Category: clinical study retractions

Authors retract highly cited XMRV-prostate cancer link paper from PNAS

pnas 1113Retraction Watch readers may recall that nearly two years ago, an editor at PLOS declared the scientific story of a link between XMRV, aka xenotropic murine leukemia-related virus, and prostate cancer over, saying that a retraction from PLOS Pathogens was the “final chapter.” (That retraction led to an apology from the journal about how it was handled.)

Perhaps, however, there is an epilogue. This week, a group of authors who published a highly cited 2009 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) making the same link retracted it. Here’s the notice, signed by all five authors: Continue reading Authors retract highly cited XMRV-prostate cancer link paper from PNAS

Immunology paper retracted for inappropriate presentation but “no evidence of intentional misconduct”

immun40_4.c1.inddA paper in Immnunity has been retracted after two separate panels determined some of the figures “inappropriately presented” the data but cleared the team of wrongdoing.

However, the original data are now unavailable, according to the notice, so there’s no way to know if the paper’s conclusions are sound.

Here’s the notice for “Suppressors of Cytokine Signaling 2 and 3 Diametrically Control Macrophage Polarization”: Continue reading Immunology paper retracted for inappropriate presentation but “no evidence of intentional misconduct”

Serial figure fakers have expression of concern upgraded to a retraction

Another retraction has appeared up for frequent fliers Jun Li, Kailun Zhang and Jiahong Xia at Huazhong Science and Technology University in Wuhan, China.

We’ve covered them twice before, for a variety of retractions, corrections, and expressions of concern.

The retraction, in Clinical and Experimental Immunology, upgrades an expression of concern published earlier this year, and is the team’s fourth.

Here’s the notice for “CCR5 blockade in combination with rapamycin prolongs cardiac allograft survival in mice”: Continue reading Serial figure fakers have expression of concern upgraded to a retraction

Anesthesiologist “con man” apologizes for faking cover-up charges against Australian university

Via IADH
Via IADH

It’s not uncommon for scientists accused of wrongdoing — especially if they’re fired for it — to attempt to muddy the waters by claiming that they are being framed because they had threatened to blow the whistle on others.  Some of those stories have more than a grain of truth to them.

Here’s one that doesn’t.

Paul Barach, an anesthesiologist who accused his former employer, the University of New South Wales, of a massive cover-up — and in turn accused by his employer of being an academic grifter — has admitted making up the affair.

The Australian, which broke the story, says Barach — a U.S.-born physician — has apologized for making the claims. According to an earlier article in the paper:

Continue reading Anesthesiologist “con man” apologizes for faking cover-up charges against Australian university

Panel says BMJ was right to not retract two disputed statin papers

bmjA panel reviewing The BMJ‘s handling of two controversial statin papers said the journal didn’t err when it corrected, rather than retracted, the articles.

The articles — a research paper and a commentary — suggested that use of statins in people at low risk for cardiovascular disease could be doing far more harm than good. Both articles inaccurately cited a study that provided data important to their conclusions — an error pointed out vigorously by a British researcher, Rory Collins, who demanded that the journal pull the pieces.

In a letter to Godlee this spring, Collins wrote: Continue reading Panel says BMJ was right to not retract two disputed statin papers

MD Anderson postdoc faked results of Novartis anti-cancer compound study

jun fu
Raymond Sawaya, director of MD Anderson’s brain tumor program, presents Jun Fu with the 2014 Caroline Ross Endowment Fellowship.

A former postdoc at MD Anderson Cancer Center faked the results of a mouse study of a Novartis compound designed to fight brain tumors, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Jun Fu “admitted to knowingly and intentionally falsifying Figure 8a” in “Novel HSP90 Inhibitor NVP-HSP990 Targets Cell-Cycle Regulators to Ablate Olig2-Positive Glioma Tumor–Initiating Cells,” a paper published in Cancer Research on May 15, 2013:

Continue reading MD Anderson postdoc faked results of Novartis anti-cancer compound study

UT-Southwestern cancer research group notches ninth retraction

lung cancerA research team at the University of Texas-Southwestern that has retracted eight papers for image manipulation has retracted another, this one in Lung Cancer.

Here’s the notice for “Aberrant methylation of Reprimo in lung cancer,” published by Adi Gazdar’s group: Continue reading UT-Southwestern cancer research group notches ninth retraction

Authors retract paper “confirming” that narcolepsy is an autoimmune disease

stmA group of researchers at Stanford and elsewhere is retracting a 2013 paper that another scientist told Nature was “one of the biggest things to happen in the narcolepsy field for some time.”

The Science Translational Medicine paper caused a buzz because it claimed to show that narcolepsy was an autoimmune disease. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Authors retract paper “confirming” that narcolepsy is an autoimmune disease

“Authors, please call us. Pretty please? OK, we’re going to retract your paper!”

dovelogoThe 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!”

“Positivity ratio” research now subject to an expression of concern

An expression of concern has been issued for the second of three papers on the idea that, if you have three positive emotions for every negative one, you will be more successful in life.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has spent the last decade building a brand around this ratio, initially described by a mathematical equation based on fluid dynamics by mathematician Marcial Losada. You can read our coverage of the debunking of that equation, presented in a 1999 paper that has been cited nearly 1,700 times, here.

Nick Brown, co-author with Alan Sokal on the paper that discredited the Losada equation, has written a blog post on the current state of affairs. He also got in touch with us regarding the expression of concern for a 2004 article in American Behavioral Scientist that he had also questioned, “The Role of Positivity and Connectivity in the Performance of Business Teams: A Nonlinear Dynamic Model”: Continue reading “Positivity ratio” research now subject to an expression of concern