Nature is retracting a 2010 paper by a team from Princeton and Drexel on the workings of Plasmodium falciparum, which causes malaria in people. How that came about seems to have been a winding road. The article — a research letter — titled “Branched tricarboxylic acid metabolism in Plasmodium falciparum,” came from the Princeton lab … Continue reading Authors retract already-corrected Nature malaria paper
One of the two corrections recommended by a McGill committee for work by Maya Saleh and colleagues has appeared, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). As we reported last month, the committee found that two figures in [a] Nature paper had been “intentionally contrived and falsified.” One of those figures was duplicated … Continue reading Musical figures: PNAS paper corrected with version of “intentionally contrived and falsified” Nature figure
An associate professor at Montreal’s McGill University is correcting two papers, one of them in Nature, after a university committee found evidence of falsification, Retraction Watch has learned. Concerns had been raised about four papers by Maya Saleh and colleagues:
In baseball, it’s three strikes and you’re out. In Nature, apparently, you can stay at the plate after three swings-and-misses. That’s what we concluded from a Corrigendum in last week’s issue, for “CD95 promotes tumour growth,” originally published in May 2010 and now corrected not once, not twice, but three times. Here was the first … Continue reading The Nature paper that required three corrections
Maybe it’s an occupational hazard of dealing with quantum physics — uncertainty and all that — but a group of Swiss researchers has retracted their paper on quantum dots after discovering “major errors” that undermined their conclusions. The article, published in 2010 as a research letter in Nature Photonics, was titled “Polarization-entangled photons produced with … Continue reading “Major errors” lead to retraction of Nature Photonics paper on quantum dots
A second psychology researcher has resigned after statistical scrutiny of his papers by another psychologist revealed data that was too good to be true. Ed Yong, writing in Nature, reports that Lawrence Sanna, most recently of the University of Michigan, left his post at the end of May. That was several months after Uri Simonsohn, … Continue reading University of Michigan psychologist resigns following concerns by statistical sleuth Simonsohn: Nature
Shikeagi Kato, an endocrinologist formerly of the University of Tokyo who resigned on March 31 amidst an investigation into his work, has retracted another paper, this one in Nature. Here’s the notice for “DNA demethylation for hormone-induced transcriptional derepression,” which was the subject of a correction last October:
Last week, we wrote about a correction of a heavily criticized paper in The Lancet by the Millennium Villages Project, a large aid program. Paul Pronyk, director of monitoring and evaluation at Columbia University’s Center for Global Health and Economic Development, which runs the Project, left his job shortly after writing an explanatory letter that … Continue reading Former Millennium Villages Project staffer responds to critical Nature editorial
After five years of operation, the Nature Publishing Group is will no longer accept submissions to its preprint server Nature Precedings, having found the experiment “unsustainable as it was originally conceived.” Here’s the announcement sent to all Nature Precedings registrants this morning:
If there’s one consistent lesson of covering retractions, it’s that science doesn’t stop when researchers publish a paper. But what also seems true is that once a paper is published, lots of people — authors and editors, in particular — are often reluctant to say just what’s happened next, particularly if it casts the study … Continue reading Stop fetishizing the scientific paper: Our invited Comment in Nature