Retraction Watch

“Commendable”: Researchers retract a paper when they find gene sequence errors

Researchers in Italy have retracted a 2019 paper on the genetics of a form of herpes virus after determining that the genomic sequences they thought they’d been analyzing proved to be something else.

The paper, “A complex evolutionary relationship between HHV-6A and HHV-6B,” appeared in July in Virus Evolution, an Oxford University Press title. The authors came from the Scientific Institute IRCCS in Lecco, and the University of Milan.

The article purported to find that:

Award-winning researcher in India retracts two papers, corrects three

Kithiganahalli Narayanaswamy Balaji, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, has retracted two papers and corrected three for duplication of images.

Balaji, who won the 2011 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize from India’s Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) “for outstanding contributions to science and technology,” is last author of the five papers, which were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) from 2008 to 2015.

The authors take responsibility for what they call “inadvertent mistakes.” The retraction notice for “Pathogen-specific TLR2 protein activation programs macrophages to induce Wnt-β-catenin signaling,” for example, concludes as follows:

Weekend reads: Stolen identity and peer review; key heart data concealed; psychology’s ‘collective self-deception’

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

The retraction of a paper claiming a link between the HPV vaccine and lower pregnancy rates;
Whistleblowers in a recent case speaking out;
Two expressions of concern for a Cambridge researcher;
The retraction of a paper on creativity for duplication.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

‘The policy of Creativity Research Journal is to consider only original material.’ Prominent Cornell professor has another paper retracted for duplication.

Robert Sternberg, a Cornell psychology professor whose work has earned three retractions for duplication, has had another paper retracted for the same reason.

Here’s the notice:

‘A long and lonely process:’ Whistleblowers in a misconduct case speak out

Last week, we reported on a case at the University of Leiden in which the institution found that a former psychology researcher there had committed research misconduct. In the anonymized report — which we were able to confirm regarded Lorenza Colzato, who is listed as a faculty member at Ruhr University in Bochum and at TU Dresden — the university found a lack of ethics approval for some studies and fabricating results in some grant applications. We asked the three whistleblowers in the case — Bryant Jongkees, Roberta Sellaro, and Laura Steenbergen — to reflect on their experiences. (We should note that they did not confirm it was Colzato named in the report.)

Retraction Watch (RW): What prompted you to come forward?

Journal retracts paper claiming a link between the HPV vaccine and lower pregnancy rates

A paper on the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) that was called a “very flawed and biased study with the potential of being misinterpreted or misused” has been retracted.

‘Exceptionally silly mistakes’: PLOS ONE flags two papers by Cambridge researcher for image issues

A researcher at the University of Cambridge has had two papers subjected to expressions of concern by the editors of PLOS ONE for image problems.

The expressions of concern for “The Coordination of Cell Growth during Fission Yeast Mating Requires Ras1-GTP Hydrolysis” and “The Role of the RACK1 Ortholog Cpc2p in Modulating Pheromone-Induced Cell Cycle Arrest in Fission Yeast” are extensive. They both refer to multiple “discontinuities,” “similarities,” and other issues.

The common author on the two papers is Graham Ladds, who told Retraction Watch that no other papers would be affected. He said that

Authors retract two studies on high blood pressure and supplements after realizing they’d made a common error

A group of researchers from Iran, Italy and the UK have retracted two meta-analyses on supplements and high blood pressure after making what a statistics expert calls a common error.

Both papers were originally published in the Journal of Human Hypertension. Here’s the retraction notice for “Elevated blood pressure reduction after α-lipoic acid supplementation: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials:”

Weekend reads: Leading stem cell researcher’s work under scrutiny; faked drug trial data; troubling China practice snares publisher

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Researchers suing a journal over a retraction;
A publisher retracting nearly 50 papers at once;
A psychology researcher who committed misconduct, according to her former university;
Two retractions of papers claiming a link between exposure to violence and aggressive behavior.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Journal retracts two papers linking exposure to violence to aggressive behavior

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

A journal on adolescent issues has retracted a pair of papers linking exposure to violent media to aggressive behavior in youth after critics questioned the validity of the data.

The studies, which appeared in Youth & Society, were led by Qian Zhang, of Southwest University in Chongqing, China and were published in 2018.

According to the retraction notice, which covers both “Short-term exposure to movie violence and implicit aggression during adolescence,” and “The priming effect of violent game play on aggression among adolescents”:

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