Retraction Watch

New developments cause authors to pull paper on drugs’ environmental impact

The authors of an article about the effects of pharmaceutical drugs on the environment have retracted it before publishing the final version due to new developments in the field, which would have required a major revision.

The authors pulled the paper from Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management before it went through the final publication process – such as copyediting and proofreading – after they learned about new findings related to assessing to the risks of human exposures to pharmaceuticals in the environment.

We’d try to figure out which portions of the paper might need updating, but publisher Wiley recently pulled the original article and abstract, against the journal editor’s wishes.

Here’s the retraction note: Continue reading New developments cause authors to pull paper on drugs’ environmental impact

We have a new record: 80 years from publication to retraction

We have a new record for the longest time from publication to retraction: 80 years. It’s for a case report about a 24-year-old man who died after coughing up more than four cups of what apparently looked — and smelled — like pee.

According to the case report titled “Een geval van uroptoë” published in 1923, an autopsy revealed that the man had a kidney that was strangely located in his chest cavity. A case of pneumonia caused the kidney to leak urine into the space around his lungs, leading to the perplexing cough.

If that sounds too crazy to be true, you’re right: This man never existed. The case was retracted in 2003. (Yes, we are a little late to this one — it recently popped up in one of our Google alerts.)

A write-up by the editors of the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde — that translates to “Dutch Journal of Medicine” — explains that the strange case was a fake (on the fifth page of this PDF, in English):

Continue reading We have a new record: 80 years from publication to retraction

The Big (Retraction) Short: Securitized loans paper may get change of venue

A paper on the securitized loan industry’s pricing practices was pulled from the Journal of Finance, but may be appearing in another journal.

The Journal of Finance issued a notice of withdrawal, for “Who Facilitated Misreporting in Securitized Loans?” by John M. Griffin and Gonzalo Maturana, but does not say why it was taken out. Griffin’s web site notes that the paper is to be published in the Review of Financial Studies.

Here’s the note, dated Sept. 23: Continue reading The Big (Retraction) Short: Securitized loans paper may get change of venue

A bullshit excuse? My lab notebook “was blown into a manure pit”

A researcher who studies how to turn dairy cattle manure into natural gas falsified and fabricated data in a journal article and failed to declare a commercial conflict of interest, a Washington State University investigation has found.

The study “Evaluation of Co-Digestion at a Commercial Dairy Anaerobic Digester” was published in 2011 in the journal CLEAN: Soil, Air, Water. First author Craig Frear was a Ph.D. student at WSU Pullman when the study was carried out and an assistant professor at the time of the investigation. The editor-in-chief of CLEAN, Prisca Henheik, told us that the retraction is a done deal even though it has not been posted online: Continue reading A bullshit excuse? My lab notebook “was blown into a manure pit”

Cancer study pulled when published without supervisor’s consent

The Turkish Journal of Medical Sciences has retracted a paper after concerns surfaced from a researcher who claims to have supervised the research but was not listed as a co-author.

The first author completed the research — which explored the use of epigenetic alterations as potential early signs of cancer — as part of her master’s degree, under the supervision of Muy-Teck Teh at the Barts & The London School of Medicine & Dentistry. When Teh contacted the journal to say he had not consented to the publication, Ayesha Umair claimed she had paid for the research herself.

Here’s the retraction note for “Quantitative study of epigenetic signature in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma,” which tells us more about the dispute: Continue reading Cancer study pulled when published without supervisor’s consent

Nature retracts paper six years after it was flagged for fraud

Nature retracted a paper on protein structures today, six years after an investigation at the University of Alabama identified several structures that were “more likely than not falsified and/or fabricated” by one of the authors.

The paper came under scrutiny soon after it was published in 2006. A letter published in Nature that same year pointed out “physically implausible features in the structures it described.” That triggered the investigation at the University of Alabama, the result of which was published in 2009, identifying “nine publications related to the same protein structures that should be retracted from various scientific journals.” Everything was pinned on last author H.M. Krishna Murthy, who the investigation determined was “solely responsible for the fraudulent data.”

A 2009 Nature news article on the investigation declared that the “fraud is the largest ever in protein crystallography.”

We’re not sure what took Nature so long to retract the letter, titled “The structure of complement C3b provides insights into complement activation and regulation.” Here’s the note, which explains that not all the authors agreed to the retraction:

Continue reading Nature retracts paper six years after it was flagged for fraud

Why retraction shouldn’t always be the end of the story

When researchers raised concerns about a 2009 Science paper regarding a new way to screen for enzymatic activity, the lead author’s institution launched an investigation. The paper was ultimately retracted in 2010, citing “errors and omissions.”

It would seem from this example that the publishing process worked, and science’s ability to self-correct cleaned up the record. But not so to researchers Ferric Fang and Arturo Casadevall.

Fang, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and Casadevall, of Johns Hopkins — who have made names for themselves by studying retractions — note today in an article for Chemistry World that

Continue reading Why retraction shouldn’t always be the end of the story

Third retraction appears for Leiden researcher fired in 2013

A researcher who was fired from Leiden University Medical Center in 2013 for fraud has notched a third retraction, following an investigation by her former workplace.

When Leiden fired Annemie Schuerwegh, they announced two retractions of papers that contained manipulated data. This third retraction — the last, according to a spokesperson for the center — is for “a discrepancy between the data reported in the article and the original collected data,” per the note.

The 2011 paper, “Mast cells are the main interleukin 17-positive cells in anticitrullinated protein antibody-positive and -negative rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis synovium” published in Arthritis Research & Therapy, suggests the source of a protein involved in rheumatoid arthritis. It has been cited 51 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the retraction note:

Continue reading Third retraction appears for Leiden researcher fired in 2013

Voinnet’s notice count grows, as he notches his 18th correction

Olivier Voinnet, a high-profile plant scientist at ETH Zurich, has earned a mega-correction. It wrapped up a rough year for the biologist, which included his seventh retraction, and a CNRS investigation that found evidence of misconduct.

This latest correction, to a paper on the mechanisms behind RNA silencing in Arabidopsis, was published in RNA. The 2007 paper has been cited 101 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The corrigendum modifies three figures in total.

The notice is long, so we’re not going to post the whole thing here. The first error in “Transitivity in Arabidopsis can be primed, requires the redundant action of the antiviral Dicer-like 4 and Dicer-like 2, and is compromised by viral-encoded suppressor proteins” is a clarification to a legend:

Continue reading Voinnet’s notice count grows, as he notches his 18th correction