last updated by Pluto on 2024-03-19 08:13:55 UTC on behalf of the NeuroFedora SIG.
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in Science News on 2024-03-18 13:15:00 UTC.
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in WIRED Science on 2024-03-18 08:00:00 UTC.
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A journal has retracted a controversial 2010 article on intelligence and infections that was based on data gathered decades ago by a now-deceased researcher who lost his emeritus status in 2018 after students said his work was racist and sexist.
The article, “Parasite prevalence and the worldwide distribution of cognitive ability’, was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, by a group at the University of New Mexico. Their claim, according to the abstract:
The worldwide distribution of cognitive ability is determined in part by variation in the intensity of infectious diseases. From an energetics standpoint, a developing human will have difficulty building a brain and fighting off infectious diseases at the same time, as both are very metabolically costly tasks.
Overlaying average national IQ with parasitic stress, they found “robust worldwide” correlations in five of six regions of the globe:
Infectious disease remains the most powerful predictor of average national IQ when temperature, distance from Africa, gross domestic product per capita and several measures of education are controlled for. These findings suggest that the Flynn effect [which posits that average national IQs increase over time] may be caused in part by the decrease in the intensity of infectious diseases as nations develop.
The study – and a related paper by a different group of authors – caught the attention of the popular science media. The Washington Post covered the research (pointing out some shortcomings), as did Science, and the lead author, Christopher Eppig, wrote about it for Scientific American. In that article, Eppig wrote:
In our 2010 study, we not only found a very strong relationship between levels of infectious disease and IQ, but controlling for the effects of education, national wealth, temperature, and distance from sub-Saharan Africa, infectious disease emerged as the best predictor of the bunch. A recent study by Christopher Hassall and Thomas Sherratt repeated our analysis using more sophisticated statistical methods, and concluded that infectious disease may be the only really important predictor of average national IQ.
But as the journal notes in the retraction, Eppig and his colleagues based their study on an analysis of data published in 2004 by Tatu Vanhanen and Richard Lynn, who died in 2023:
Following the publication of this article, Proceedings B was recently made aware of potential problems with the underpinning datasets used in the analyses, which were drawn from published sources [1,2]. The editors’ attention was drawn to the fact that the datasets on between-country variation in IQ had been the subject of several critiques claiming that they contain substantial inaccuracies and biases that throw substantial doubt on inferences made from them, and that these problems had not been resolved in revised versions of the dataset used by Eppig and colleagues. Upon detailed scrutiny, the editors found these claims to be convincing and asked Eppig and colleagues for their response. While the authors acknowledged at least some of the claimed flaws, they maintained that the inferences from the data were nevertheless reliable.
Proceedings B publishes research of outstanding scientific excellence and importance, conforming to recognized standards of scientific procedure in terms of methodology and ethical standards. Journal policy stipulates retraction where editors have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable (and may invalidate the conclusions of the paper). After carefully considering the dataset, the critiques, the authors’ response and the potential harms created by using a dataset that appears to portray human populations in some geographical regions as of below normal intelligence on average, the editors concluded that the manifest problems in the data warranted retraction in order to uphold these standards.
Lynn’s career, and views, have been highly visible for many years in the United States in the United Kingdom, where he worked. In 2018, Ulster University, where he was a professor emeritus, agreed to demands from students that the school revoke his academic status – news covered by the BBC among other outlets (including this one).
We emailed the chief editor of the journal, and received a reply from a spokesperson for the Royal Society, who told us:
In July 2023, the editorial team was made aware of criticism about the dataset used by Eppig et al. in a 2010 paper in Proceedings B. After considering a wide array of evidence, including the original data set, subsequent critiques and the authors’ response, the editors concluded problems with the study were sufficient to call its conclusions into question and warrant retraction.
The decision to retract was made in January 2024, and the authors were informed at that time, the spokesperson added.
Randy Thornill, the last author of the paper, did not respond to our request for comment.
So what about the other paper that used Vanhanen and Lynn’s data? Hassall and Sherratt told us that in light of the retraction, they would ask Intelligence, where they published their paper in 2011, to revisit the research. Hassall, of the University of Leeds, in England, told us:
Our paper was really focused on statistical issues when looking at spatial patterns in anything, but with IQ data as a case study (prompted by the fact that Eppig et al (and many others) were doing these kinds of analyses). As a result, I’d be hesitant to retract the whole thing as it has value as (and was always intended as) a methodological contribution.
However, both researchers agreed the journal ought to do something to indicate the work was potentially fraught. Hassall said:
researchers are clearly using our work to support the idea of an IQ-disease link.
