You’ve been dupe’d: Catching up on authors who liked their work enough to use it again

photo by Mark Turnauckas via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/marktee/

As we’ve noted before, we generally let duplication retractions make their way to the bottom of our to-do pile, since there’s often less of an interesting story behind them, duplication is hardly the worst of publishing sins, and the notices usually tell the story. (These are often referred to — imprecisely — as “self-plagiarism.”)

But that skews what’s represented here — boy, are there a lot of duplication retractions we haven’t covered! — and we might as well be more comprehensive. Plus, our eagle-eyed readers may find issues that we won’t see on a quick scan.

So with this post, we’re inaugurating a new feature here at Retraction Watch, “You’ve been dupe’d.” Every now and then, we’ll gather five of these duplication retractions at a time, and post them so they get into the mix, and into our category listing (see drop-down menu in right-hand column if you haven’t already). Here are the first five:

Study linking antidepressants to diabetes retracted when authors publish it twice

A group of researchers from Texas and Zimbabwe has lost a paper after they tried publishing it twice — first in the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, and then in the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy.

Here’s the notice:

Journal retracts antipsychotic study when all subjects’ PET scans turn out to be unreliable or invalid

The Journal of Psychiatric Research is retracting a 2010 paper claiming to show a relationship between quetiapine (Seroquel) and certain lab tests and brain scans, after it turns out the brain images were either unreliable or invalid.

Here’s the notice for “Relationship between dopamine D₂ receptor occupancy, clinical response, and drug and monoamine metabolites levels in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid. A pilot study in patients suffering from first-episode schizophrenia treated with quetiapine”:

JPET corrects Janssen antidepressant paper after neuroscience blogger notes errors

Are drug company R&D departments reading blogs?

In a recent paper, “Translational evaluation of JNJ-18038683, a 5-HT7 receptor antagonist, on REM sleep and in major depressive disorder,” researchers with New Jersey-based Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. tested whether a potential drug code-named JNJ-18038683 that binds to a receptor linked to depression could actually help patients.

Turns out, the drug was a flop, but

Controversial homosexuality “reparative therapy” paper staying put despite author’s regrets

We’ve been watching with interest an unfolding flap about a controversial 2003 paper in the Archives of Sexual Behavior (ASB) by a prominent mental health researcher, Robert Spitzer, which suggested that gays could be deprogrammed by so-called “reparative therapy” to change their sexual orientation.

Spitzer, who was instrumental in the effort to extradite homosexuality from the realm of mental illnesses, apparently had developed serious doubts about the validity of his paper, which has been cited 47 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. His regrets came to light recently in a piece by Gabriel Arana, of The American Prospect, detailing his own unfortunate experience with “ex-gay” therapy. In his article, Arana says Spitzer requested that he

  print a retraction of his 2001 study, “so I don’t have to worry about it anymore”?

Authors retract paper claiming antidepressants prevent suicide

The authors of a study allegedly showing that antidepressants prevent suicide have retracted it over unspecified errors. Here’s the notice:

At the request of the authors and in agreement with the Editor-in-Chief and Wiley-Blackwell, the following article “Antidepressant medication prevents suicide in depression”. Acta Psychiatr Scand 2010;122:454–460 has been retracted. The retraction has been requested and agreed due to unintentional errors in the analysis of the data presented.

The original paper linked “data on the toxicological detection of antidepressants in 18 922 suicides in Sweden 1992–2003″ to “registers of psychiatric hospitalization as well as registers with sociodemographic data.” It found:

Duplicate submission from 2002 in American Journal of Psychiatry earns an Expression of Concern

The American Journal of Psychiatry has issued an Expression of Concern about a 2003 paper that was apparently simultaneously submitted to a German-language journal. According to the notice in the August 2011 issue of the journal (link added):

Double trouble: Psych journal prints PTSD paper twice

Aging & Mental Health “welcomes original contributions” to fill its pages.

Or not so original. Last November, the journal published a study by two California researchers which looked at the possible effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on physical well-being in older women – and found no evidence of such a link.

Six months later, the journal published the findings again.

It issued a retraction earlier this month, which included the following: