The debate over the retraction of a highly controversial paper on the effects of GMOs on rats continues unabated. This week, Adriane Fugh-Berman and Thomas Sherman wrote on the Hastings Center website that Continue reading Journal editor defends retraction of GMO-rats study while authors reveal some of paper’s history
Category: toxicology
St. Louis Krokodil paper reappears
Earlier this month, we reported on the unexplained withdrawal of a case report from the American Journal of Medicine whose authors said they had treated a man in St. Louis who used krokodil, a homemade mixture of prescription painkillers heroin and flammable contaminants that has proven deadly in Russia.
At the time, all the journal’s publisher, Elsevier, would say about why the article was removed was that there was “a permission problem that the originating institution is working to resolve.”
The paper has now reappeared. And contrary to the notice that appeared on the withdrawal Continue reading St. Louis Krokodil paper reappears
Melendez notches retraction 14, Lemus now stands at 12
Two researchers who have appeared frequently on Retraction Watch have racked up another retraction each.
This is the fourteenth retraction for Alirio Melendez, who was found guilty of misconduct by the National University of Singapore but denies the allegations. Here’s the notice in The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology for “Environmental toxicogenomics: A post-genomic approach to analysing biological responses to environmental toxins,” a paper published in Environmental Research and cited nine times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Melendez notches retraction 14, Lemus now stands at 12
Drug withdrawal: St. Louis Krokodil paper disappears
On November 11, St. Louis’s KTVI reported that krokodil, a nasty opioid concoction with roots in Russia, had arrived in their town. They based that report on a case study published in the American Journal of Medicine, “Krokodil’—A Designer Drug From Across the Atlantic, with Serious Consequences,” and interviewed two of the paper’s authors, Dany Thekkemuriyil and Unnikrishnan Pillai.
The case study involved a 30-year-old man the Thekkemuriyil and Pillai said they had seen at St. Mary’s Health Center in Richmond Heights, Missouri. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported a few days later: Continue reading Drug withdrawal: St. Louis Krokodil paper disappears
Controversial Seralini GMO-rats paper to be retracted
A heavily criticized study of the effects of genetically modified maize and the Roundup herbicide on rats is being retracted — one way or another.
The paper — by Gilles Seralini and colleagues — was published in Food and Chemical Toxicology last year. There have been calls for retraction since then, along with other criticism and a lengthy exchange of letters in the journal. Meanwhile, the paper has been cited 28 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, and the French National Assembly (their lower house of Parliament) held a long hearing on the paper last year, with Seralini and other scientists testifying.
Now, as reported in the French media, the editor of the journal, A. Wallace Hayes, has sent Seralini a letter saying that the paper will be retracted if Seralini does not agree to withdraw it.
Here’s most of the November 19 letter, including Hayes’ proposed retraction notice: Continue reading Controversial Seralini GMO-rats paper to be retracted
Duplication leads to recall of toxicology paper
A group of researchers from Egypt and the United States has lost their 2010 paper in the journal Toxicology in Vitro for recycling many of their own words from a previously published manuscript.
The article, “Bacterial lipopolysaccharide-induced oxidative stress in adult rat Sertoli cells in vitro,” was written by Hamdy A.A. Aly, Hany A. El-Shemy and David A. Lightfoot, a professor of biotechnology and genomics at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. El-Shemy, now of Cairo University, was a visiting scholar at SICU a few years ago, and he and Lightfoot have published together several times. Continue reading Duplication leads to recall of toxicology paper
Mislabeled chemical bottle leads to retraction of liver protection paper
A labeled chemical bottle may contain a genie and not the expected reagent, according to a cautionary retraction that could be a warning for all bench researchers.
Sreenivasan Sasidharan, a researcher at the Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), part of the Universiti Sains Malaysia, used a bottle labeled lantadene A, a liver-destroying chemical from the leaves of the Lantana camara plant that some livestock eat.
Sasidharan found that contrary to expectations, “lantadene A” protected livers against damage from acetaminophen — aka Tylenol.
But Manu Sharma, assistant pharmacy professor at Jaypee University of Information Technology in India, suspected something was technically amiss: Continue reading Mislabeled chemical bottle leads to retraction of liver protection paper
De-Toxicology: Authors pull more meeting abstracts, citing journal error
We recently wrote about a group of English scientists who asked Toxicology to de-publish their abstract from a conference proceedings issue. Turns out they were far from alone.
The journal’s December issue has at least five more such removal notices, all for the same problem.
The notices read: Continue reading De-Toxicology: Authors pull more meeting abstracts, citing journal error
Get the lead out: duplication leads to retraction of heavy metal paper
Biological Trace Element Research has retracted a paper by a group of Egyptian authors for duplication.
The paper, “The Effect of Lead Acetate Toxicity on Experimental Male Albino Rat,” came from investigators in the department of Economic Entomology and Pesticides at Cairo University and appeared in December 2011. As the notice states:
Article has been retracted due to duplicate publication.
Here’s the abstract: Continue reading Get the lead out: duplication leads to retraction of heavy metal paper
Left and right apparently agree that “GMO” studies should be retracted (but they’re talking about different papers)
We couldn’t help noticing that the past few weeks have seen calls to retract two papers on food, from different sides of the political spectrum. One paper actually looked at the effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), while the GMO link in the other paper seems mostly to be in activists’ minds. Consider:
On the right, we have Henry I. Miller writing on Forbes.com about a study of rats fed genetically modified maize: “The honorable course of action for the journal would be to retract the paper immediately“: Continue reading Left and right apparently agree that “GMO” studies should be retracted (but they’re talking about different papers)