A journal is pulling an article (with approval of “most” of the authors) because a similar paper had already been published in Chinese.
That wasn’t the only problem with “Aneuploidy analysis of non-pronuclear embryos from IVF with use of array CGH: a case report,” published in the Journal of Molecular Histology.
The retraction note lists the three things that led to the paper’s retraction:
Continue reading IVF embryo paper pulled for plagiarism, errors, lack of permissions
The Turkish Journal of Medical Sciences has retracted a paper after concerns surfaced from a researcher who claims to have supervised the research but was not listed as a co-author.
The first author completed the research — which explored the use of epigenetic alterations as potential early signs of cancer — as part of her master’s degree, under the supervision of Muy-Teck Teh at the Barts & The London School of Medicine & Dentistry. When Teh contacted the journal to say he had not consented to the publication, Ayesha Umair claimed she had paid for the research herself.
Here’s the retraction note for “Quantitative study of epigenetic signature in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma,” which tells us more about the dispute: Continue reading Cancer study pulled when published without supervisor’s consent
An investigation has uncovered fake reviews on 21 papers submitted to the Journal of the Renin-Angiotensin Aldosterone System.
After taking a second look at accepted papers with an author-nominated reviewer, the journal discovered that the listed reviewers on the 21 papers, though real people, had never submitted a report.
Eight of the papers have been retracted by JRAAS. The rest had not yet been published, and have now been rejected, explains a commentary by the journal editors. The journal has also stopped allowing authors to nominate reviewers.
The retraction note — the same on all eight papers — explains how the authors “seriously compromised” the review process:
Continue reading Eight retractions for fake reviews lead journal to suspend author nominations
Nature Publishing Group is retracting three papers today, after an investigation found evidence the peer-review process had been compromised.
The publisher issued a statement saying they had notified corresponding authors and institutions associated with the three papers, which were all published last year in the journals Cancer Gene Therapy and Spinal Cord.
Here’s the note that’s going on each of the papers, (they’re the same, except for the publication date):
Continue reading “Compromised” peer review hits three papers from Nature Publishing Group
Researchers in Germany have retracted their 2011 article in the Journal of Bacteriology after another lab pointed out a fatal error in the paper.
The article, “Escherichia coli Exports Cyclic AMP via TolC,” came from a group at Tübingen University led by Klaus Hantke. The paper focuses on the crucial role of the membrane channel TolC in exporting cyclic AMP (cAMP)-cAMP receptor protein (CRP) complex, which regulates nearly 200 E. coli genes. According to the abstract:
The data demonstrate that export of cAMP via TolC is a most efficient way of E. coli to lower high concentrations of cAMP in the cell and maintain its sensitivity in changing metabolic environments.
But the conclusions rested on a gene mutation that wasn’t quite what it seemed. Here’s the notice: Continue reading E. coli gene paper falls to mistaken mutation
A paper on the genetics underlying a common neurological disorder has issued a correction that influences the results of the paper.
“Genetic Diagnosis of Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease in a Population by Next-Generation Sequencing” was published in BioMed Research International, and looked at 81 families with the disease. The researchers identified mutations that might be connected to the disease. The problem, says the correction note, is that the authors classified a couple variants in one patient’s genes as “likely pathogenic,” when their true nature was less clear.
The correction explains the new numbers:
Continue reading Correction changes results about genetics of neurological disorder
The authors of a paper on an anti-fungal bacterium couldn’t ward off a very common problem: plagiarism. The people credited on the paper, published in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, apparently weren’t the original authors, according to the retraction note.
We’re not sure who the original authors are. The retraction note doesn’t elaborate much:
Continue reading A bacterium may be anti-fungal, but it’s not anti-retraction
A review article about a tool used to link genes to traits and behaviors has been retracted for including content “without permission and/or proper reference.”
Corresponding author Ali Masoudi-Nejad at the University of Tehran told us that the retraction occurred mostly because the paper included many figures and tables from other sources, and he didn’t realize they needed to seek permission from both the author and the copyright-holder (ie, the publisher). He added that he doubts he is the only one to make this mistake: Continue reading Genetics paper retracted for using material “without permission and/or proper reference”
The authors of a Cell Metabolism paper are pulling it after discovering blot images that “appear more than once in independent and unrelated experiments.”
Just how the duplication occurred in the 2009 paper — about transcription of mitochondrial DNA — remains a mystery, the authors note:
…the reasons for the errors are still under investigation…
Meanwhile, we’ve learned that the last author on the paper — Carlos Moraes of the University of Miami — has requested a retraction for another 2013 paper in Mitochondrion, also co-authored by Tina Wenz at the University of Cologne in Germany. That paper is among multiple publications co-authored by Moraes and Wenz that have been flagged on PubPeer.
We’ve reached out to the parties involved, and received a warning from an attorney representing Wenz that if we write about Continue reading University investigating duplicated images in retracted paper
The Journal of Mosquito Research has retracted a paper because it contains a figure that “was obviously stolen” from another paper.
The retracted paper’s first author Emtithal M. Abd El-Samiee is now up to two retractions, by our count. Last month, we reported on her fruit fly paper, felled by a faulty gene sequence. On the paper, she is listed as an entomologist at Cairo University.
The note tells us where the figure was stolen from:
Continue reading “Obviously stolen” figure squashes mosquito paper in author’s second retraction