Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza retracts four papers

Gregg Semenza

A Johns Hopkins researcher who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology has retracted four papers from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) for concerns about images in the articles.

Gregg Semenza is “one of today’s preeminent researchers on the molecular mechanisms of oxygen regulation,” the work for which he shared the 2019 Nobel, according to Hopkins. But even before that, the pseudonymous Claire Francis began pointing out potential image duplications and other manipulations in Semenza’s work on PubPeer, as described in October 2020 by Leonid Schneider.

The four papers retracted yesterday are:

Continue reading Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza retracts four papers

Weekend reads: A tale of deception; hydroxychloroquine in Australia; AI and ML to fix your papers — or write them

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 257. There are more than 35,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: A tale of deception; hydroxychloroquine in Australia; AI and ML to fix your papers — or write them

Former NCI postdoc faked data, says federal watchdog

A former postdoc at the National Cancer Institute faked 15 figures and a movie in grant applications, presentations, a paper, and an unpublished manuscript, according to a federal watchdog.

The finding from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) comes more than a year after PLOS Biology retracted a 2016 paper and noted that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had found that the postdoc, Ritankar Majumdar, committed misconduct and faked data in two figures. 

The same day, the journal republished a revised version without the faked data. The retracted paper has been cited 107 times, 13 of those after it was retracted, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. The revised paper — which included Majumdar as a first author — has been cited eight times. 

The retraction notice stated that Majumdar agreed with the retraction but that he “disputes the NIH’s finding of misconduct.” 

Continue reading Former NCI postdoc faked data, says federal watchdog

Veterinary researcher banned from journal after fourth forthcoming retraction

Tereza Cristina Cardoso da Silva

A veterinary researcher with three retracted papers and one marked with an expression of concern has another retraction on the way, Retraction Watch has learned. 

The first retraction for Tereza Cristina Cardoso da Silva, of the University of São Paulo State in Brazil, came in 2019. As we reported at the time, the retracted paper, about herpesvirus infections in cattle, had reused an image from an earlier paper describing experiments with chicken cells. (We would apologize for the headline of that post, but we just couldn’t resist.)

Since then, Cardoso has lost two more papers for similarly reusing images of different species of animals, and had another article flagged with an expression of concern that mentions an institutional investigation into her work which culminated in a “Disciplinary Administrative Procedure.” A fourth retraction is in the works, per an email we were copied on from a journal editor to the whistleblower who identified another image reused between species. 

Continue reading Veterinary researcher banned from journal after fourth forthcoming retraction

When an independent replication isn’t really independent

Matt Warman

My laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School studies genetic diseases that affect the skeletal system.  We became interested in the protein osteocalcin after Gerard Karsenty at Columbia University reported in several papers using knockout mice – mice lacking the genes which produce osteocalcin – that osteocalcin is a bone-derived hormone that affects glucose metabolism, insulin production, male fertility, muscle mass, and cognition.  If osteocalcin functions similarly in humans, then osteocalcin becomes an exciting and clinically important protein. 

To independently confirm these findings, we created our own osteocalcin knockout mouse strain. We examined glucose metabolism and male fertility in our mice and found none of the effects reported by Karsenty and colleagues; we reported our findings in May 2020.  A group in Japan created a third osteocalcin knockout mouse strain which also failed to confirm Karsenty and colleagues’ findings.  

In earlier years my laboratory also could not independently confirm other results reported by the Karsenty group: a paper I co-authored in 2011 found no evidence of the Wnt co-receptor LRP5 affecting blood serotonin levels, contrary to what Karsenty’s lab published.

Continue reading When an independent replication isn’t really independent

In four years, a psychosocial counselor co-authored seven papers on disparate medical topics. How? 

Photo by Bilal Kamoon via flickr

At the end of July, Muttukrishna Sarvananthan noticed something curious in the publications of Chulani Herath, a senior lecturer at the Open University of Sri Lanka in Nawala.

Herath is listed as a middle author on seven papers about various topics in medicine, including heart disease, stroke, and burnout among general practitioners in China. 

That struck Sarvananthan, an economist in Sri Lanka, as odd. Herath is a psychosocial counselor, not a physician or expert in medicine. “How could she possibly co-author an article in medical sciences?” he wrote in one email to a journal editor, requesting the editor investigate Herath’s paper as a potential product of a paper mill. 

Sarvananthan has written to the editors of the journals that published the following seven papers, requesting they investigate: 

Continue reading In four years, a psychosocial counselor co-authored seven papers on disparate medical topics. How? 

An editor on why he ignores anonymous whistleblowers – and why authors are free to publish ‘bullshit and fiction’

Guido Schmitz

Just over a decade ago, in the second year of Retraction Watch’s existence, we wrote a column in the now-defunct Lab Times urging journal editors to stop ignoring complaints from anonymous whistleblowers. The Committee on Publication Ethics didn’t think anonymity was a problem as long as the complaints were evidence-based, so why should editors? 

And journals have come a long way over the last decade in this regard. Some retraction notices even credit anonymous – and even pseudonymous – correspondents. 

Guido Schmitz, however, appears not to have gotten the memo. 

Continue reading An editor on why he ignores anonymous whistleblowers – and why authors are free to publish ‘bullshit and fiction’

Weekend reads: ‘The Problem of Irreproducible Bioscience Research;’ ‘How to Stop the Unknowing Citation of Retracted Papers;’ data scandal leads to stock drop

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 254. There are more than 35,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘The Problem of Irreproducible Bioscience Research;’ ‘How to Stop the Unknowing Citation of Retracted Papers;’ data scandal leads to stock drop

Editors-in-chief of aging journal resign en masse after ‘impasse with the Anatomical Society and Wiley’

A journal regarded as the leader in its field is without editors after they resigned as a group earlier this month in a dispute over their workload and compensation. 

On August 11, the four editors-in-chief of Aging Cell tendered their resignations to Wiley and the Anatomical Society, which together publish the monthly periodical. Explaining their decision in a letter dated August 23 and posted to Twitter by an account unrelated to the journal, the editors – Peter Adams, Julie Andersen, Adam Antobi, Vera Gorbunova, along with John Sedivy, the reviews editor – said they had reached the breaking point after trying to work with the publishers for the last “2-3 years” on “serious issues in running the journal.” 

We were unable to immediately reach the editors or Wiley, but Adams retweeted the letter and asked his followers to “Please distribute.”

Continue reading Editors-in-chief of aging journal resign en masse after ‘impasse with the Anatomical Society and Wiley’

Exclusive: Cancer researcher sues med school for retaliation after research misconduct finding

Stacy Blain

A breast cancer researcher at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn has sued the university for sex discrimination and retaliation after an institutional investigation found she committed research misconduct. 

Stacy Blain, an associate professor in the departments of pediatrics and cell biology at Downstate, has alleged that the university violated the Equal Pay Act by paying her less than her male colleagues; discriminated against her based on her sex since she joined the faculty in 2002, including by conducting multiple investigations into her lab’s work; and used the latest investigation and its finding that she committed research misconduct to retaliate against her for accusing the university of sex discrimination. 

From the lawsuit: 

Continue reading Exclusive: Cancer researcher sues med school for retaliation after research misconduct finding