“Data fabrication and manipulation have occurred”: Taste bud paper soured by fraud

A 2013 paper on the neurological impact of flavors has been retracted from The Journal of Neuroscience. The retraction notice offers few details (which is typical for the journal), but a statement sent to us by the last author noted that an investigation at the University of Maryland “determined that data fabrication and manipulation have […]

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Brain paper retracted after university report finds “substantial data misrepresentation”

The Journal of Neuroscience is retracting a 2012 paper on how estrogen produced in the brain shapes the auditory system on the basis of “a report from Northwestern University that describes substantial data misrepresentation” in the paper. The paper, “Mechanistic Basis and Functional Roles of Long-Term Plasticity in Auditory Neurons Induced by a Brain-Generated Estrogen,” […]

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SfN journal retracts paper, bans UPenn researchers over “data misrepresentation”

The Journal of Neuroscience has yanked an Alzheimer’s paper and banned three University of Pennsylvania authors from publishing there temporarily, following conflicting investigations by the university and the publisher, the Society for Neuroscience, into the data. The 2011 paper looked into the cellular makeup of the characteristic plaques that develop in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. […]

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Matlab mixup sinks Journal of Neuroscience paper

A team of neuroscientists at University of Oregon and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have retracted a paper from The Journal of Neuroscience after realizing their analytic code contained an error. The authors state in the notice that their conclusion remains accurate after correcting the mistake in the program Matlab. However, the paper — […]

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ORI sanctions former University of Chicago and UCSF scientists for faking findings

The stories behind several recent inscrutable retraction notices became a bit more clear today when the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) issued findings in cases involving former researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of California, San Francisco. The ORI found that H. Rosie Xing, a former assistant professor at the University of […]

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Journal of Neuroscience still won’t explain author-initiated retractions

The Journal of Neuroscience hasn’t changed its policy of not explaining retractions if authors don’t want to, as this October 8 notice attests. Here’s the notice for “Coordinated Regulation of Hepatic Energy Stores by Leptin and Hypothalamic Agouti-Related Protein:” At the request of the authors, The Journal of Neuroscience is retracting “Coordinated Regulation of Hepatic Energy Stores by […]

Authors retract study suggesting magnesium prevents Alzheimer’s in mice

The authors of a 2013 Journal of Neuroscience study suggesting that “elevation of brain magnesium…may have therapeutic potential for treating [Alzheimer's disease] in humans” have retracted it after finding errors in the work. Here’s the original abstract: Profound synapse loss is one of the major pathological hallmarks associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and might underlie […]

It’s an epidemic! Another group does the right thing, retracting neuroscience paper

As the bumper sticker says, “Regime change starts at home.” Seems to be the case with scientists these days. This month we have seen commendable instances of researchers retracting papers after identifying flaws in their own data — an outbreak of integrity that has us here at Retraction Watch applauding. (We’ve even created a new […]