Category Archives: journal of neuroscience
Journal of Neuroscience retracts plasticity paper for “substantial data misrepresentation”
The Journal of Neuroscience has retracted a 2012 paper by a group from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet for what appears to be research misconduct. But more on that in a moment. The article, “The Existence of FGFR1-5-HT1A Receptor Heterocomplexes in Midbrain 5-HT Neurons of the Rat: Relevance for Neuroplasticity,” came from the lab of Kjell Fuxe, […]
“Serious irregularities” in Western blots lead to retraction of brain chemistry paper
The Journal of Neuroscience has retracted a 2009 article by a group from Mount Sinai (now the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) for suspicious Western blots. The paper, “Requirement for Protein Synthesis at Developing Synapses,” came from the lab of Deanna Benson, a Parkinson’s expert. According to the abstract, which is still available […]
Retractions arrive for former Wash U neuroscience grad student found to have committed misconduct
Two studies by Adam Savine, the former Washington University neuroscience graduate student found by the Office of Research Integrity to have falsified data, have been retracted. Here’s the notice for one: The Journal of Neuroscience has received the findings of the Office of Research Integrity of the Department of Health and Human Services, which report […]
Wash U psych researcher cited in ORI probe, faces multiple retractions
Adam Savine
The Office of Research Integrity says Adam Savine, a former post-doc graduate student in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, committed misconduct in work that tainted three papers and six abstracts he submitted to conferences.
One of Savine’s studies that drew some media attention involved Diederik Stapel-esque research showing which brain region lights up when people see money. He was quoted in this 2010 article on Medical News Today saying:
“We wanted to see what motivates us to pursue one goal in the world above all others,” Savine says. “You might think that these mechanisms would have been addressed a long time ago in psychology and neuroscience, but it’s not been until the advent of fMRI about 15-20 years ago that we’ve had the tools to address this question in humans, and any progress in this area has been very, very recent.”
Apparently, now we know. According to the notice, Savine engaged in misconduct in research funded by four grants:
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant R56 MH066078, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), NIH, grants F31 DA032152 and R21 DA027821, and National Institute on Aging (NIA), NIH, grant T32 AG00030.
ORI found that Savine had falsified data in the following three papers:
- Savine, A.C., & Braver, T.S. “Local and global effects of motivation on cognitive control.” Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 12(4):692-718, 2012 Dec. (not yet cited, according to Thomson Scientific)
- Savine, A.C., McDaniel, M.A., Shelton, J.T., Scullin, M.K. “A characterization of individual differences in prospective memory monitoring using the Complex Ongoing Serial Task.” J Exp Psychol Gen. 141(2):337-62, 2012 May (cited three times)
- Savine, A.C., & Braver, T.S. “Motivated cognitive control: Reward incentives modulate preparatory neural activity during task-switching.” J Neurosci. 30(31):10294-305, 2010 Aug 4 (
not yetcited 31 times)
He also falsified data in these six conference abstracts:
- Savine, A.C., & Braver, T.S. (November 2010) “The contextual and local effects of motivation on cognitive control.” Psychonomics Society, St. Louis, MO
- Savine, A.C., & Braver, T.S. (November 2010) “A model-based characterization of the individual differences in prospective memory monitoring.” Psychonomics Society, St. Louis, MO
- Savine, A.C., & Braver, T.S. (November 2010) “Motivated cognitive control: Reward incentives modulate preparatory neural activity during task-switching.” Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA
- Savine, A.C., & Braver, T.S. (June 2010) “Motivated cognitive control: Reward incentives modulate preparatory neural activity during task-switcing.” Motivation and Cognitive Control Conference, Oxford, England
- Savine, A.C., & Braver, T.S. (January 2010) “Neural correlates of the motivation/cognitive control interaction: Activation dynamics and Performance prediction during task-switching.” Genetic and Experiential Influences on Executive Function, Boulder, CO
- Savine, A.C., & Braver, T.S. (June 2009) “Incentive Induced Changes in Neural Patterns During Task-Switching.” Organization for Human Brain Mapping, San Francisco, CA
Here’s what Savine acknowledged doing:
- falsified data in Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2012 to show an unambiguous dissociation between local and global motivational effects. Specifically, Respondent exaggerated (1) the effect of incentive context on response times and error rates in Table 1 and Figures 1 and 3 for experiment 1 and (2) the effect of incentive cue timing on response times and error rates in Table 2 and in Figures 6, 9, and S2 for experiment 2.
