Marc Hauser, the Harvard psychology professor who retracted a paper last year following a university investigation, has resigned his post. As the Boston Globe’s Carolyn Johnson, who broke the original Hauser retraction story, reports: Continue reading Marc Hauser resigns from Harvard
Carsten Carlberg out at University of Luxembourg
The University of Luxembourg has fired researcher Carsten Carlberg after concluding that his name was a drag on the institution.
Here’s an English translation of an article about the firing, which many readers were kind enough to forward to us: Continue reading Carsten Carlberg out at University of Luxembourg
Cryptic “legal issues” lead to retraction of paper about potential Novartis alcohol abuse drug
Readers of this blog by now know that if there’s one thing that really gets us going, it’s obfuscation. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the following retraction notice from the journal Psychopharmacology, made us particularly batty:
This paper has been retracted by the author because of legal issues.
The notice refers to “Selective activation of the metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 7 “mGluR7” attenuates acquisition, expression, and reinstatement of ethanol place preference,” was published online in late June by Amine Bahi under the heading “Original Investigation.”
Bahi is in the department of anatomy at United Arab Emirates University. He has also held positions at Yale and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Among his publications is one that involved a collaborator from Novartis (more on that in a moment). Continue reading Cryptic “legal issues” lead to retraction of paper about potential Novartis alcohol abuse drug
University of Louisville investigating work by team under review at Emory
On Tuesday, we reported that Emory University in Atlanta was looking into why a team of former researchers — now at the University of Louisville — had retracted three papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC).
Today, we learned that the researchers’ home institution since 2009 is now investigating the work. A spokesperson tells Retraction Watch: Continue reading University of Louisville investigating work by team under review at Emory
Jatinder Ahluwalia out at University of East London: report
Jatinder Ahluwalia, whose story Retraction Watch has been following since last fall, is no longer working at the University of East London, according to a report in today’s Times Higher Education.
Ahluwalia, Retraction Watch readers may recall, came to our attention in the fall after he and his colleagues were forced to retract a paper in Nature. A University College London (UCL) investigation revealed that Ahluwalia had faked results, and probably sabotaged his colleagues’ work. We then learned, from a source, that Ahluwalia had been dismissed from Cambridge University’s graduate program — his first attempt to get a PhD — in 1998.
Given all of these revelations, the University of East London — where Ahluwalia had been a faculty member since leaving UCL — and Imperial College London, where he earned his PhD, both began investigations into his work. Last week, we reported that Imperial had finishing re-running all of his experiments, and was reviewing the results.
Today, as the Times Higher Education reported, his faculty page has been removed: Continue reading Jatinder Ahluwalia out at University of East London: report
German paper on inflammation taken out of Circulation (Research) for data manipulation
Circulation Research, a journal of the American Heart Association (AHA), has retracted a 2009 article from a German group whose first author copped to manipulating data — and got called on it. From the notice: Continue reading German paper on inflammation taken out of Circulation (Research) for data manipulation
Emory looking into circumstances of three new retractions in the JBC
Emory University is looking into why the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) has retracted three papers published by Emory faculty from 2005 to 2007, Retraction Watch has learned. The papers were: Continue reading Emory looking into circumstances of three new retractions in the JBC
So how often does medical consensus turn out to be wrong?
In a quote that has become part of medical school orientations everywhere, David Sackett, often referred to as the “father of evidence-based medicine,” once famously said:
Half of what you’ll learn in medical school will be shown to be either dead wrong or out of date within five years of your graduation; the trouble is that nobody can tell you which half–so the most important thing to learn is how to learn on your own.
Sackett, we are fairly sure, was making an intentionally wild estimate when he said “half.” [See note about these strikethroughs at bottom of post.] But aA fascinating study out today in the Archives of Internal Medicine gives a clue as to the real figuresuggests that he may have been closer than any of us imagined. Continue reading So how often does medical consensus turn out to be wrong?
Authors retract Nature Medicine cystic fibrosis paper after some results don’t hold up
The authors of a Nature Medicine study published online in September about the behavior of white blood cells in cystic fibrosis have retracted the paper, saying that further experiments suggested the original results were unreliable. According to the notice: Continue reading Authors retract Nature Medicine cystic fibrosis paper after some results don’t hold up
“Representative” image in liver paper leads to retraction
The journal International Immunology has retracted a 2007 article, “Amelioration of hepatic fibrosis via beta-glucosylceramide-mediated immune modulation is associated with altered CD8 and NKT lymphocyte distribution,” by a group of Israeli liver researchers whose manuscript included a composite image that didn’t quite call itself such.
The study, by scientists at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, purported to show that a soy-derived compound could reduce liver disease in mice. It has been cited 17 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The journal is published by Oxford and the Japanese Society for Immunology.
From the notice: Continue reading “Representative” image in liver paper leads to retraction