A journal has pulled a paper about tools to knock out a key transcription factor because of a conflict between the authors.
The retracted article is “Generation of Knock down Tools for Transcription Factor 7-like-2 (TCF7L2) and Evaluation of its Expression Pattern in Developing Chicken Optic Tectum,” published just last year in MicroRNA.
We’ll get right to the reason — the retraction note provides one short one:
Continue reading Mystery conflict between authors fells molecular bio paper
Authors have retracted a case report describing a surgery to remove gallstones in a patient with Crohn’s disease after learning they’d mixed up two cases, and instead reported on a patient who had died 21 days after the procedure.
We were alerted to this story by La Repubblica, and contacted by the son of the patient (who asked not to be named, for privacy reasons). He told us he found the study and asked the journal to retract it:
…I can say that it was absolutely devastating to realise that the pictures I was looking at were from the surgery that led to the death of my father. It is something that gives me a lot of sorrow thinking that the man in that picture with the open belly was him, when he was fighting for his life. I asked the rest of my family not to see them to avoid them the same shock.
Even before the retraction appeared, we received confirmation it was coming from Giuseppe Paolisso, the Principal of the School of Medicine at the Second University of Naples, where the authors are based: Continue reading Son sees dead father in case report, requests retraction
A journal has retracted a paper on a controversial course of treatment used to stunt the growth of disabled children, at the request of the human research ethics committee at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.
The paper described the so-called Ashley Treatment — explored last week in the New York Times — in which disabled children receive hormones and procedures to keep them small and diminish the effects of puberty, making it easier for them to be cared for. The retracted paper analyzed the use of the treatment in a girl named Charley who was born in New Zealand with a brain injury, whose case has attracted the attention of The Washington Post and People magazine, among other outlets.
The paper analyzed Charley’s case, and did not involve any clinical subjects. But the retraction note suggests that the ethics of publishing this paper weren’t fully worked out:
Thrombosis Research has removed an abstract after all seven authors authors listed did not know that it had been submitted for publication.
We’ve seen many instances of some authors not being in on a submission, but a case in which all of the authors are in the dark? That’s new to us.
A spokesperson for Elsevier, the journal’s publisher, told us that the organizers of a conference submitted it to the journal as part of a supplement for a meeting, unbeknownst to the authors.
Here’s the odd “removal notice” for “The Characterisation of the Age-Specific Differences in Platelet Physiology and Function:”
Continue reading How does an abstract get published without any of the authors knowing?
An unusual article that considered the concept of change from a systems perspective — including change in medicine, economics, and decision-making, for instance — has, well, changed from “published” to “retracted.”
After commenters on PubPeer called the 2014 paper “gibberish” and even suggested it might be computer-generated, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience retracted it, noting it “does not meet the standards of editorial and scientific soundness” for the journal, according to the retraction notice. The paper’s editor and author maintain there was nothing wrong with the science in the paper.
Here’s the full note for “Sensing risk, fearing uncertainty: systems science approach to change:” Continue reading Neuroscience journal retracts paper for lack of “scientific soundness”
This isn’t a scientific paper being retracted, but given the subject, and that we led Weekend Reads with it this morning, we think it merits a post: A film by Andrew Wakefield, infamous for the now-retracted paper he co-authored in The Lancet linking autism and vaccines, has been withdrawn from the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival.
The announcement of the Tribeca lineup, which included the film, “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” earlier this week was met with surprise and objections. As of yesterday, however, festival co-founder Robert De Niro defended the screening, saying he and his wife, who have a child with autism, thought it was “critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined.”
De Niro has apparently changed his mind. As per Jezebel, here is De Niro’s statement from this afternoon (Saturday): Continue reading Tribeca Film Festival pulls Wakefield vaccine film from schedule
The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper on the potential dangers of Wi-Fi, and our 3,000th post. Also, have you taken our survey? Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Fraudster rises again as filmmaker; Elsevier, open access publisher?; unethical ethics research
The National Football League failed to include data from diagnosed concussions in peer-reviewed studies, making the sport look safer than it is, allege the results of an investigation published yesterday in the New York Times. Now, the paper and the NFL are arguing over whether the studies were supposed to include every instance of head injury.
Early studies on concussion rates published in the journal Neurosurgery left out at least 100 instances of of concussions, the Times reported. The Times and the NFL disagree on the implications of studies based on an incomplete data set: Sources told the Times that it’s bad science, while the NFL explains that the studies were “necessarily preliminary.”
Yesterday afternoon, the sports league published a statement saying that the Times story “is contradicted by clear facts” and “sensationalized.” The statement argued that: Continue reading NFL and NYT collide: Did studies on concussion rates leave out necessary data?
A father and son are fighting over whether a laser therapy they describe as co-authors of a 2015 paper could be harmful to patients, prompting the journal to retract the article.
The small study suggested that the therapy could safely treat patients with glaucoma. But Tomislav Ivandic — the father — alleges that errors in how the study was reported could lead to harmful doses of laser light for patients receiving the therapy. His son and co-author, Boris Ivandic, maintains that the article is accurate.
To err on the side of patient safety, Photomedicine and Laser Surgery retracted “Effects of Photobiomodulation Therapy on Patients with Primary Open Angle Glaucoma: A Pilot Study.”
The retraction note explains the dispute:
Continue reading Family squabble over safety of eye therapy forces journal to pull paper
Four expressions of concern in the journal Diabetes have turned into retractions for Mario Saad, a move which he had tried to stop with a lawsuit.
Last August, a judge dismissed Saad’s suit against the American Diabetes Association, which publishes Diabetes, concluding that the expressions of concerns on the papers were not defamation, but part of an “ongoing scientific discourse.” Now, after an investigation at the University of Campinas in Brazil, where Saad is based, and an assessment from an ADA ethics panel (which overturned some of Unicamp’s recommendations), the journal has added to that discourse by turning the EOCs into retractions — and flagging two more of Saad’s papers with EOCs.
Together, the retracted papers have been cited more than 600 times.
As the retraction notes explain, Continue reading Lawsuit couldn’t stop four retractions for diabetes researcher