Another busy week here at Retraction Watch, with many in the scientific world glued to their browsers for more information on the latest stem cell controversy. Hear Ivan on the BBC discussing what that story means for post-publication peer review. Elsewhere around the web:
An article in New Space, a journal about space travel, has been retracted because the results it presented weren’t ready for liftoff. The retraction notice appears as a letter from editor G. Scott Hubbard:
Yet another busy week at Retraction Watch, with one of us taking part in a symposium on the future of science journalism for a few days. (See if you can find Ivan in this picture.) Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web in science publishing and related issues:
Retraction Watch has learned that The Leadership Quarterly, a management journal published by Elsevier, plans to retract five papers by a Florida researcher poised to “rock” the field — but probably not quite in the way a press release intended — whose findings in the articles were questioned by readers. The scholar, Fred O. Walumbwa, … Continue reading Leadership journal to retract five papers from FIU scholar
Neuroskeptic featured an interesting situation over the weekend, involving a case report published in an anesthesiology journal. The case report in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care — about a six-year-old boy with a rare neurological condition who died following administration of anesthesia — caused the boy’s parents great distress when it appeared in November. Here’s the … Continue reading Journal and authors apologize “unreservedly” for distress caused to deceased child’s family by case report
Living Cell Technologies (LCT), a biotech company headquartered in Australia, has retracted a 2011 paper purporting to show that their product reversed Parkinson’s symptoms in rats after “being unable to reconfirm their reported results and a possible deviation from the protocol.” LCT is developing NTCELL, which, according to their site:
A group of exercise researchers at the University of Rome Tor Vergata has lost their May 2010 paper in BMC Physiology on the effects of marathon running on blood cells, because of figure irregularities. The article, “The effect of marathon on mRNA expression of anti-apoptotic and pro-apoptotic proteins and sirtuins family in male recreational long-distance runners,” … Continue reading Out of the running: Dodgy blots prompt retraction of paper on marathoning and cell death
We’ve found a third retraction for Karel Bezouška, the Czech scientist, who, as we reported this summer, broke into a lab in an attempt to tamper with experiments trying to replicate his own falsified data. The article, “Molecular Characterization of Binding of Calcium and Carbohydrates by an Early Activation Antigen of Lymphocytes CD69,” had appeared … Continue reading Third retraction for Karel Bezouška, of lab break-in fame
A heavily criticized study of the effects of genetically modified maize and the Roundup herbicide on rats is being retracted — one way or another. The paper — by Gilles Seralini and colleagues — was published in Food and Chemical Toxicology last year. There have been calls for retraction since then, along with other criticism … Continue reading Controversial Seralini GMO-rats paper to be retracted
Nature has retracted a controversial 2012 paper by a group from Johns Hopkins University which has been the subject of a protracted public dispute. The article, “Functional dissection of lysine deacetylases reveals that HDAC1 and p300 regulate AMPK,” came from the lab of Jef Boeke, a celebrated biochemist. But a former lab member, Daniel Yuan, … Continue reading Nature yanks controversial genetics paper whose co-author was found dead in lab in 2012