- falsified data in J Exp Psychol Gen. 2012 to show that prospective memory is influenced by three dissociable underlying monitoring patterns (attentional focus, secondary memory retrieval, information thresholding), which are stable within individuals over time and are influenced by personality and cognitive differences. Specifically, Respondent modified the data to support the three category model and to show (1) that individuals fitting into each of the three categories exhibited differential patterns of prospective memory performance and ongoing task performance in Tables 1-3; Figures 5-8, and (2) that certain cognitive and personality differences were predictive of distinct monitoring approaches within the three categories in Figure 9.
- falsified data in J Neurosci. 2010 and mislabeled brain images to show that motivational incentives enhance task-switching performance and are associated with activation of reward-related brain regions, behavioral performance, and trial outcomes. Specifically, Respondent modified the data so that he could show a stronger relationship between brain activity and behavior in Table 2 and Figure 4 and used brain images that fit the data rather than the images that corresponded to the actual Talairach coordinates in Figure 3.
Unfortunately for one of Savine’s Wash U. colleagues and co-authors, Todd Braver, a 2013 paper of his in Frontiers in Cognition titled “Temporal dynamics of motivation-cognitive control interactions revealed by high-resolution pupillometry,” might suffer collateral damage. It cites two of the soon-to-be-retracted articles — which might necessitate a correction, or even a retraction.
Savine — whose name appears on the Neurotree website – has agreed to submit to a three-year supervisory period for any work involving funding from the Public Health Service. He spent some time after Wash U at the University of Michigan, in the lab of John Jonides, but left in the fall, according to the lab.
Savine won a 2011 travel award from the Society for Neuroscience, and gives tips on how to apply for that grant here. That might be advice best unheeded, much like grant consulting services from Michael Miller, another neuroscientist found to committed misconduct by the ORI.
Hat tip: Rolf Zwaan
University of Lisbon investigation that spawned neuroscience retractions found no evidence of misconduct
Yesterday, we reported on two retractions in the Journal of Neuroscience whose notices referred to a University of Lisbon report that had determined there was “substantial data misrepresentation” in the original articles. The notice didn’t say anything about misconduct, but when we see “misrepresentation,” we tend to think — as do many others — that there had been funny business.
But we heard back this morning from the senior author of the study, Ana M. Sebastião, and there’s a lot more to this story. It turns out that the University of Lisbon committee that wrote the report concluded, unanimously, that
the misrepresentations of the figures that were detected by the Editor of the Journal of Neuroscience in the two articles in question did not result from misconduct, i.e. these faults cannot be attribute to intentional fabrication or falsification. On the contrary, these errors seem to have occurred in good faith and in no way did these affect the scientific content of the articles and their conclusions.
The committee — full report available here — recognized
that these misrepresentations resulted from a careless action of 2 PhD students [Natalia Assaife-Lopes and Sofia Critovao-Ferreira] who admitted that at the time of preparing the final manuscripts had to work under great time pressure. Further the Committee acknowledges that the senior author (AMS) should take the main responsibility for not having detected the mistakes that occurred in the figures in both articles. All authors assumed their share of responsibility.
Here’s how the April 2012 report describes what happened:
In the case of Figures 1a and 4a of the paper by Assaife-Lopes et al. (2010), where the same images of a Western blot are repeated for two different conditions, the 1st author admitted that this occurred due to faulty “cut and paste” of very similar pictures. In the case of Figure 4f of the paper by Cristovao-Ferreira et al. (2011) the Western blots of Tubulin that were repeated resulted from using the selected part of the blot twice in the final figure. The Committee members examined the original blots to better understand what went wrong. This fault occurred at the last moment after the manuscript had been revised and was being prepared to be resubmitted. Apparently this was done under great time pressure to re-submit the manuscript. Most co-authors received this last version at the same moment as it was being sent to the Journal, and thus did not see the very final version before resubmission.
We’ve made the original Cristovao-Ferreira et al figure 4 available here, along with the corrected version here, so readers can judge the errors for themselves.
The committee recommended that the journal publish errata for the two studies — a move Sebastião had actually proposed in November 2011, months before the journal’s publisher, the Society for Neuroscience (SfN), asked the university to investigate in February 2012.