Taken together, it’s a complicated picture:
- The point of our paper is the method and the method is sound and important, independent of data
- Our analysis yields quantitatively the same conclusions whether based on a problematic dataset (IQ) or on a robust dataset (PISA) that is measuring something similar
- Researchers cite our work sometimes for the methods and sometimes for the (potentially questionable) results.
Sherratt, of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, added:
While our paper does a service by educating researchers on why autocorrelation matters and how to address it, at very least there needs to be a “public health warning” on the data set on which our methods paper is based. We should insist on this. A corrigendum might do the trick if it is seen whenever a reader views our paper … The fear is that if we don’t do anything then, now that Epigg et al. (2010) has been taken out of circulation, our paper can still be used to provide general support for the relationship!
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.
in Retraction watch on 2024-03-18 07:00:00 UTC.
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in WIRED Science on 2024-03-17 13:00:00 UTC.
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How does the role of NUAK1 tau phosphorylation differ within mouse and human brains, and why could inhibiting this enzyme open the door to future therapeutics within Alzheimer’s disease research?
A new paper published by the journal Acta Neuropathologica has highlighted a possible driver of Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia worldwide, encompassing a range of symptoms such as memory loss, that contributes to cognitive decline within individuals. Since age is the greatest risk factor to developing the disease, it is most widespread in people aged over 65. With more people living longer due to advances in global healthcare systems, the number of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease is set to increase. As there is no cure, recent advancements in disease-modifying treatments are the only possible therapies shown to slow down the progression of the disease.
"Phospho-tau 356 appears to correlate with Alzheimer’s disease progression"
Neurons within Alzheimer’s disease fail to communicate properly due to a build up of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, resulting in neuronal cell death. These tau tangles are made up of hyperphosphorylated tau. Enzymes, known as kinases, can regulate the turnover of tau by phosphorylating the protein. One kinase in particular, named NUAK1, is responsible for generating a type of phospho-tau 356.
Recently, researchers at the UKDRI University of Edinburgh used high resolution imaging to find that levels of phospho-tau 356 correlated with Alzheimer’s disease progression within human post-mortem brains. It was noted that post-mortem brains at later disease staging had higher levels of phospho-tau 356. Moreover, phospho-tau 356 was found within the between the synapses of neurons in post-mortem Alzheimer’s disease patients, near neurofibrillary tangles, possibly disrupting cell-to-cell communication. Therefore, phospho-tau 356 appears to correlate with Alzheimer’s disease progression.
Next, scientists blocked the action of NUAK1 by using an inhibitory drug. By using mouse brain slice cultures, the overall tau levels decreased both in the neuron and within the synapse itself. However, when used on valuable left-over human brain tissue from tumour removal surgery, the drug demonstrated more specificity compared to mice brain slices, by selectively lowering phospho-tau 356 levels alone.
Overall, these findings have determined that phosphor-tau 356 correlates with Alzheimer’s disease progression, with higher levels of phospho-tau associated with more severe Alzheimer’s disease cases post-mortem. Thus, phospho-tau 356 could be a future therapeutic target for Alzheimer’s disease via inhibiting NUAK1 enzyme activity. Finally, this study highlighted differences in tau turnover from NUAK1 activity within both mouse and human brain tissue; indicating the importance of translating animal research into human therapies.
This article was written by Catherine Turnbull and edited by Julia Dabrowska. Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch!
in Women in Neuroscience UK on 2024-03-16 16:11:25 UTC.
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Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 47,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.
in Retraction watch on 2024-03-16 05:00:00 UTC.
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What are we doing here? What’s the point of existence?
Traditionally, the West has been dominated by two very different answers to these big questions. On the one hand, there is belief in the traditional God of the Abrahamic faiths, a supreme being who created the universe for a good purpose. On the other hand, there is the meaningless, purposeless universe of secular atheism. However, I’ve come to think both views are inadequate, as both have things they can’t explain about reality. In my view, the evidence we currently have points to the universe having purpose but one that exists in the absence of the traditional God.
The theistic worldview struggles to explain suffering, particularly in the natural world. Why would a loving, all-powerful God choose to create the North American long-tailed shrew that paralyses its prey and then slowly eats it alive over several days before it dies from its wounds? Theologians have tried to argue that there are certain good things that exist in our world that couldn’t exist in a world with less suffering, such as serious moral choices, or opportunities to show courage or compassion. But even if that’s right, it’s not clear that our creator has the right to kill and maim—by choosing to create hurricanes and disease, for example—in order, say, to provide the opportunity to show courage. A classic objection to crude forms of utilitarianism considers the possibility of a doctor who has the option of kidnapping and killing one healthy patient in order to save the lives of five other patients: giving the heart to one, the kidneys to another, and so on. Perhaps this doctor could increase the amount of well-being in the world through this action: saving five lives at the cost of one. Even so, many feel that the doctor doesn’t have the right to take the life of the healthy person, even for a good purpose. Likewise, I think it would be wrong for a cosmic creator to infringe on the right to life and security of so many by creating earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters.
