Neuro journal pulls comatose brain abstract due to “several mistakes”

clinical neurophysiologySwiss researchers have retracted an abstract in Clinical Neurophysiology because only one of them actually knew about the paper — and what he submitted had “several mistakes.”

The abstract, about electric impulses in the brain of comatose patients, originally appeared as a poster at the June 2014 joint meeting of multiple Swiss neuroscience societies. It was submitted by first author Alexandre Simonin, who lists his affiliation as the University Hospital of Lausanne, a Swiss hospital.

The meeting proceedings ran in the October issue of Clinical Neurophysiology. Besides the issues of authorship and errors, the notice also says the abstract “potentially conflicts with another publication,” suggesting the data might have already appeared in a paper.

Here’s the notice for “P02. Predicting the outcome of post-anoxic comatose patients based on single-trial EEG analysis”: Continue reading Neuro journal pulls comatose brain abstract due to “several mistakes”

Are retractions more frequent in stem cell research?

sci eng ethicsThere are a number of fields that seem to punch above their weight on Retraction Watch: Anesthesiology, home to the world record holder (and runner-up), and psychology, home to Diederik Stapel and others. But the red-hot field of stem cell research is another that makes frequent appearances, last year’s STAP controversy being particularly prominent.

There’s an interesting (but unfortunately paywalled) recent paper in Science and Engineering Ethics, “The Acid Test for Biological Science: STAP Cells, Trust, and Replication,” by Cheryl Lancaster, a small part of which tries to answer that question.

Lancaster applies the same methods Fang, Steen, and Casadevall used to broadly measure the causes of retractions in all life science and biomedicine to the specific field of stem cell research: Continue reading Are retractions more frequent in stem cell research?

David Vaux: Nature’s decision to add double-blind peer review is good, but could be better

David Vaux, a cell biologist at the Walter + Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, explains how Nature could do more to remove bias from the peer review process. He previously wrote about his decision to retract a paper.

vaux
David Vaux

Last week, Nature announced that they are to offer authors of papers submitted to Nature or the monthly Nature research journals the option of having their manuscripts assessed by double-blind peer review, in which reviewers are blinded to the identity of authors and their institutions. Until now, papers sent to Nature, and most other journals, have been reviewed by a single-blind process, in which the reviewers know the identities and affiliations of the authors, but the authors are not told who the reviewers are. The goal of double-blind peer review is for submitted papers to be judged on their scientific merit alone, and thus to reduce publication bias.

While Nature should be applauded for this move, the way they have implemented it leaves room for improvement.

Continue reading David Vaux: Nature’s decision to add double-blind peer review is good, but could be better

Judge denies motion by researcher to quash Diabetes expressions of concern

Mario Saad, via unicamp.br
Mario Saad, via unicamp.br

American Diabetes Association 1, Mario Saad 0.

As reported by the National Law Journal, a federal judge in Boston has denied Saad’s requests to stop the ADA’s flagship journal, Diabetes, from publishing expressions of concern about four of Saad’s papers, and to prevent the journal from retracting the studies.

Saad filed suit against the ADA on February 5. Judge Timothy Hillman wrote in his order yesterday that approving the researcher’s motion would have violated the right to free speech: Continue reading Judge denies motion by researcher to quash Diabetes expressions of concern

Frontiers lets HIV denial article stand, reclassifies it as “opinion”

frontiers phFollowing an investigation sparked by criticism for its decision to publish a paper questioning the link between HIV and AIDS, a Frontiers journal has decided to not retract the article but rebrand it as an “opinion.”

In September, 2014, Patricia Goodson, a professor of health education at Texas A&M University, published an article called “Questioning the HIV-AIDS hypothesis: 30 years of dissent.”

The paper was quickly called into question, and the journal, Frontiers in Public Health, issued a statement of concern and promised to look into the problem. Now, they’ve announced their solution: call the paper an “opinion” and publish an argument against it.

Continue reading Frontiers lets HIV denial article stand, reclassifies it as “opinion”

Stats mistake crashes bike accident paper

Image via Thomas Hawk
Image via Thomas Hawk

Two researchers at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada have retracted a paper that came to fairly common-sense conclusions about bike safety.

In the September 2014 issue of the Journal of Transport and Health, the authors concluded that slippery road surfaces, night-time biking, and higher speed limits were all associated with higher probabilities of a bicycle accident.

Despite these logical conclusions, the authors discovered a statistical error that “would significantly change the discussion,” according to the retraction notice.

Continue reading Stats mistake crashes bike accident paper

A rare event: Toronto Star retracts fear-mongering vaccine story

TorontoStarOriginalGardasilHeadlineFifteen days after publishing a widely-criticized article linking anecdotal health problems to the HPV vaccine Gardasil, the Toronto Star has issued a retraction.

The Page 1 story, “A wonder drug’s dark side,” was full of health horror stories from women who became sick “sometime after” the vaccine, as the retraction notes – twitching limbs, feeding tubes, even death. Each of these stories came from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a public database of anecdotes maintained by the U.S. government to help monitor rare side effects that might emerge when the vaccine is given to millions of people.

In mining this database of self-reported illness, the Star failed to give equal weight to the large body of scientific evidence that says Gardasil has very low rates of adverse effects and a huge public health benefit. The publisher’s note both acknowledges the criticism and explains where the story went wrong:

Continue reading A rare event: Toronto Star retracts fear-mongering vaccine story

Journal stops asking authors to stack citations following Retraction Watch post

After we flagged a journal that was asking authors to cite the journal in order to boost its impact factor, the journal’s website has now removed the request from its author information page.

We noted on February 9 that the Thammasat International Journal of Science and Technology‘s author information page had a helpful suggestion: Continue reading Journal stops asking authors to stack citations following Retraction Watch post

More black marks against unapproved protein touted as miracle cure

clinical immunologyA protein which is sold online as a cure for everything from autism to cancer and the focus of multiple retracted papers has earned more black marks: The UK government’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has issued a warning about its use after discovering problems in the factory, and a journal has removed the last author from a paper touting its benefits in HIV.

The protein, vitamin D-binding protein-derived macrophage activating factor (GcMAF), is supposedly a natural activator of macrophages. The website GcMAF.eu continues to hawk the results of treatment, while the Anticancer Fund has been pushing journals to correct the record on GcMAF. Continue reading More black marks against unapproved protein touted as miracle cure

Weekend reads: Why some scientists lie, the state of academic integrity in Iran, Nature goes double-blind

booksThe week at Retraction Watch featured Matlab miscoding and a look at how often a retracted paper was cited. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Why some scientists lie, the state of academic integrity in Iran, Nature goes double-blind