Ulrich Lichtenthaler now up to 12 retractions
Industrial and Corporate Change is the site of management professor Ulrich Lichtenthaler’s 12th retraction.
Here’s the notice for “Outward knowledge transfer: the impact of project-based organization on performance,” originally published in 2010: Read the rest of this entry »
Cell attributes image problems in cloning paper to “minor” errors; sees no impact on conclusions
Yesterday we reported that Cell was looking into problematic images in a recent paper on human embryonic stem cell cloning. We’ve now heard from the journal about the nature of the inquiry.
Mary Beth O’Leary, a spokeswoman for Cell Press — an Elsevier title — tells us that:
Based on our own initial in-house assessment of the issues raised in PubPeer and in initial discussions with the authors, it seems that there were some minor errors made by the authors when preparing the figures for initial submission. While we are continuing discussions with the authors, we do not believe these errors impact the scientific findings of the paper in any way.
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Dodgy figure in cord blood paper prompts Expression of Concern in oncology journal
The editor of Clinical Medicine Insights: Oncology has issued an Expression of Concern over a 2008 paper by a group of authors in China after identifying “flaws” in one of the figures.
The article, “Exvivo experiments of human ovarian cancer ascites-derived exosomes presented by dendritic cells derived from umbilical cord blood for immunotherapy treatment,” purported to show that:
tumor-specific antigens present on exosomes can be presented by DCs [dendritic cells] derived from unrelated umbilical cord blood to induce tumor specific cytotoxicity and this may represent as a novel immunotherapy for ovarian cancer.
But according to William C. S. Cho, editor of the journal, there’s reason to doubt the conclusions. As the notice explains:
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Cell reviewing allegations of image reuse in human embryonic stem cell cloning paper
Cell is looking into whether the authors of a widely hailed study published last week claiming to have turned human skin cells into embryonic stem cells manipulated images inappropriately, Retraction Watch has learned.
The potential image problems came to light on PubPeer, a site designed to allow for post-publication peer review. A commenter, identified as Peer1, identified “several examples of image reuse which might be of interest to PubPeer members and readers:” Read the rest of this entry »


