PLOS One has retracted a paper that links the most commonly used herbicide to ADHD, after it was “published in error.”
According to the note, the paper was “editorially rejected following peer review and consultation with the Editorial Board,” but ended up going through the production process anyway.
When we contacted the authors, they filled us in with more details.
Continue reading A mess: PLOS mistakenly publishes rejected ADHD-herbicide paper, retracts it
Two out of the three authors of a PNAS paper on mutations underlying lung diseases are pulling it after failing to reproduce key findings.
The paper, published in 2012, investigated how mutations in lung surfactant genes induce molecular changes that lead to lung pulmonary fibrosis and lung cancer might work. But follow-up work revealed problems. In the retraction note, last author Christine Kim Garcia and second author Christoper Cano, both at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, write:
Current members of the C.K.G. laboratory are unable to reproduce key findings reported in the paper.
Here’s the retraction note in full:
Dutch social psychologist and well-known fraudster Diederik Stapel is up to 55 retractions. He remains secure in his spot at #4 on our leaderboard.
The “fraudulent” Social Cognition article found, according to its abstract, that the more positively you perceive yourself, the less you need to compare yourself to other people. Conversely, negative thoughts were linked to more comparison to others. As an article in the New York Times points out, where Stapel’s faulty studies often succeeded is in telling us what we want to believe about the world.
Here’s the retraction note for the article:
Continue reading Diederik Stapel ups count to 55 retractions
The journal that recently published a bogus study showing the health benefits of chocolate has been kicked out of a membership organization for open access journals.
According to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the International Archives of Medicine was removed from the list of member journals August 20, due to “suspected editorial misconduct by publisher.”
The journal is still was listed in PubMed until November 2014.
According to the DOAJ website, membership to the organization serves as a stamp of approval for OA journals:
Continue reading Journal that published bogus chocolate study delisted from open access directory
A former graduate student at the University of California, San Francisco “knowingly falsified and/or fabricated” data in two published papers, according to the Office of Research Integrity.
According to a case summary published this morning, Peter Littlefield was working on his PhD, studying the ways that cells respond to external signals, when he published the two problematic papers. He is the first author on the papers; Natalia Jura, whose lab he worked in, is the last on both.
The report’s findings are based on, among other sources, “the respondent’s admission.”
The first paper, “Structural analysis of the EGFR/HER3 heterodimer reveals the molecular basis for activating HER3 mutations” was published in Science Signaling and has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Three figures in the paper are problematic, says the ORI summary:
Continue reading Former UCSF grad student fudged data in two papers
A paper on the evolution and development of urochordata — also known as sea squirts — was published in an under-developed form: Due to the publishers’ “error,” a “preliminary draft” of the article was published online in Developmental Dynamics last year.
The draft has been retracted; we can no longer find it on the site at all. The final copy of the paper has been posted in its place.
Here’s the retraction note in full for “Development, Metamorphosis, Morphology and Diversity: Evolution of Chordates muscles and the Origin of Vertebrates”:
Continue reading Sea squirt draft paper published by mistake
Community blog PLOS Biologue has pulled a post by journalists Charles Seife and Paul Thacker that argued in favor of public scrutiny of scientists’ behavior (including emails), following heavy criticism, including from a group and scientist mentioned in the post.
Their reasoning: The post was “not consistent with at least the spirit and intent of our community guidelines.”
The original post, published August 13, is no longer available online, but you can read it here. In the piece, Seife and Thacker lament what they call a recent backlash against transparency in science: Continue reading Following criticism, PLOS removes blog defending scrutiny of science
It may not be much of a surprise that narcissistic CEOs of pharmaceutical companies will make bold choices, such as adopting radically new technology. That idea remains true, despite a lengthy correction to a paper that supports it.
The paper, “CEO Narcissism, Audience Engagement, and Organizational Adoption of Technological Discontinuities,” in Administrative Science Quarterly, found support for the following hypothesis:
Continue reading Paper on narcissistic CEOs earns big correction
The week at Retraction Watch featured revelations of yet more fake peer reviews, bringing the retraction total to 250. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: “Unfeasibly prolific authors;” why your manuscript will be rejected; is science broken?
A former graduate student at Wake Forest School of Medicine “presented falsified and/or fabricated data” in a government-funded drug study, according to findings released by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity earlier today.
The report was released in the wake of an investigation conducted by the university and the ORI. Investigators found that although Brandi Blaylock recorded responses of a dozen laboratory monkeys after giving them anti-abuse drugs, she hadn’t given them the compounds “per protocol.”
Blaylock then presented the data at “two poster presentations, several laboratory meetings, and progress reports.”
Some of her research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, “Dopamine D2 Receptors In Primate Models of Cocaine Abuse,” which examined the effects of novel dopamine D3 receptor compounds on drug addiction on monkeys.
However, according to the report, Blaylock presented the falsified responses from a dozen monkeys: Continue reading Former Wake Forest grad student fudged data for drug study