Penkowa notches fourth retraction, in Experimental Neurology

Milena Penkowa, the Danish neuroscientist who resigned from the University of Copenhagen in December 2010 amid suspicions of misconduct, has had another paper retracted. The new retraction appears in Experimental Neurology. Here’s the notice for “M-CSF deficiency leads to reduced metallothioneins I and II expression and increased tissue damage in the brain stem after 6-aminonicotinamide … Continue reading Penkowa notches fourth retraction, in Experimental Neurology

Researchers get a mulligan: JBC paper withdrawn sans explanation

A group of authors has withdrawn a paper from the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), but readers won’t know why. The paper, “Static High-Gradient Magnetic Fields Activate Transient Receptor Potential Vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) Ion Channels Enabling Remote Control of Cell Function,” whose corresponding author is Thomas Simmet of Ulm University, appeared online on June 11. … Continue reading Researchers get a mulligan: JBC paper withdrawn sans explanation

Double submission leads to retraction of probability paper — and a publishing ban

What are the chances of successfully duplicating publication in the Journal of Theoretical Probability? Not too high, it seems. A pair of South Korean authors have gotten a five-year ban from the journal for double-publishing a paper in the math literature. The article, “Convergence of Weighted Sums for Arrays of Negatively Dependent Random Variables and … Continue reading Double submission leads to retraction of probability paper — and a publishing ban

Glaxo asks Nature Medicine to retract paper by fired company scientist

In what could be a significant blow to a major pharmaceutical company, Nature Medicine is reportedly set to retract a 2010 article by a group of researchers affiliated with a Chinese arm of the drug giant GlaxoSmithKline. We’re not the first to report the news — you can read coverage of it on In the … Continue reading Glaxo asks Nature Medicine to retract paper by fired company scientist

And the award for the most self-referential abstract ever goes to…

Here at Retraction Watch, we like to dig for what lies behind sometimes opaque retraction notices. But today, thanks to Neil Martin, we have a glimpse into something a bit different: The back-and-forth between an author and his editor. In Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Peter Reiner, of the University of British Columbia, wrote a comment on … Continue reading And the award for the most self-referential abstract ever goes to…

Duplicate submission costs authors two papers on Parkinson’s disease

A group of pharmacology researchers in the UK has lost two papers after submitting effectively identical versions to different journals — and getting them accepted, of course — just a day apart. The first article appeared on the British Journal of Pharmacology‘s website on July 10, 2012. It was titled “Exendin-4 reverts behavioural and neurochemicaldysfunction … Continue reading Duplicate submission costs authors two papers on Parkinson’s disease

Cell attributes image problems in cloning paper to “minor” errors; sees no impact on conclusions

Yesterday we reported that Cell was looking into problematic images in a recent paper on human embryonic stem cell cloning. We’ve now heard from the journal about the nature of the inquiry. Mary Beth O’Leary, a spokeswoman for Cell Press — an Elsevier title — tells us that: Based on our own initial in-house assessment … Continue reading Cell attributes image problems in cloning paper to “minor” errors; sees no impact on conclusions

How does a paper get published without the alleged corresponding author knowing?

The Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering ran a retraction yesterday that’s left us scratching our heads. The paper, “Wettability-gradient-driven micropump for transporting discrete liquid drops,” was published on February 8 of this year.  For a paper published in a journal run by the Institute of Physics, the retraction notice reads like a mix of Hindenburg … Continue reading How does a paper get published without the alleged corresponding author knowing?

Nanotech researcher SK Sahoo notches fifth retraction

Nanotech researcher SK Sahoo, whom as we reported in February lost four papers from Acta Biomaterialia for what the journal called “highly unethical practices,” has actually retracted five papers from that journal. According to a notice for “Enhanced cellular uptake and in vivo pharmacokinetics of rapamycin loaded cubic phase nanoparticles for cancer therapy” that appears … Continue reading Nanotech researcher SK Sahoo notches fifth retraction

Editor inadvertently spurns reviewers; retraction ensues

The Journal of Multivariate Analysis has retracted a paper it was never meant to publish — a problem, it seems, of multivariate analyses. The article, titled “Regression estimation with locally stationary long-memory errors,” came from a pair of statisticians in Chile, Wildredo Palma and Guillermo Ferreira. It appears that the article did not pass muster … Continue reading Editor inadvertently spurns reviewers; retraction ensues