Category Archives: cancer letters
Caught Our Notice: Researcher who sued PubPeer commenter up to 21 retractions
Titles: 1) Notch-1 induces Epithelial-mesenchymal transition consistent with cancer stem cell phenotype in pancreatic cancer cells 2) Sensitization of squamous cell carcinoma to cisplatin induced killing by natural agents What Caught Our Attention: Regular readers will be familiar with the saga involving Fazlul Sarkar and PubPeer: In 2014, Sarkar sued anonymous commenters on the site, claiming … Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Researcher who sued PubPeer commenter up to 21 retractions
Caught Our Notice: Researcher who sued PubPeer commenter draws 19th retraction
Title: Increased Ras GTPase activity is regulated by miRNAs that can be attenuated by CDF treatment in pancreatic cancer cells What Caught Our Attention: We’ve been following cancer scientist Fazlul Sarkar for years, as he (unsuccessfully) sought to expose the identity of a PubPeer commenter who he believes cost him a job offer. In November […]
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Fake peer review strikes again for pair of authors
Two authors who had a paper retracted for fake peer review in 2015 have lost another for the same reason. Elsevier recently retracted the second paper by the duo, a 2015 paper in a cancer journal, after finding evidence of fake peer review. The paper was submitted in October 2014 and accepted just a week […]
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Posted by in cancer letters, china retractions, elsevier, faked emails, freely available, oncology retractions
Breast cancer studies by fired Pfizer employee retracted
Last year, Pfizer fired one of its scientists following an investigation that ended with requests for retraction of five of her studies. Now, two of the five papers, which were first flagged on PubPeer, have been retracted. One notice cites the Pfizer investigation, which found that cancer researcher Min-Jean Yin had included duplicated images in all five […]
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Pfizer fires employee, requests five retractions
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has announced it plans to retract five papers by a former employee, after an investigation found duplicated images. As first reported today by Leonid Schneider, Pfizer has asked to retract five papers from the lab of Min-Jean Yin, a cancer researcher. A spokesperson for the company confirmed to us that Yin had […]
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ORI-sanctioned former UT-Southwestern cancer researchers up to 10 retractions
There’s been a 10th retraction from two former postdocs at a UT-Southwestern cancer research center who were sanctioned by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) last September, in part due to observations and comments from Retraction Watch readers. It’s a 2008 Cancer Letters paper, “Methylation of apoptosis related genes in the pathogenesis and prognosis of […]
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Posted by in cancer letters, elsevier, freely available, gazdar, image manipulation, japan retractions, united states
UT-Southwestern cancer researchers up to 8 retractions
A group at the University of Texas Southwestern led by Adi F. Gazdar that found evidence of inappropriate image manipulation in a number of their papers has retracted its seventh and eighth studies. Here’s the notice for 2005′s “Aberrant methylation profile of human malignant mesotheliomas and its relationship to SV40 infection,” in Oncogene: This paper […]
Two cancer papers retracted because authors “are unable to guarantee the accuracy of some of the figures”
A team of researchers in Ireland has retracted two papers from Cancer Letters after concerns were apparently raised about some of the studies’ figures.
Denise Egan, of the Institute of Technology Tallaght in Dublin, and colleagues published “In vitro anti-tumour and cyto-selective effects of coumarin-3-carboxylic acid and three of its hydroxylated derivatives, along with their silver-based complexes, using human epithelial carcinoma cell lines” and “A study of the role of apoptotic cell death and cell cycle events mediating the mechanism of action of 6-hydroxycoumarin-3-carboxylatosilver in human malignant hepatic cells” in 2007.
The two notices say the same thing:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Authors.
The Authors are unable to guarantee the accuracy of some of the figures in the paper, specifically in the presentation of some of the cellular morphologies and electrophoretic data.
The coumarin-3-carboxylic acid paper has been cited 53 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, while the 6-hydroxycoumarin-3-carboxylatosilver paper has been cited 14.
We’ve contacted Egan and the editor of the journal, and will update with anything we learn.
Retraction count for gynecologic cancer researcher Takai grows to seven
Noriyuki Takai, a gynecologic cancer researcher at Oita University in Japan who retracted three papers last October, has four more retractions, these in Cancer Letters.
All but one of the notices reads as follows:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Authors. Errors were identified in the original data which have affected several figure panels in the article.
Those three papers are:
- Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IV expression in epithelial ovarian cancer (cited 11 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge)
- Survivin expression correlates with clinical stage, histological grade, invasive behavior and survival rate in endometrial carcinoma (cited 91 times)
- Targeting calcium/calmodulin-dependence kinase I and II as a potential anti-proliferation remedy for endometrial carcinomas (cited 13 times)
The fourth notice, for “Novel target genes responsive to the anti-growth activity of triptolide in endometrial and ovarian cancer cells” (cited 8 times), suggests there’s far more to the story:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor in Chief has serious doubts about the handling and publication of data associated with the four panels represented in Figure 4.
We’ve contacted Takai and the editor of the journal for more details, and will update with anything we learn.
Update, 1:40 p.m. Eastern, 3/4/13: The journal tells us:
Errors were identified in the figure panels in the four retracted papers by an anonymous reader of Cancer Letters. The Editor pursued the allegations with the corresponding author who acknowledged that the figure panels did not accurately report the original data. The corresponding author also advised that the other authors were not involved in making the figures. The corresponding author agreed to three papers being retracted. The Editor decided to retract the fourth paper as well. All authors were made aware of the decision to retract.