Looking at the other side of the coin, the secular atheist belief in a meaningless, purposeless universe struggles to explain the fine-tuning of physics for life. This is the recent discovery that for life to be possible, certain numbers in physics had to fall in a certain, very narrow range. If the strength of dark energy—the force that powers the expansion of the universe—had been a little bit stronger, no two particles would have ever met, meaning no stars, no planets, no structural complexity at all. If, on the other hand, it had been significantly weaker, it would not have counteracted gravity, and the universe would have collapsed back on itself a split second after the big bang. For life to be possible, the strength of dark energy had to be—like Goldilocks’ porridge—just right.
For a long time, I thought the multiverse was the best explanation of the fine-tuning of physics for life. If enough people play the lottery, it becomes likely that someone’s going to get the right numbers to win. Likewise, if there are enough universes, with enough variety in the numbers in their ‘local physics,’ then statistically it becomes highly probable that one of them is going to fluke the right numbers for life to exist.
However, I have been persuaded by philosophers of probability that the attempt to explain fine-tuning in terms of a multiverse violates a very important principle in probabilistic reasoning, known as the “Total Evidence Requirement.” This is the principle that you should always work with the most specific evidence you have. If the prosecution tells the jury that Jack always carries a knife around with him, when they know full well that he always carries a butter knife around with him, then they have misled to jury—not by lying, but by giving them less specific evidence than is available.
The multiverse theorist violates this principle by working with the evidence that a universe is fine-tuned, rather than the more specific evidence we have available, namely that this universe is fine-tuned. According to the standard account of the multiverse, the numbers in our physics were determined by probabilistic processes very early in its existence. These probabilistic processes make it highly unlikely that any particular universe will be fine-tuned, even though if there are enough universes one of them will probably end up fine-tuned. However, we are obliged by the Total Evidence Requirement to work with the evidence that this universe in particular is fine-tuned, and the multiverse theory fails to explain this data.
This is all a bit abstract, so let’s take a concrete example. Suppose you walk into a forest and happen upon a monkey typing in perfect English. This needs explaining. Maybe it’s a trained monkey. Maybe it’s a robot. Maybe you’re hallucinating. What would not explain the data is postulating millions of other monkeys on other planets elsewhere in the universe, who are mostly typing nonsense. Why not? Because, in line with the Requirement of Total Evidence, your evidence is not that some monkey is typing English but that this monkey is typing in English.
In my view, we face a stark choice. Either it is an incredible fluke that these numbers in our physics are just right for life, or these numbers are as they are because they are the right numbers for life, in other words, that there is some kind of “cosmic purpose” or goal-directedness towards life at the fundamental level of reality. The former option is too improbable to take seriously. The only rational option remaining is to embrace cosmic purpose.
Theism cannot explain suffering. Atheism cannot explain fine-tuning. Only cosmic purpose in the absence of God can accommodate both of these data-points.
OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.
in OUPblog - Psychology and Neuroscience on 2024-03-15 14:00:00 UTC.
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We are back with our 'spotlight on' interview series, shedding light on inspiring women working in the field of neuroscience and reflecting on their distinct backgrounds and career journeys. The questions posed to these individuals explore the themes of job perks and challenges, developing new skills, inspirations in the neuroscience field, and goals for the future. Stay tuned to see new interviews every few weeks from women in a range of neuroscience-related professions!
We interviewed Laura Elin Pigott, a Lecturer and Researcher at London South Bank University. Laura also has other research affiliations, including with Queen Square Institute of Neurology and University College London (UCL). Laura previously completed a MSc Clinical Neurosciences degree, and we will be exploring her subsequent career path in this interview, as well as her experiences and useful insights as a woman in neuroscience.
Can you tell us about your background in science/neuroscience?
I started off interested in the human body and how we can help rehabilitate people; even as a child I read books on anatomy and the workings of the human body and brain. I think this curiosity, coupled with my personal experiences of hospitals and rehabilitation, was why I pursued a BSc in Physiotherapy. I cannot remember a time when I wanted to be anything else.
Then, during my first degree, I got the incredible opportunity to conduct some research, which I later presented at a conference. I remember thinking that translating research into real change could help, not just the hundreds of patients a clinician sees, but the thousands or millions of patients to come. So, I decided very quickly that I wanted to pursue neuroscience and research. Then, during my MSC in Clinical Neurosciences, I was encouraged to push myself and think outside the box, and so I did – what better way to learn?
