and odd retraction letter.” Miller has had at least one other retraction, it turns out, this one in Developmental Neuroscience for 2009’s “Lability of Neuronal Lineage Decisions Is Revealed by Acute Exposures to Ethanol.” Here’s the notice, published online on January 19: Continue reading Second retraction for former SUNY Upstate department chair found guilty of misconduct
Tsuji explains why JBC paper was retracted: Western blot problems
Last week, we reported on the retraction of a paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) that had one of the journal’s typically inscrutable retraction notices.:
This article has been withdrawn by the authors.
Late last week, we heard back from corresponding author Takashi Tsuji by email. It turns out one of our commenters had basically figured out what was wrong. It was, as seems to often be the case lately in retractions we cover, troubles with Western blots: Continue reading Tsuji explains why JBC paper was retracted: Western blot problems
An arXiv for all of science? F1000 launches new immediate publication journal
Late last year, we published an invited commentary in Nature calling for science to more formally embrace post-publication peer review, and stop fetishizing the published paper. One of the models we cited was Faculty of 1000 (F1000), “in which experts flag important papers in their field.”
So it’s not surprising that F1000 is announcing today that they’re launching a new journal, F1000 Research,
intended to address three major issues afflicting scientific publishing today: timely dissemination of research, peer review and sharing of data.
The journal will publish all submissions immediately, “beyond an initial sanity check:” Continue reading An arXiv for all of science? F1000 launches new immediate publication journal