Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Doh! Top Science Journal Retractions of 2011

Doh! Top Science Journal Retractions of 2011

Bad scholarship papers can have durability effects. Consider a 1998 paper in a biography a Lancet that related autism to a MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. That paper was wholly retracted in 2010 on justification that comparison author Andrew Wakefield had manipulated information and breached several correct reliable codes of conduct.

Nevertheless a erring paper continues to criticise open certainty in vaccines. After a Lancet article, dipped neatly and haven't wholly rebounded. This decrease in a MMR vaccine has been tied to a arise in measles cases ensuing in permanent damage and death.

Each year hundreds of peer-reviewed systematic articles are retracted. Most engage no blatant malfeasance; a authors themselves mostly detect errors and redress a paper. Some retractions, however, as documented on a blog , entail plagiarism, fake authorship or baked data.

No biography is protected from retractions, from a strong "single-word-title" journals such as Nature, Science and Cell, to a innumerable minor, enigmatic ones.

Yet as astronomer , "Extraordinary claims need unusual evidence." Below are 5 scholarship formula retracted in 2011, pulled henceforth off a books in prejudiced for descending distant brief of assembly a Sagan standard.

#5: Los Angeles pot dispensaries lead to dump in crime.

Keep smoking. The RAND Corporation retracted a possess news in Oct after realizing a messy data collection.

Crime information gathered from neighborhoods with these rarely quarrelsome medical pot dispensaries presumably suggested somewhat reduce crime rates. The authors attributed this decrease not to pot itself though rather a participation of confidence cameras and guards in and around a dispensaries, carrying a certain outcome on a neighborhood. []

The L.A. city attorney's bureau was angry with a report, carrying argued a conflicting â€" that a dispensaries multiply crime. The city's lawyers shortly found vicious flaws in RAND's information collection, mostly stemming from RAND's faith on information from CrimeReports.com, that did not embody information from a L.A. Police Department. RAND blamed itself for a error, not CrimeReports.com, that had done no claims of carrying a finish set of data, and, in fact, didn't even know about a study.

#4 -- Butterfly meets worm, falls in love, and has caterpillars.

The Proceedings of a National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a illusory explain in 2009 by zoologist Donald Williamson, that was delightfully reported in a scholarship news media. Williamson claimed that ancestors of complicated butterflies incorrectly fertilized their eggs with spermatazoa from velvet worms. The outcome was a prerequisite for a larva theatre of a .

The PNAS paper got a few laughs among evolutionary scientists, though it hasn't nonetheless been retracted. Williamson's follow-up 2011 paper in a biography Symbiosis, however, has been retracted.

Researchers Michael Hart and Richard Grosberg during a University of Texas, Austin, evenly refuted all of Williamson's claims in a pages of PNAS by a finish of 2009. They formed their arguments wholly on obvious concepts of both simple expansion and a genetics of complicated worms and butterflies. When Symbiosis published a butterfly-meets-worm essay in Jan 2011, Hart lifted questions with a editor. As of Nov a paper is no longer available.

#3: Treat appendicitis with antibiotics, not surgery.

The Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery published an essay in 2009 by Indian researchers patrician "Conservative government of strident appendicitis." The crux was that antibiotics competence be a , a surgical dismissal of a appendix.

Well, maybe not. The biography retracted a paper in October. Italian surgeons had lifted a red dwindle with a investigate in a extensive minute published in 2010 in a same journal, kindly citing a crowd of problems with a study's methodology. The Indian researchers responded a month after with their possess two-paragraph minute fortifying a methodology and job for a incomparable investigate to settle a supremacy of antibiotic diagnosis over surgery.

There's no word either that incomparable investigate is pending, though a journal's editors retracted a strange essay for reasons of supposed plagiarism, saying that "significant portions of a essay were published earlier" by other researchers in 2000 and 1995.

#2: Litter breeds crime and discrimination.

It sounded so reasonable: Graffiti and spawn in civic settings can trigger changes in a mind that can lead to crime, loathing and discrimination. Alas, a comparison author of this Apr 2011 paper in Science, Dutch amicable clergyman Diederik Stapel, competence have .

The biography Science retracted a paper in Nov on fulfilment that Stapel, a media heavenly whose name busy a New York Times, might have calculated information in during slightest 30 papers, according to a news from Stapel's university, Tilburg University in a Netherlands. Stapel has given been dangling from Tilburg tentative serve investigation.

The design reader contingency now doubt other pet theories from Stapel. These embody his "findings" that beauty-advertising works since it creates women feel worse about themselves, and that leads to hypocrisy.

#1: Chronic tired syndrome is caused by a virus.

Chronic tired syndrome (CFS) is a commotion of different origin. Some researchers, in fact, cruise this a psychological commotion mostly cramped to wealthier countries, inspiring women some-more than men.

Then came a investigate published in Science in Oct 2009 by researchers from a Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada. The researchers compared CFS with something called xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related pathogen (XMRV), that they pronounced they found in blood samples of patients with CFS.

CFS advocates were elated. At final there was explanation that their illness was real, they said. Retrovirus experts, on a other hand, were skeptical. Maybe a blood samples were contaminated. It turns out that a paper is expected wrong. No other lab could imitate a results.

Science released an "Editorial Expression of Concern" in Jul after a authors themselves refused to redress their paper. The Science editorial states bluntly that a investigate supposed "to uncover that … XMRV was benefaction in a blood of 67 percent of compared with 3.7 percent of healthy controls. Since then, during slightest 10 studies conducted by other investigators and published elsewhere have reported a disaster to detect XMRV in eccentric populations of CFS patients."

The authors finally released a prejudiced nullification in September, stealing information now famous to be from infested samples. Science followed with on Dec. 23. Meanwhile, in a unfortunate twist, comparison author Judy Mikovits was dismissed from a Whittemore Peterson Institute in Sep and arrested in California in Nov over charges for possession of stolen skill and wrong holding of mechanism data, apparatus and supplies. Science is questioning either a information were manipulated.

Following a story of this paper is adequate to make we fatigued.

Christopher Wanjek is a author of a books "" and "." His column, , appears frequently on LiveScience.


News referensi http://news.yahoo.com/doh-top-science-journal-retractions-2011-130105686.html

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