I think it is because of this curiosity that I have found myself in a few different areas of sub-specialisms, but they all have one thing in common, the incredible capacity of our brain.
Can you tell us about your current role/area of study, and what interested you about neuroscience initially?
I am very lucky to work in a field that I am passionate about and to have the opportunity to join research, such as the study I am a part of at the Neurophysiology unit at UCL on epilepsy. I was drawn to this because of my interest in neural networks: how we can monitor them and how they differ in disease.
My main research, over the past few years, has been on the surveillance of high-grade gliomas at the Queen Square Institute of Neurology. I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I made. Cancer will touch all of us, in one way or another, at some point in our lives and the possibilities for new cancer treatments provide us all with hope.
Most recently, I have started a study at LSBU, looking at the impact of social media on brain development. Due to my interest in neural networks, I’m fascinated by how these connections develop and what can influence them. I’m also excited about this new project as I have also had the opportunity to get students involved through research placements.
What are the most enjoyable aspects of your current job?
I honestly believe this is the best job in the world - the endless learning and imagination that comes with academia and research, the excitement of students eager to learn, and that proud feeling you get when someone does well in an exam or project.
That “Aha, I get it” feeling when I am researching something or when a student has an “aha” moment when they are learning something.
What are some of the challenging aspects of your current job?
Time and money, as with any job. As academics we are constantly juggling our time, and as researchers we are constantly needing funding.
What are you currently trying to get better at in your neuroscience role?
I would like to develop more research projects for students to take an active role in. I had the opportunity to participate in research as a student and I would love to feed that back. I want to show students that research can be exciting, creative, and inspiring.
I also want to learn more about the money distribution within research and how we can optimise this.
Which women in your life inspire you, in neuroscience and beyond?
There are so many women who have inspired me and helped me get to where I am today. There have been some truly amazing women in neuroscience and science over the course of history; some received the recognition they deserved, and others silently paved the way for women like us. Anita Harding, Elizabeth Roboz Einstein, Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin and Cécile Charrier are a few that, despite the challenges they faced, pushed back against the stereotypes.
More recently, scientists like May Britt-Moser, Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Wendy Suzuki, who push the boundaries of research and academia with their ambition and imagination, inspire me.
Beyond science, or perhaps before I had my love for science, my mum inspired me; she always encouraged me and she embodies the phrase “a woman can do anything a man can, just in heels too!”. My sister, who possesses a kindness with no room for outside malice, also inspires me. The women who, through work or friendship, accept me and challenge me to be a better neuroscientist and a better person; one cannot exist without the other. And also the men in my life, like my dad, who support me and have given me the resilience I needed to succeed.
One woman in particular stands out, Tirion Havard, my academic mentor, who called me out when I wasn’t “standing on the right side of feminism”. We had just met in a research meeting and were chatting after it had finished. At the time, I was a lot more timid and still finding my footing in the research and academic world. She asked me what kind of woman I wanted to be – did I want to be small and get “trodden on”, or did I want to be heard. She told me I needed to put on my “big girl pants and get my elbows out”, because I was coming through. And it’s a memory I look back on fondly; it was one of those mind-blowing moments, where you think to yourself: I can do this and I will do this.
What goals do you have for your career, and where do you see yourself in the next few years professionally?
I’d like to complete my PhD and I’d also like to become a Professor of Neuroscience.
I recently delivered a Seed Talk, which educates the public on various topics; my talk was on “The Science of Neuroplasticity”. I would love to grow more into public speaking, as I think we should all have the knowledge and the tools we need to be informed about the workings of our own body.
On this note, over the coming months, I’m hoping to work on a ‘public engagement and highlighting need’ project about stroke recovery with Start Something: Women in immersive tech, Different strokes and Local strokes in the southwest with Anna Ridley.
I’d also like to see myself mentoring other young professionals; I think that academia and research can be lonely sometimes and having a go-to person makes life easier. I want to be the reason young women stay and succeed, not the reason we continue to have high attrition rates.
What advice would you give to females at the early stages of their neuroscience careers?
Keep going. You can do it!
We are programmed from such a young age to be amenable and to not take up space, but as I learnt, sometimes we have to put our big girl pants on and get our elbows out. So be vocal and voice your ideas and DON’T be afraid to put your name to it.
Create a network. This is something I struggled with, but now having so many supportive colleagues around me, means that the bad days don’t seem all that bad after all.
