Freedom from Information Act? Another JBC retraction untarnished by any facts

There’s helpful but uninformative:

Ivan: What’s the weather like today?

Adam: Sunny.

And then there’s uninformative as served up by the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

We’ve already recounted one teeth-grinding experience with the JBC, a publication of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The case involved two papers in JBC by Axel Ullrich, an esteemed cancer researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. According to Ullrich, one of his then-postdocs, Naohito Aoki, had manipulated figures that appeared in the papers, necessitating their retraction.

Round two involves another JBC retraction of a 2000 paper by Aoki and co-author Tsukasa Matsuda, titled ‘A cytosolic protein-tyrosine phosphatase PTP1B specifically dephosphorylates and deactivates prolactin-activated STAT5a and STAT5b.’ The paper has been cited more than 100 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

According to the notice: Continue reading Freedom from Information Act? Another JBC retraction untarnished by any facts

Another retraction of Spirocor research

Remember Spirocor, the Israeli company that closed down a clinical trial involving its “respiratory stress” test for coronary artery disease because the data underpinning the validity of the method proved unreliable? The problem led to the retraction of two articles, about which we’ve previously reported. But we also found a study by some of the same researchers, who include scientists in Israel and the United States, that had been presented at the 2010 meeting of the American Heart Association and published in the journal Circulation.

That abstract, No. 14426 “Accuracy and Usefulness of Finger Pulse Wave Analysis during Brief Deep Breathing Exercise (Respiratory Stress Response) as a Marker of Significant Coronary Artery Disease,” has now been retracted — making, to our knowledge, the entire body of published research on the Spirocor product an editorial memory.

Here’s the notice, which appears within the text of the abstract: Continue reading Another retraction of Spirocor research

Sigh: “The purpose of keeping these retraction notices slim is not to produce too much detail”

Regular readers of this blog by now know that one of our goals is to make retractions as open and informative as possible. Which is why when they’re not, we get irritated that not everyone seems to agree.

Consider the editors of Computational and Theoretical Chemistry, which this month has retracted two papers from a group of researchers in Iran. The articles were titled “Determination of the electrode potentials for substituted 1,2-dihydroxybenzenes in aqueous solution: Theory and experiment” first published online in July 2006 and cited 25 times, according to the Thomson Scientific Web of Knowledge, and “Calculation of electrode potentials of 5-(1,3-dioxo-2-phenyl-indan-2-yl)-2,3-dihydroxy-benzoic acid, molecular structure and vibrational spectra: A combined experimental and computational study,” which appeared in December 2006. (Both articles were published in the journal’s previous incarnation as the Journal of  Molecular Structure: THEOCHEM.)

The reason given in each case  is the same — and tantalizingly cryptic: Continue reading Sigh: “The purpose of keeping these retraction notices slim is not to produce too much detail”

In a retraction’s wake: Postdoc Shane Mayack, dismissed from Amy Wagers’ stem cell lab, speaks out

 

Last October, Retraction Watch readers will recall, up-and-coming stem cell researcher Amy Wagers retracted a study in Nature describing how her team rejuvenated blood-forming stem cells in older mice. Shane Mayack, a postdoc in Wagers’ lab who had been dismissed after an inquiry into what happened, did not sign that retraction. Since then, Mayack has not spoken to the press, except for a brief comment to Nature through her attorney.

Here, we present, unedited, Mayack’s side of the story. While accepting responsibility, she also has a number of suggestions for how universities and journals can handle these situations better. Shane can be reached at smayck[at]yahoo.com.

Since it was well covered by this blog, the readers of Retraction Watch are no doubt aware that in October 2010, a paper that I co-authored was retracted from Nature and a notice of concern was posted regarding a second paper published in Blood.

So, what went wrong? Continue reading In a retraction’s wake: Postdoc Shane Mayack, dismissed from Amy Wagers’ stem cell lab, speaks out

More on Applied Mathematics Letters: Journal retracted paper questioning second law of thermodynamics

Have you read yesterday’s post on a retraction in Applied Mathematics Letters yet? (If you haven’t, you’ve missed the explanation of how “Both science and spirituality came from space,” along with other oddities. We’ll wait while you go read it.) But for those of you who have, it turns out that this wasn’t the first retraction of a bizarre paper in the journal this year.

