Category: clinical study retractions

Another image falsification retraction for Emory heart researchers

jbc1112coverA group of authors from Emory University, has lost another paper for image manipulation, bringing their total to at least four. What makes this particularly interesting is that the main actor in the figure fakery, Lian Zuo, does not appear to have been involved this time.

Zuo, you may recall, was cited in multiple retraction notices back in 2011 after Emory investigators concluded that he appeared to have been fabricating figures. But, one of the notices, from Circulation Research, raised the possibility that someone else was implicated, too: Continue reading Another image falsification retraction for Emory heart researchers

“Just significant” results have been around for decades in psychology — but have gotten worse: study

qjepLast year, two psychology researchers set out to figure out whether the statistical results psychologists were reporting in the literature were distributed the way you’d expect. We’ll let the authors, E.J. Masicampo, of Wake Forest, and Daniel Lalande, of the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, explain why they did that:

The psychology literature is meant to comprise scientific observations that further people’s understanding of the human mind and human behaviour. However, due to strong incentives to publish, the main focus of psychological scientists may often shift from practising rigorous and informative science to meeting standards for publication. One such standard is obtaining statistically significant results. In line with null hypothesis significance testing (NHST), for an effect to be considered statistically significant, its corresponding p value must be less than .05.

When Masicampo and Lalande looked at a year’s worth of three highly cited psychology journals — the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; and Psychological Science — from 2007 to 2008, they found: Continue reading “Just significant” results have been around for decades in psychology — but have gotten worse: study

Second retraction stemming from Cardiff investigations appears

cancer research 1113A second retraction of a paper by a Cardiff University researcher found to have committed misconduct has appeared.

In April, a Cardiff investigation found that Rossen Donev, a former researcher at the university, had manipulated images in four different papers. Donev, who was at the University of Swansea until August, according to his LinkedIn profile, and is now director of Biomed Consult Ltd., had already retracted a Journal of Immunology paper in late 2011 after a different Cardiff investigation.

The investigation cleared co-author and dean Paul Morgan of misconduct. Morgan resigned from Cardiff in August, but “he categorically denied that his decision had anything to do with the misconduct investigation,” according to Times Higher Education.

Here’s the new notice, from Cancer Research: Continue reading Second retraction stemming from Cardiff investigations appears

“Personal rivalry” leads to retraction of nut-health paper

ejpcHere’s a retraction that leaves us itching to know more:

The authors of a recent paper in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology on nut intake and the risk of high blood pressure and diabetes have pulled their article from publication for an undisclosed conflict of interest.

Now, you wouldn’t know this unless you were willing to pony up the $32 to read the notice, which is behind a pay wall — something that drives us, well, nuts. But here it is:

Continue reading “Personal rivalry” leads to retraction of nut-health paper

Two detailed retraction notices correct the cardiology record

jaccTwo American College of Cardiology conference abstracts published earlier this year in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) have been retracted, one because the authors were actually measuring something other than what they reported, and the other because newer software invalidated the results.

Here’s the notice for “Worsening of Pre-Existing Valvulopathy With A New Obesity Drug Lorcaserin, A Selective 5-Hydroxytryptamine 2C Receptor Agonist: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials” by Hemang B. Panchal, Parthav Patel, Brijal Patel, Rakeshkumar Patel, and Henry Philip of East Tennessee State University: Continue reading Two detailed retraction notices correct the cardiology record

Henry IV, part 2: No retraction necessary, say some authors of royal head identification paper

Henry IV, via Wikimedia
Henry IV, via Wikimedia

Last week, we reported that some of the authors of a 2010 paper in the BMJ claiming to have identified Henry IV’s head thought the study should be retracted based on new evidence. Some of the other authors have now responded to that call for retraction, which appeared on the BMJ’s site alongside the paper.

Philippe Charlier, the corresponding author of the original paper, and five of the original paper’s 15 co-authors conclude after reviewing the evidence that

Continue reading Henry IV, part 2: No retraction necessary, say some authors of royal head identification paper

JBC issues correction for paper by Khachigian, who has had four others retracted

jbc1113The Journal of Biological Chemistry has a fairly gory correction — we’d call it a mega-correction — for a 2010 paper by Levon Khachigian, an Australian researcher whose studies of a new drug for skin cancer recently were halted over concerns about possible misconduct, including image manipulation. As we reported earlier this year, Khachigian has already lost four papers, including one in the JBC — which the journal simply noted had “been withdrawn by the authors.”

The new correction involves the article “c-Jun regulates shear- and injury-inducible Egr-1 expression, vein graft stenosis after autologous end-to-side transplantation in rabbits, and intimal hyperplasia in human saphenous veins,” which Khachigian wrote with Jun Ni and Alla Waldman. The paper has been cited nine times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the notice: Continue reading JBC issues correction for paper by Khachigian, who has had four others retracted

Retraction for authors of muscle paper who lifted data from their own 18-year-old article

janatFor the second time in a week, we’ve seen a journal retract a paper because it duplicated something in its own archive. Yesterday, it was a case of plagiarism in a plant journal. Today, we find that the Journal of Anatomy has retracted an article it published earlier this year by a group of Slovenian authors who took a page (or several) out of their 1995 article in the same periodical.

The article, “Muscles within muscles: a tensiomyographic and histochemical analysis of the normal human vastus medialis longus and vastus medialis obliquus muscles,” came from researchers in the department of orthopedic surgery at the University Medical Centre in Ljubjana. According to the abstract: Continue reading Retraction for authors of muscle paper who lifted data from their own 18-year-old article

NEJM paper on sleep apnea retracted when original data can’t be found

nejmThe authors of a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine are retracting it, after being unable to find data supporting a table that required corrections.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading NEJM paper on sleep apnea retracted when original data can’t be found

Off with his paper! Some authors want to retract claim to have identified Henry IV’s head

Henry IV, via Wikimedia
Henry IV, via Wikimedia

The BMJ is well-known for its annual Christmas issue, which New York Times medical correspondent Lawrence Altman calls

a lighter and sometimes brighter side of medicine, publishing unusual articles that vary from simply amusing to bizarre to creative or potentially important.

The 2010 issue was no exception, featuring a paper called “Multidisciplinary medical identification of a French king’s head (Henri IV)” in which: Continue reading Off with his paper! Some authors want to retract claim to have identified Henry IV’s head