They also recommended that SfN rescind a moratorium it had placed on the University of Lisbon authors that would prevent them from publishing in the Journal of Neuroscience and presenting abstracts at the group’s annual meeting. (The moratorium did not apply to Moses Chao of New York University, one of the authors on one of the papers, which might have been a bit awkward, considering that Chao is immediate past-president of a group called the Society for Neuroscience.)
The moratorium was lifted on all authors except Sebastião, who will face a ban until September 2014:
The argument was that as corresponding author it was my duty to carefully check figures in the papers, which is true and is indeed written in the Journal rules. I do not contest that, rules are rules, though I consider the time period a bit excessive for errors that are very hard to detect by eye. As supervisors usually do, I checked quantifications against blots during the course of the investigation, but since the errors have been made while setting up the final Figures, due to a lack of attention of the first authors, they escaped to my eye while doing a final revision of the MS.
Now, it would be one thing if the Journal of Neuroscience didn’t believe the University of Lisbon report. After all, there is a conflict of interest when an institution investigates one of its own. But in an email exchange late last year with Sebastião, in which she tried (obviously unsuccessfully) to convince him to run errata instead of retract the papers — even offering to fly to the US to go through the data with him — John Maunsell, the editor of the journal, wrote:
We accept without reservation the conclusion from the investigation of the University of Lisbon that the errors were honest and that there was no misconduct. The retractions are based on the number and nature of the errors that appeared multiple articles, which have left the editors unprepared to stand behind these reports.
So why wouldn’t the journal include the four-word phrase “there was no misconduct” in the notice? And why does a ban make any sense, if such bans are about intent? We’ve taken issue with how the Journal of Neuroscience handles retractions before, and this unfortunately doesn’t instill any confidence.
University of Lisbon finds “substantial data misrepresentation;” two Journal of Neuroscience papers retracted
A University of Lisbon investigation has prompted two retractions in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The papers share a few authors, including senior author Ana M. Sebastião. Here’s the notice for the first paper:
The Journal of Neuroscience has received a report describing an investigation by Universidade de Lisboa, which found substantial data misrepresentation in the article “Modulation of GABA Transport by Adenosine A1R–A2AR Heteromers, Which Are Coupled to Both Gs- and Gi/o-Proteins” by Sofia Cristóvão-Ferreira, Gemma Navarro, Marc Brugarolas, Kamil Pérez-Capote, Sandra H. Vaz, Giorgia Fattorini, Fiorenzo Conti, Carmen Lluis, Joaquim A. Ribeiro, Peter J. McCormick, Vicent Casadó, Rafael Franco, and Ana M. Sebastião, which appeared on pages 15629–15639 of the November 2, 2011 issue. Because the results cannot be considered reliable, The Journal is retracting the paper.
The paper has been cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
The notice is the same for “Activation of Adenosine A2A Receptors Induces TrkB Translocation and Increases BDNF-Mediated Phospho-TrkB Localization in Lipid Rafts: Implications for Neuromodulation” by Natália Assaife-Lopes, Vasco C. Sousa, Daniela B. Pereira, Joaquim A. Ribeiro, Moses V. Chao, and Ana M. Sebastião, which appeared in 2010 and has been cited17 times.
The second-to-last author, Moses Chao, is the immediate past-president of the Society for Neuroscience, which publishes the Journal of Neuroscience. His Spring 2012 message to the SfN membership was about the need for change in scientific publishing. Both retraction notices are behind a paywall, so making them freely available would be a good start. We’ve also had issues with the opacity of such notices in the journal, although these two do give some information.
We’ve contacted Sebastião for comment, and will update with anything we hear back.
Update, 2 p.m. Eastern, 1/17/13: Please see a new post on this case, which includes the University of Portugal report.
Journal of Neuroscience retraction, typically opaque, from author with history of errors
The Journal of Neuroscience has retracted a 2011 paper by an international group of scientists, including the prominent Maryland researcher Ronald Dubner, but readers won’t know why.
As the notice “explains“:
At the request of the authors, the following manuscript has been retracted: “Spinal 5-HT3 Receptor Activation Induces Behavioral Hypersensitivity via a Neuronal-Glial-Neuronal Signaling Cascade” by Ming Gu, Kan Miyoshi, Ronald Dubner, Wei Guo, Shiping Zou, Ke Ren, Koichi Noguchi, and Feng Wei, which appeared on pages 12823–12836 of the September 7, 2011 issue.
The paper has been cited five times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Absent more information — and neither Dubner nor the journal’s editor, John Maunsell, have replied to our requests for comment — we’re left to speculate. But using the data points we now have from previous notices, it looks like Koichi Noguchi may be the common thread here.