Don’t take the notes. I mean you can if you want to, but do you? Really? And why doesn’t Tim do it? It’s okay to say, “I think someone else should, so we have some variety within the team!” or “I actually have a few points I’d like to discuss today so perhaps someone else could pitch in”.
Have pre-prepped “stock answers” for when you feel something inequitable is happening. This helps me feel more prepared.
Think like a man. I think sometimes we are our worst enemy. My male alter ego is Laurence and when I catch myself doing, or about to do something, that may be an unwanted/unnecessary ‘pink task’, I say to myself, “Would Laurence do/take this?” and if the answer is no, then my answer should be no too.
Make male allies. My supervisor, Sotirios Bisdas, challenged me and never treated me any different. Most of my male colleagues listen and look to me for my speciality, just as I look to them for theirs. This should be the norm, and I am confident that one day soon it will be. Science will be so much more productive if we all work harmoniously.
What aspects of the science/academic industry do you think need improving/addressing, particularly in terms of issues minority groups may face?
Today, the challenge we face is more covert than it once was; they are sexist notions that trickle in from our societal standards of what a woman should be, look like, and do… This covert hostility, or persistent quiet sexism, brews and seems harmless to some, but the statistics would indicate that this is in fact endangering the future of equality. So, challenging these notions is important, especially if we want to recruit more girls into STEM.
Without gender equality in science, scientific progress will fulfil just half of its potential.
Overall, the percentage of female graduates with core STEM degrees is steadily growing, however, the split is still just 26%. This figure is also translated into the female STEM workforce, with women making up 24%. This shows that there is still work to be done to encourage women to study these subjects, transition into the workforce and, importantly, remain in these fields.
Once women are in the workforce, we receive less research funding and fewer prizes for scientific contributions, with women receiving, on average, 60 cents to every dollar a male researcher receives. This means that gender inequality will directly impact scientific discoveries, as well as equality in the workforce (as promotion applications have sections dedicated to funding and prizes). How can we expect to increase the percentage of women in STEM, sitting at a mere 24%, when the money is unequally distributed?
This brings me to my next issue that I would like the industry to tackle; attrition of women in STEM.
The competitive nature of academia is unlikely to change, both because of the low number of faculty positions available, and because of the driven nature of those in the field. However, talented women are currently discouraged from academia, or left behind, for example due to the added pressure of parenting responsibilities, to which the academic environment is hostile.
Even with policies in place, a broad cultural change will be necessary to precipitate true equality. Only a quarter of fathers take paternity leave, with this number dropping over the past few years – this is troublesome for the future of gender equality and also indicates a significant ingrained bias.
If we are stopping women from succeeding in their careers, what example are we setting for our future generations?
Finally, scientifically, we need to look at the research we are outputting; is this representative of our populations? Historically, we have seen the horrendous consequences of not conducting research on people of the reflected population of use. We must learn from this. As research advances, and we see awesome new methods and technologies, guidelines and policies will be useful in ensuring we are equitable and progressive in our approach to research and development.
This article was written by Lauren Wallis and edited by Rebecca Pope. Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch!
in Women in Neuroscience UK on 2024-03-15 11:42:07 UTC.
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In the autumn of 2022, a researcher in Turkey was reviewing a paper for a cardiology journal when an image of a Western blot caught her eye: A hardly visible pair of “unusual” lighter pixels seemed out of place. Magnification only bolstered her suspicion that something was off.
“This image made me think that the bands were cut one by one and pasted on a membrane background,” Şenay Akin, of Hacettepe University in Ankara, wrote in her comments to the editor of Cardiovascular Drugs and Therapy, a Springer Nature journal. “If this is the case, it indicates a manipulation [of] the results of this study.”
The editor, Yochai Birnbaum of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, made a note to check the figure, adding below Akin’s comments in the editorial-management system: “I agree with the reviewer. It could be that the I/R band was manipulated.”
Akin followed up with Birnbaum to ask why the paper was eventually rejected. He wrote:
We emailed the corresponding author using his email addressed to ask clarification and data concerning the western blots. As he did not responded, I finally rejected the manuscript
We asked Birnbaum whether the rejection was related to the alleged manipulation, but he and a spokesperson for Springer Nature, which publishes the journal, declined to comment, citing confidentiality concerns.
A few months after the manuscript was rejected by Birnbaum’s journal, however, it appeared in the pages of the European Journal of Pharmacology, an Elsevier journal, under the same title, “Inhibition of MALT1 reduces ferroptosis in rat hearts following ischemia/reperfusion via enhancing the Nrf2/SLC7A11 pathway.”
The image Akin had flagged in the rejected paper “had been modified” in the published version, she told us, softening the suspicious features in the original. Some of the error bars and P-values in the paper also differed from the material she had reviewed.
