Category: jbc retractions

The Journal of Biological Chemistry has retracted two papers by a group from the University of Toronto over what the leader of the research says were “misguided efforts” by a co-author to make the perfect Western blot. 

The retractions are among a batch of seven recent removals by the journal for image issues, some of which were flagged on PubPeer. 

Two of the papers, which date back to 2004, come from one group, two from another and two from a third. The seventh is a stand-alone for a group with a history of problematic articles. 

A team of heart researchers at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio has received expressions of concern for two papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, which says the images in the articles appear suspect. 

The papers, both of which appeared in 2004, come from the lab of Subha Sen, a highly-funded scientist who has received millions in NIH grants over the past decade. Sen’s work also has drawn scrutiny on PubPeer, with comments cropping up on the site roughly three years ago for many of her papers. 

In 2016, Sen’s group retracted a 2009 article in JBC titled “A unique microRNA profile in end-stage heart failure indicates alterations in specific cardiovascular signaling networks.” According to the notice: 

A prominent researcher at Georgia State University who had two papers retracted and eight subjected to expressions of concern for problematic images last year is now up to nine retractions.

Ming-Hui Zou is the common author on all nine retracted papers, which were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry from 2003 and 2010. Of the eight papers originally subjected to expressions of concern, seven have been retracted, and one has been updated to a correction.

Here is a typical retraction notice, for “Nicotine-induced activation of AMP-activated protein kinase inhibits fatty acid synthase in 3T3L1 adipocytes: A role for oxidant stress,” referring to image duplication, and an offer by the authors to “publish an amended figure or to repeat the experiments,” which the journal declined:

A pathologist in Chicago has lost five papers for image manipulation and other problems. 

The first retraction for Yashpal Kanwar, of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, appeared in 2013, for a review article published earlier that year in the American Journal of Physiology Renal Physiology. According to the notice: