Blood has an interesting retraction of a 2011 paper on what a group of authors claimed was a new cell line — but which proved, apparently, to be a chimera. The article, “Oxygen-regulated expression of the erythropoietin gene in the human renal cell line REPC,” came from a team at Universität Duisburg-Essen, in Germany, and … Continue reading Contaminated cells force retraction of Blood paper
Another busy week at Retraction Watch, which kicked off with our announcement that we’re hiring a paid intern. Here’s what was happening elsewhere around the web:
A group of authors at the University of Oklahoma have retracted a 2013 paper on ethics training after the university found that the data they used couldn’t be shared publicly. Here’s the notice for “Improving Case-Based Ethics Training: How Modeling Behaviors and Forecasting Influence Effectiveness:”
A group of researchers in Tokyo has lost their 2013 article in the Journal of Crystal Growth over commercial interests — which don’t appear to be their own. We’ll explain. The article, “Interactions between planar defects in bulk 3C-SiC,” came from a team consisting of a researcher at Keio University and scientists at two companies, … Continue reading Crystal unclear? “Business decision” forces retraction of silicon paper
Last month, researchers published a paper whose conclusions suggested that looking at Arctic sea ice in the autumn offers clues to winter temperatures in Europe. The letter appeared — briefly, as this post will demonstrate — in Nature Geoscience. The letter, titled “High predictability of the winter Euro–Atlantic climate from cryospheric variability,” was written by … Continue reading Faulty model forces rapid retraction of paper on sea ice and climate change
We have some updates on the case of more than 120 fake SCIgen conference proceedings papers that slipped into IEEE and Springer journals.
Over the past week, there have been a number of comments on PubPeer — a site of which we’re big fans — about a 2007 paper in Oncogene. The comments suggested that the figures in the paper had problems. Some bands seemed to be duplicated, and one of the images looked very much like that … Continue reading Brutal honesty: Author takes to PubPeer to announce retraction — and tells us she’ll lose PhD, professorship
Almost two years ago, we brought you — with the help of Trevor Stokes — the story of a stem cell researcher in Korea whose publication record, and career, unraveled after evidence of image manipulation surfaced in her work. We’ve reported on four retractions, all in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, by Soo-Kyung Kang, formerly of Seoul … Continue reading Stem cell researcher in Korea up to half a dozen retractions
The Journal of Biological Chemistry has an illuminating retraction notice — we’re happy to be able to say — about a 2001 article from a group of researchers at the National University of Singapore. The paper, “Intracellular acidification triggered by mitochondrial-derived hydrogen peroxide is an effector mechanism for drug-induced apoptosis in tumor cells,” was written … Continue reading Data highjinx forces retraction of tumor paper in JBC
A group of neonatal researchers in Caen has lost their 2013 review article in Archives of Disease in Childhood Fetal & Neonatal Edition for a variety of problems with their analysis of the data. The article was titled “NIDCAP in preterm infants and the neurodevelopmental effect in the first 2 years,” and its first author was … Continue reading Multiple data errors force retraction of paper about preemies