Akin took it upon herself to alert the journal’s editor-in-chief, Frank Redegeld of Utrecht University, in the Netherlands, to her misgivings. But Redegeld dismissed her concerns.
In an email to Retraction Watch, Redegeld wrote that he had investigated the allegations about the Western blots with “very sensitive AI image analysis software.”
“The analysis did not detect any issues with the western blot images as published,” he told us. “Therefore, we have no reason to assume the published figure was manipulated and we have closed this case accordingly.”
Ya-Qian Jiang of The Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Changsha, China, lead author of the paper and one of the authors credited for conducting the experiments, told us by email:“We actually provided all the raw data for [the Western blots] as the supplemental materials in the process of review.” Jiang also sent us the image purported to be the original Figure 1F.
“Anyone [who] has the hand-on experience in doing WB should understand why he/she does not use the full-size membrane to incubate with the antibody and why there [are] some peculiar features — haloes around the bands,” Jiang said.
But David Sanders, a scientific sleuth and biologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, said the blots published in the European Journal of Pharmacology had “clear discontinuities,” adding that “some of the bands appear to be pasted on to other bands as background.”
While Sanders could not rule out legitimate image processing had caused the anomalies, magnifying the image revealed clear rectangular outlines for the bands that were posted on a background, he told Retraction Watch.
“The addition of those smudges in the upper left hand corners of each of the lanes is certainly not consistent with this being a normal immunoblot image,” Sanders said.
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in Retraction watch on 2024-03-15 10:14:22 UTC.
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Thursday, March 14th is arXiv’s Giving Day! The number pi will always hold a special place in our hearts, which makes the fact that arXiv Giving Day falls on 3.14 this year even more special!
arXiv Giving Day is a part of Cornell Giving Day, which is facilitated by our parent organization, Cornell University. On March 14th, we ask both the Cornell community, and the scientific community at large, to come together in support of important causes that help foster inclusive education, equitable scholarship, and scientific innovation.
Like pi, the possibilities and potential for scientific discovery provided by arXiv are endless—but our resources aren’t. arXiv is open and free to use for all, but it is not free to operate. arXiv is a critical community resource, and we depend on you to help us stay fast, free to use, and open for all.
100% of your contribution today will go towards supporting arXiv’s infrastructure, operations, and special initiatives.
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in arXiv.org blog on 2024-03-14 15:14:36 UTC.
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in Science News on 2024-03-14 15:00:00 UTC.
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in Science News on 2024-03-14 13:30:00 UTC.
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Wiley, whose Hindawi subsidiary has attracted thousands of paper mill papers that later needed to be retracted, has seen widespread paper mill activity among hundreds of its journals, it announced yesterday.
More than 270 of its titles rejected anywhere from 600 to 1,000 papers per month before peer review once they implemented a pilot of what the publisher calls its Papermill Detection service. That service flagged 10-13% of all of the 10,000 manuscripts submitted to those journals per month, Wiley told Retraction Watch.
Wiley said the service includes “six distinct tools,” including looking for similarities with known paper mill papers, searching for “tortured phrases” and other problematic passages, flagging “irregular publishing patterns by paper authors,” verifying researcher identity, detecting hallmarks of generative AI, and analyzing the relevance of a given manuscript to the journal.
Wiley will now “advance this new service into the next phase of testing in partnership with Sage and IEEE,” a spokesperson said.
“This service is complementary to the STM Integrity Hub, which has been established to provide a shared infrastructure both for screening and information sharing across publishers,” the spokesperson told Retraction Watch. The service does not make use of another product, the Papermill Alarm from Clear Skies, which is incorporated into the Integrity Hub, the spokesperson added.
Asked what Wiley would tell authors of rejected papers, or whether they would alert any other publishers, the spokesperson said:
Wiley’s Papermill Detection service is meant to supplement human integrity checks with AI-powered tools. This means that papers will not automatically be rejected if they are flagged in the system – rather, they will be flagged to an editor for closer consideration before proceeding in the publishing workflow.
Research integrity is an industry-wide challenge, and we are committed to transparency and sharing what we learn about papermills with our peers and the wider industry. We will continue to do so as we learn more through the continued testing and piloting of this service.
We also asked if Wiley has considered steps to reduce the incentives authors have to use paper mills, rather than just working to detect them:
Yes, this is a problem we must address across the entire scholarly communications ecosystem. Wiley agrees with the findings of the 2022 joint report between COPE and STM which calls for direct engagement with funders, universities and hospitals to create new incentives. The United2Act initiative, which Wiley endorses and contributes to, has been organized to bring those stakeholders together. One of their five working groups is focused directly on this important dialog between the stakeholders in the global academic reward systems.
