Category: not reproducible

Blood retracts two, including a disputed paper from the Karolinska Institute

The journal Blood has two retractions this month, one of which seems particularly interesting. So let’s deal with the other one first.

The paper, “MicroRNAs 15a/16-1 function as tumor suppressor genes in multiple myeloma,” appeared online in October 2010. But according to the retraction notice, the authors

have recently discovered that the cell lines used in their paper were inadvertently misidentified. The cell lines utilized in the paper have now been found to contain the bcr/abl translocation and most likely represent the K562 CML cell line, instead of MMS1 and RPM1 myeloma cell lines. Due to this issue, the relevance of the findings to myeloma and thus, the conclusions of the paper, are not supported by the data. The authors apologize to the readers, reviewers, and editors of Blood for publishing these erroneous data.

That seems straightforward enough, and we couldn’t find any evidence that this problem affected other publications.

The second paper, however, could be more significant. Continue reading Blood retracts two, including a disputed paper from the Karolinska Institute

The Importance of Being Reproducible: Keith Baggerly tells the Anil Potti story

For those Retraction Watch readers who have been following the case of Anil Potti — who has now retracted four papers — Keith Baggerly’s name will likely be familiar. Baggerly is the bioinformatician at M.D. Anderson in Houston who has been publicly questioning, in letters, papers, and The Cancer Letter, work by Potti et. al.

Yesterday, Baggerly gave a keynote at the Council of Science Editors meeting in Baltimore. It was a fascinating — and riveting — walk through how, after a group at M.D. Anderson asked him and his team to evaluate the Potti group’s tools for predicting whether given patients would respond to different chemotherapies, Baggerly’s group unraveled the Potti research.

In his talk, Baggerly demonstrated all of the mislabeling and other easily recognized errors his team found when they sifted through the raw data. And yet there were a number of wince-inducing moments in which Baggerly described the cool reception he had from several journals.

There have been a lot of calls recently that journals should require that authors deposit their data.  There’s none more powerful than when they come at the end of a talk showing how that could have stopped a faulty clinical trial from ever starting.

Baggerly told Retraction Watch he just wants this story to get the widest attention possible, so he was glad to allow us to post his slides. They get appropriately technical, given the crowd, but it’s worth it. You can follow a very unofficial and rough transcript at this Twitter search, since Ivan live-tweeted the talk. Or just click over to the slideshow here.

Retractile dysfunction? Author says journal yanked paper linking Viagra, Cialis to vision problem after legal threats

The British Journal of Ophthalmology has retracted a 2006 paper which purported to show a link between drugs for erectile dysfunction and a rare form of sudden vision loss called non-arteritic anterior ischaemic optic neuropathy, more commonly known as “Viagra blindness.”

That wouldn’t be terribly interesting, except for this: One of the authors of the paper, a researcher at the University of Alabama named Gerald McGwin Jr., told us that the journal retracted the article because it had become a tool in a lawsuit involving Pfizer, which makes Viagra, and, presumably, men who’d developed blindness after taking the drug:

The article just became too much of a pain in the rear end. It became one of those things where we couldn’t provide all the relevant documentation [to the university, which had to provide records for attorneys]

Ultimately, however, McGwin said that the BJO pulled the plug on the paper.

It was really the journal’s decision to take it out of the literature.

The retraction notice is mute on the reason for the retraction of the blindness paper (and, so far, our requests for comment seem to have fallen on deaf ears). Here’s all it says: Continue reading Retractile dysfunction? Author says journal yanked paper linking Viagra, Cialis to vision problem after legal threats

Feminism & Psychology study of UK birthing classes draws ire, winds up retracted

The debate — in entrenched medical circles, anyway — over whether it’s safe to give birth at home can be fierce. Just last month, for example, Nature reported that a review of the subject in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology that found home births more dangerous than those in the hospital generated so much controversy that it forced an investigation. Outside reviewers found problems, but the journal didn’t think they rose to the level of a retraction. Critics disagreed.

The same fraught subject came up in a paper published in Feminism & Psychology last year by Mary Horton-Salway and Abigail Locke. The original paper had concluded:

Our analysis suggests that the normativity of medical interventions in labour and childbirth is discursively reproduced in ante-natal classes whilst parental choice is limited by a powerful ‘rhetoric of risk’.

In other words, NCT classes were scaring women into choosing hospital births. But it turns out that conclusion wasn’t actually supported by the findings, which were based on a review of National Childbirth Trust’s classes. That led to a retraction: Continue reading Feminism & Psychology study of UK birthing classes draws ire, winds up retracted

Stanford group retracts JACS paper, but revisits and validates findings

A prominent Stanford University chemistry lab has been forced to retract a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). According to the retraction notice:

Due to inconsistencies between some of the assigned structures and the experimental data that appear in the paper, the authors retract this publication. We regret very much this unfortunate occurrence.

The Retraction Watch tipster who alerted us to this retraction explained what the original paper reported: Continue reading Stanford group retracts JACS paper, but revisits and validates findings

Another Cell retraction, and more questions than answers

A new retraction has appeared in the journal Cell. The article, “DNA-PKcs-PIDDosome: A Nuclear Caspase-2-Activating Complex with Role in G2/M Checkpoint Maintenance,” had initially appeared in February 2009.

According to the notice: Continue reading Another Cell retraction, and more questions than answers

Where did I park my car? Psychological Science retracts working memory study

In what might be considered a model for how retraction notices should look, Psychological Science has retracted a 2008 paper, “Gaining control: Executive training and far transfer of the ability to resolve interference.” According to the notice — which includes two tables: Continue reading Where did I park my car? Psychological Science retracts working memory study

NEJM retracts Potti paper

courtesy Duke

About a month ago, the New England Journal of Medicine told us that they didn’t “have any plans” to retract a paper by Anil Potti. Apparently, they’ve changed their minds.

Today, they posted this retraction notice: Continue reading NEJM retracts Potti paper

A Nature chain retraction for Arabidopsis paper, and some unanswered questions

courtesy Nature

If a paper is retracted, should papers that cite it get retracted, too? We’ve been on the lookout for this kind of move, which we figure is consistent with cleaning up the scientific record. Today, one appears in Nature.

The original paper, “Mediation of pathogen resistance by exudation of antimicrobials from roots,” purported to show how a particular bug evades the immune system of Arabidopsis, a plant commonly used in the lab. It has been cited 51 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

The retraction notice says that the paper’s conclusions could no longer be supported because one of the key references — a paper in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry by many of the same authors — had been retracted: Continue reading A Nature chain retraction for Arabidopsis paper, and some unanswered questions

No Potti retractions on the horizon from JAMA, NEJM

With the third retraction of a paper by Anil Potti this weekend, plus details of various investigations dribbling out, we decided to check in with the world’s two leading medical journals about whether they planned to retract the papers of Potti’s they’d published.

JAMA published two papers by Potti and colleagues: One, “Gene Expression Signatures, Clinicopathological Features, and Individualized Therapy in Breast Cancer,” appeared in 2008. It has been cited 51 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, and was the subject of two letters. In one, a correspondent expressed concerns about the lack of information in the study about Continue reading No Potti retractions on the horizon from JAMA, NEJM