In January, Granville Sewell, of the University of Texas, El Paso’s math department, published a paper there called “A Second Look at The Second Law.” Its abstract: Continue reading More on Applied Mathematics Letters: Journal retracted paper questioning second law of thermodynamics

Faked data, unsubstantiated claims, and spirituality add up to a math journal retraction

Sometimes, things just don’t add up. Take this retraction notice, from the March 2011 issue of Applied Mathematics Letters:

This article has been retracted at the request of the editor as the authors have falsified mathematical findings and have made unsubstantiated claims regarding Euclid’s parallel postulate (Appl. Math. Lett. 23 (2010) 1137–1139. doi:10.1016/j.aml.2010.05.003). This article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

There’s actually only one author, an M. Sivasubramanian, of Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology, Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, India, but we’re not PhDs in math, so we figured we were missing something important. Fortunately, Ben Steinberg, a high school friend of one of ours — Ivan’s — is a bit of a math rock star and a professor at Carleton University. We asked him for his take:

I am not sure which is more amusing, the article or the retraction. I cannot understand how this could possibly be published anywhere. It seems like a practical joke to test whether articles are actually refereed. Not a single statement in the author’s “proof” makes sense. Continue reading Faked data, unsubstantiated claims, and spirituality add up to a math journal retraction

As last of 12 promised Bulfone-Paus retractions appears, a (disappointing) report card on journal transparency

The final two retractions by Silvia Bulfone-Paus and colleagues, among the 12 promised by Research Centre Borstel following an investigation into scientific misconduct, have appeared. Both are in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), and read as follows:

This article has been withdrawn by the authors.

We find that near-complete lack of information frustrating, not to mention useless to the scientific community. Unfortunately, it’s par for the course when it comes to the JBC and Bulfone-Paus retractions. The other three said exactly the same thing.

With that in mind, we thought it would be worth looking at all 12 retraction notices, as a sort of case series in journals’ transparency. We often look at particular retractions in a vacuum, but here was a chance to look at 12 papers, all retracted for the same reason, to see how each journal reported the withdrawal.

Here are the 12, in rough order, worst to best, based on how useful they are to scientists coming across them: Continue reading As last of 12 promised Bulfone-Paus retractions appears, a (disappointing) report card on journal transparency

Aftermath: Gut-wrenching misstep leads to retraction, frayed feelings and a paperless postdoc

Graham Ellis-Davies says January 25th was one of the worst days of his life. That was when the journal ChemBioChem retracted an article, published barely two weeks earlier, for a mistake Ellis-Davies blames squarely on himself.

The fallout has been nearly two months of painful self-recrimination, a tattered friendship and, perhaps most significant, he adds, the wasted effort of a postdoc who poured months of research into a now worthless publication. Continue reading Aftermath: Gut-wrenching misstep leads to retraction, frayed feelings and a paperless postdoc

Naoki Mori, with 16 retractions, to be rehired?

Naoki Mori

Naoki Mori, of 16-retraction fame, believes he’s getting his job back at the University of the Ryukyus, which released him in August after learning that the cancer researcher had misused images in many of his publications.

According to a report in Science Insider, Mori’s penalty has been reduced to a 10-month suspension, and he will resume his professorship in June. Mori apparently also told Science that some journals “are considering accepting corrected papers,” although he didn’t name them. Continue reading Naoki Mori, with 16 retractions, to be rehired?

Tenth Bulfone-Paus retraction notice appears, in Journal of Biological Chemistry

The tenth of 12 promised retractions by Silvia Bulfone-Paus and colleagues has appeared, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC).

The paper, “Reverse signaling through membrane-bound Interleukin-15,” was published in 2004 and has been cited 31 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The retraction notice, just like the other one for the team’s work that appeared in the JBC, was completely uninformative: Continue reading Tenth Bulfone-Paus retraction notice appears, in Journal of Biological Chemistry