Wiley will stop using the Hindawi brand, it said late last year, after they paused publication of lucrative special issues because they were overrun by paper mills. That move cost the company, which publishes about 1,600 journals, millions of dollars. CEO Brian Napack stepped down in October 2023 amid the bad news.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.
in Retraction watch on 2024-03-14 13:27:47 UTC.
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in WIRED Science on 2024-03-14 09:00:00 UTC.
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in WIRED Science on 2024-03-13 16:50:21 UTC.
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in Science News on 2024-03-13 16:36:16 UTC.
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in Science News on 2024-03-13 13:00:00 UTC.
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in Science News on 2024-03-12 16:00:00 UTC.
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Following an investigation into possible paper mill activities, the journal Cureus has barred a doctor in Pakistan from publishing more papers “out of an abundance of caution,” Retraction Watch has learned.
The journal investigated Satish Kumar, an internist at Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical College in Karachi, after a tipster accused him of selling authorship of scientific papers to scientists who did not participate in the research.
The tipster, who wishes to remain anonymous to avoid backlash from the authors of these papers, sent Cureus WhatsApp messages from a group called “research Match Residency.” There, a user named ”SSS” sent paper titles and offered author slots on manuscripts. Many of the articles were slated for publication in Cureus.
The tipster also shared the WhatsApp messages with Retraction Watch, telling us:
I have known Dr. Satesh Kumar for a couple of years and previously had his contact information saved in my phone. Upon his online advertisements in various WhatsApp groups, I recognized the name already saved in my phone from our prior communication.
Graham Parker, director of Publishing and Customer Success at Cureus, told Retraction Watch:
We conducted a thorough investigation and were unable to confirm these allegations. However, the circumstantial evidence presented to the journal was, out of an abundance of caution, enough to warrant the rejection of any in-progress article submissions that involved Dr. Kumar. Additionally, Dr. Kumar’s Cureus account was permanently suspended.
Several of the paper titles advertised in the WhatsApp group match papers in Cureus, according to screenshots and a video shared with Retraction Watch. Satish Kumar (spelled Satesh Kumar in two of the articles) is listed as an author on all of the papers, which include:
However, Parker stated that the journal did not find “irrefutable proof” authorship slots were “sold on any articles submitted to or published in Cureus.”
He added:
All authors that were questioned stated they had no knowledge of any such activity and extensive working materials were produced showing the collaborative work by the authors. As a result, the journal found no basis for retraction.
In response to the findings of the investigation, Kumar told Retraction Watch by email:
I certainly deny all allegations for which i have provided all the material and proof to Cureus and Mr parker in cureus. There is no single proof where they can prove i am included in any of such allegations. I have all materials and i am open to arrange and speak on call as well to give more explanation. I have already provided all materials to Mr Parker and [Cureus reviewer] Prof guistino Varassi. I am more than ready to provide an explanation and evidences to you as well considering, i am innocent and have no such involvement.
However, Kumar refused to go on the record during a subsequent call with Retraction Watch. Later, he wrote by email:
I sent emails to journal that if they dont have anything proven, they should unban me, however i can’t force someone to do because they are the owner of their journal.
The tipster also accused Kumar of using AI to author at least a portion of six of his more recent papers, which the tipster checked using the app GPT Zero, a tool that has proven accurate at flagging machine-generated medical text. Based on the abstracts of these papers, the use of AI varied from 65% to 97%.
On March 7, Parker wrote in an email to the tipster:
I’d like to once again thank you for your dedication to scientific integrity and fairness. We have conducted a thorough review regarding potential use of generative AI tools in Satesh Kumar’s articles and are unable to make a conclusive determination. ZeroGPT, GPTZero and similar tools cannot be relied upon in this regard as they have been shown to produce many false positives (perhaps most famously indicating that the United States Constitution was written by AI), but they also do not distinguish between generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT) and proofreading tools such as Grammarly.
As a result, we do not intend to take any further action regarding these articles. However, Dr. Kumar’s account will remain permanently suspended out of an abundance of caution, as the journal no longer wishes to work with him in any capacity. Thanks again for your time and energy on this.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.
in Retraction watch on 2024-03-12 14:00:00 UTC.
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in Science News on 2024-03-12 13:00:00 UTC.
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in WIRED Science on 2024-03-11 17:52:36 UTC.
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in Science News on 2024-03-11 14:30:00 UTC.
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Note: PLOS is delighted to once again partner with the Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research. The awards program honors researchers who reflect rigor, reliability, robustness, and transparency in their work. The Einstein Foundation received dozens of stellar submissions. We asked this year’s finalists to write about their research in the run up to the ceremony on March 14th in Berlin. This is the last blog in our 5-part series.
