Japan group earns 4th retraction following investigation

Researchers in Japan have issued their fourth retraction, noting that the same figures were used to depict different experimental conditions. The group lost two papers in 2015 for the same reason, following a misconduct investigation at Oita University in Japan. Last year, the same group notched another retraction, and pegged the responsibility for the problematic […]

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Heart researcher gets 3rd retraction for copying images of rat hearts

When two papers include the same images of rat hearts, one of those papers gets retracted. The papers share a corresponding author, Zhi-Qing Zhao of Mercer University School of Medicine in Savannah, Georgia. This marks his third retraction; we reported on two others earlier this year. The papers examine the effect of curcumin, which has antinflammatory properties (in addition […]

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Investigation finds “careless data workup” in alcoholism drug paper

An investigation at Karolinska Institute has led to the retraction of a paper about drug treatments for alcoholics, after concluding the article contains a “very careless data workup.” The paper, “Memantine enhances the inhibitory effects of naltrexone on ethanol consumption,” found that the drug memantine (normally used to treat Alzheimer’s) enhances the effects of naltrexone in rats, which blocks the […]

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Author break prompts retraction of bone protein paper

ejpcoverThe European Journal of Pharmacology has — against its will, it would seem — retracted a 2012 paper by a group of Chinese heart researchers embroiled in a what appears to be a rather messy authorship dispute.

The article, “The effect of alendronate on the expression of osteopontin and osteoprotegerin in calcified aortic tissue of the rat,”  came from the Institute of Cardiovascular Disease at Tongji Hospital, part of of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

As the retraction notice states:

This article has been retracted at the request of the Authors due to a disagreement regarding authorship.

Jaap van Harten, executive publisher of the EJP, tells us that:

This dispute was brought to my attention by the authors themselves. They were unanimous in their request, and no matter what further clarifications I asked them, I did not get any further than that the authorship dispute was so serious that each of the authors explicitly informed me that the wanted to have the article retracted for that reason. Not very satisfactory, but the max I could do.

Indeed. We think van Harten did the right thing, given that all of the authors had a problem with the paper. But it would be nice to know what, in particular, the problem was, yes?