PLoS ONE has issued two Expressions of Concern on unrelated studies, each of which offers plenty to be concerned about — and not just about the research itself. One is a casualty of our old friend, Jesús Lemus, the Spanish veterinary scientist accused of fabricating his data. The article, titled “The PHA-Skin Test Reflects Acquired … Continue reading A pair of expressions of concern in PLOS ONE over vet science papers
PLOS ONE has retracted an article it published earlier this year by a group from Australia who failed to receive adequate ethics approval for their study. The paper, “Late Complications of Clinical Clostridium Histolyticum Collagenase Use in Dupuytren’s Disease,” came from Warren M. Rozen, Yasith Edirisinghe and John Crock (sorry, irony machine not working today). Dupuytren’s causes thickening of the … Continue reading PLoS ONE retracts paper on treatment of tissue disease for lack of ethical approval, erroneous data
It’s pretty impressive to publish two peer-reviewed papers on complicated vaccination models while you’re still in high school. So it’s not surprising that Nathan Georgette, who grew up outside of Jacksonville, Florida, earned a prestigious fellowship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. But perhaps even more impressive is realizing you’ve made a fundamental error … Continue reading High school whiz kid retracts PLoS ONE herd immunity paper
Last month, we reported on a PLoS ONE paper about genetically modified cassava — or, more correctly, allegedly GMO cassava — that was being retracted because data “could not be found.” We have an update on that story, namely that a paper relying on materials from that lab will be retracted, and that authors of a review … Continue reading The domino effect: More retractions of papers that cited retracted PLoS ONE GMO cassava study
The authors of a paper suggesting that cassava, a starchy vegetable that’s a major food source in much of the developing world, could one day be turned into a food staple “capable of supplying inexpensive, plant-based proteins for food, feed and industrial applications” have retracted it, following an institutional investigation that failed to find critical … Continue reading PLoS ONE GMO cassava paper retracted after data “could not be found”
PLoS ONE has issued an expression of concern over a 2010 paper by Chinese scientists about how the immune system responds to the vaccine against the swine flu. The article, “Protection Induced on Day 10 Following Administration of the 2009 A/H1N1 Pandemic Influenza Vaccine,” claimed to study 58 subjects given the inoculation (more on that … Continue reading PLoS ONE expresses concern over flu vaccine paper
Today, without us having planned it, has become the day of retracted papers that found a new home. This morning, we posted an item about a chimp “culture” paper that was retracted from Biology Letters after its authors found some errors, and then published, with corrections, in the Journal of Human Evolution. This afternoon, we … Continue reading Sebastiani and Perls longevity genes work finds a new home in PLoS ONE following Science retraction
PLoS One and Nature Medicine have issued corrections for papers by Zhiguo Wang, the former Montreal Heart Institute researcher who resigned in September following an investigation into image manipulation in his lab. In September, PLoS One told us that they were investigating the paper. Here’s the text of the correction for “Transcriptional and Post-Transcriptional Mechanisms for Oncogenic Overexpression of … Continue reading Corrections in PLoS One, Nature Medicine for Zhiguo Wang, and details about Montreal Heart Institute investigation
On September 28, PLoS One published a paper, “The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence II: What about Asperger Syndrome?” But rather than celebrate another publication for her CV, one of the authors, Michelle Dawson, of Centre d’Excellence en Troubles Envahissants du Développement de l’Université de Montréal (CETEDUM) in Montréal, wasn’t happy. The PLoS One editors had … Continue reading Concerns over language in PLoS One autism paper lead to brief withdrawal and correction
Anil Potti and his former Duke colleagues have retracted a sixth paper, this one in PLoS ONE. According to the retraction notice for “An Integrated Approach to the Prediction of Chemotherapeutic Response in Patients with Breast Cancer,” the withdrawal was prompted by the retraction of a Nature Medicine paper that formed the basis of the … Continue reading Potti retraction tally grows to six with a withdrawal in PLoS ONE, and will likely end up near a dozen