If Retraction Watch was actually a business, as opposed — for the moment, anyway — to a labor of love for two guys with day jobs, 2011 would have been a very good year for business. It was a year that will probably see close to 400 retractions, including a number of high-profile ones, once … Continue reading The Year of the Retraction: A look back at 2011
“Clare Francis,” a prolific pseudonymous Retraction Watch tipster, emailed us recently to flag a retraction in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (JSBMB) of “The anti-inflammatory activity of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 in macrophages,” a paper by Amos Douvdevani and colleagues at Ben Gurion University in Israel. Here’s what we found when we clicked on the notice for the … Continue reading Mistaken notice as Ben Gurion researchers retract vitamin D paper for duplication
This past April, Amparo Acker-Palmer and colleagues published a study in Nature, “Ephrin Bs are essential components of the Reelin pathway to regulate neuronal migration.” Within a day of its publication, Nature readers were raising questions about many of its figures. They started like this: Andy Gu said: Looks like Fig 1a, the two middle … Continue reading You can do that? A massive correction in Nature, but no retraction
Four neurology journals have retracted articles by a Japanese researcher who admitted to having made “mistakes” in his handling of data. Although the cases are related, the way the journals have handled the notices is startlingly different. One chose to say nothing, one chose to say little, while two went for full — or at … Continue reading The ‘Goldilocks’ retraction? Revealing differences in how several neurology journals handled related problems
Kalasalingam University in India has fired a professor who last month blamed unethical students for data manipulation that forced the retraction of three papers amid questions about five more. As Krishna Pillai of the K2P blog reports, Sangiliyandi Gurunathan, head of Kalasalingam’s biotechnology department, was asked to resign, and did so on Friday, August 5. Kalasalingam also revoked … Continue reading India’s Kalasalingam University swiftly fires professor, kicks out six students after data manipulation scandal
Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the launch of Retraction Watch. We’d like to thank our readers, tipsters, and fans for your support and feedback — and our helpful critics who have spurred us to do better. Over the past 12 months we’ve written more than 250 posts about retractions ranging from the extraordinary — think … Continue reading Happy anniversary, Retraction Watch: What we’ve learned, and what’s in store for year two
When a group of researchers last year claimed to have found a “genetic signature” to identify people likely to live to 100, they were questioned immediately. Now they’ve retracted the controversial paper — but continue to stand behind their assertion. The paper had been the subject of an “Expression of Concern” in November. The retraction … Continue reading Sebastiani group retracts genetics of aging study from Science
The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) has retracted four studies done in a Mount Sinai School of Medicine lab whose principal investigator died last month. The studies, by the late Maria Diverse-Pierluissi and colleagues, were as follows: N-type Ca2+ channels as scaffold proteins in the assembly of signaling molecules for GABA-B receptor effects (cited 9 … Continue reading Four mysterious retractions in the JBC for a group whose PI recently passed away
Retraction Watch readers are likely to be familiar with Germany’s Research Center Borstel, because it is home to Silvia Bulfone-Paus, who has recently retracted 12 papers. Now it turns out that Borstel’s managing director, Peter Zabel — who was involved in the Bulfone-Paus investigation — has stepped down because of allegations of duplication of his … Continue reading Borstel hit with more potential misconduct as managing director steps down amid questions of plagiarism
There’s helpful but uninformative: Ivan: What’s the weather like today? Adam: Sunny. And then there’s uninformative as served up by the Journal of Biological Chemistry. We’ve already recounted one teeth-grinding experience with the JBC, a publication of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The case involved two papers in JBC by Axel Ullrich, … Continue reading Freedom from Information Act? Another JBC retraction untarnished by any facts