Noguchi was a co-author on a 2008 paper in the Journal of Neurochemistry that was first corrected — in a mega kind of way — then retracted. As the retraction notice indicated:
The quantification graphs of RT-PCR in Figs.1, 6, 10 cannot be reproduced from the existing data, and the first 2 bands in Fig.10 (Iba1 and IL-1beta) were mistakenly created from an identical band.
Noguchi also was a co-author of a 2006 paper in the Journal of Neuroscience that in 2009 picked up this erratum notice:
In the article “Suppression of the p75 Neurotrophin Receptor in Uninjured Sensory Neurons Reduces Neuropathic Pain after Nerve Injury” by Koichi Obata, Hirokazu Katsura, Jun Sakurai, Kimiko Kobayashi, Hiroki Yamanaka, Yi Dai, Tetsuo Fukuoka, and Koichi Noguchi, which appeared on pages 11974–11986 of the November 15, 2006 issue, there was an error in the legends for Figs. 1E, 2D, and 4, C and D. These legends described “n=4.” However, the quantification of RT-PCR and Western blots was carried out from three, not four, samples in each experiment. All statistically significant values in all figures were obtained from 3 samples. Therefore, all data were scientifically correct, only the number of samples was incorrect.
And the Journal of Clinical Investigation has issued corrections for at least two articles on which Noguchi’s name appears, one from 2007 and one from 2005. In both cases, problematic figures were to blame.
In other words, the Journal of Neuroscience stands as a monument to editorial muteness in what appears to be a case of pretty widespread sloppy, at best — and therefore unreliable — science. Its silence in the matter is anything but Solomonic, although it is codified in the journal’s retraction policy, which states:
The Journal will retract an article at the authors’ request at any time without requiring explanation. At the authors’ option, the retraction notice may simply state that the article has been retracted at the authors’ request. Alternatively, the authors may provide a brief explanation of the error(s) prompting the retraction. However, statements of retraction may not assign blame to specific authors or laboratories.
Readers of this blog might recall that we have disagreed on this score with Maunsell before. As he told us last year:
Retraction Watch, may be doing science a disservice by failing to emphasize that retractions fall into two very different categories: those initiated by authors to remove articles containing errors, and those initiated based on an investigation that finds fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or other unethical behavior. In searching your web site I could find no material that lays out this distinction for visitors. I worry that scientists visiting your site will be led to believe that all retractions arise from misconduct, which is far from the truth. By failing to make clear that retraction is an important mechanism for correcting honest mistakes, your site may imply to scientists that they must avoid retractions at all costs. You might greatly enhance and extend your site by providing your readers with general information about ethical behavior in scientific publication (there are many suitable links) and especially by emphasizing that there are different types of retractions.
We think Maunsell is being disingenuous here, and the journal is, too, with the following caveat to its retraction policy:
In retraction statements, The Journal clearly distinguishes between author-initiated retractions and those initiated by the editors because of violations of the Society for Neuroscience’s guidelines for Responsible Conduct Regarding Scientific Communications.
The journal’s guidelines piously intone that
SfN believes that progress in understanding the nervous system benefits human welfare. Such progress depends on the honest pursuit of scientific research and the truthful representation of findings. While recognizing that both error and differences among individuals in the interpretation of data are natural parts of the creative process, the Society for Neuroscience affirms that the success of the entire scientific endeavor is jeopardized by misconduct, in the form of plagiarism, fabrication, or falsification of data. By entering the profession, neuroscientists assume an obligation to maintain the highest level of integrity in all scientific activities.
One of the specific points in the guidelines makes clear that tinkering with data is a no-no:
1.2.1. Intentional, knowing, or reckless fabrication or falsification is misconduct and will lead to action by the Society (see Procedures for Dealing with Allegations of Unethical Scientific Conduct). No data may be put in a scientific communication that have not actually been collected or observed (fabrication), nor may data be altered in any way (falsification) other than by mathematical transformations that are commonly accepted or clearly explained in the manuscript. This includes numerical data as well as images.
Which brings us to the point: Either the journal knows what went wrong with the retracted paper and chooses not to tell its readers, or it turned a blind eye to the problems and allowed the authors to skulk off without an honest accounting of the matter. In neither case should readers feel confident that their interests — nor the interests of their society and their specialty — are being well-served.
Hat tip: @hysell