Every research study involves numerous potential outcomes and conclusions, as researchers employ diverse analytical approaches when interpreting empirical data. Recognizing the variability in these methods, my colleagues from the University of Innsbruck, Stanford University, and Dartmouth College, along with myself, have established the Global Analytical Robustness Initiative.
The primary goal of this initiative is to enhance analytical standards within the behavioral and social sciences, thereby boosting the reliability and transparency of research outcomes. The team’s plan is to have 100 studies examined by around 500 experts for analytical robustness and create an open database that makes transparent the correlation between the analytical paths taken in empirical work and the results presented in the research.
The project will enable researchers to identify and respond to the corresponding problems and challenges. On this basis, the Global Analytical Robustness Initiative aims to issue recommendations on how to increase analytical robustness and train scientists to use the most robust analytical methodologies. “In this way, we hope to strengthen the reliability of future empirical results and, ultimately, foster trust in science.”
Author: Barnabás Szászi leads the work of the Behavioral Science lab and the Behavioral Science Center for Good. His primary goal is to support vulnerable individuals and groups (families, the poor and the sad) using behavioral and data science. He obtained a dual degree in psychology and economics and finished my Ph.D. in experimental psychology in 2018. Since then, his work as a lead author appeared in top psychology and social science journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behaviour, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, and eLife. He has won numerous scholarships and awards including the scholarship of the Hungarian Central Bank, the National Excellence Program, Bolyai, Campus Mundi, Eötvös, Rosztóczy, Fulbright (2x), and the Promising Researcher and the Rosak Tamas award. He was also a visiting student researcher at Columbia University and is now an incoming Fulbright Scholar at Harvard Business School for the academic year 2023/24.
The post Improving analytical standards: Global Analytical Robustness Initiative appeared first on The Official PLOS Blog.
in The Official PLOS Blog on 2024-03-11 14:07:15 UTC.
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Disclaimer: WiNUK acknowledges that the menstrual cycle is not a gender-specific experience. Throughout this blog, people who experience the hormone changes of the menstrual cycle are referred to as the ‘female sex’ or ‘female’, and those who were assigned female at birth.
The menstrual cycle is the ~28 day hormone cycle females have to regulate the shedding and build up of the uterus lining. The hormones that fluctuate are oestrogen, progesterone, follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone. Fluctuations in oestrogen and progesterone are the most prominent, lasting for the majority of the cycle, with oestrogen peaking during the follicular phase until ovulation and progesterone increasing during the luteal phase as the lining builds, and dropping when the lining sheds.
"Even in people without PMDD, peak progesterone levels during the menstrual cycle are associated with increases in negative mood"
As these changes are so long-lasting and distinct, with oestrogen levels rising 8-fold and progesterone levels 80-fold during the ~28 day cycle (1), it has been hypothesised that people who experience these hormone changes will have marked differences in brain function and behaviour during these times. Indeed, many report emotional changes, increased irritability and decreased self-esteem during their cycle. Furthermore, people who take hormonal contraception may experience similar mood disturbances. But how do sex hormones have such a profound effect on our emotions? It is all down to the distribution of sex hormone receptors in the brain. Progesterone binds to receptors located in the amygdala, a brain region responsible for a range of emotional responses, such as anxiety, social understanding (interpreting social cues), and fear. Progesterone has been implicated in premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), a severe form of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) that is associated with emotional dysregulation during the luteal phase (when progesterone peaks) (2). Even in people without PMDD, peak progesterone levels during the menstrual cycle are associated with increases in negative mood (3). Progesterone can easily cross the blood brain barrier and can even accumulate in brain tissue to beyond levels found in the blood. Moreover, progesterone also has a role in stress regulation. During periods of stress, it can be converted to cortisol, the primary stress hormone (4) maintaining the actions of the sympathetic nervous system (the branch of the nervous system responsible for staying in high alert during situations of prolonged stress).
Other areas of the brain have sex hormone receptors too. The hippocampus is rich in sex hormone receptors and is also highly plastic, meaning it can be structurally altered in response to stimuli such as hormones. Indeed, oestrogen has been found to modulate structural plasticity in the hippocampus (5), having important implications in learning and memory. The hippocampus is also responsible for long term memory storage which can have significant implications on emotion - such as how a fond childhood memory might make us happy and reminiscent, or a negative one fearful and anxious.
"Only 0.5% of neuroimaging studies consider the effects of sex hormones and hormone transition phases on the brain"
Studies on the hippocampus have shown conflicting responses to sex hormones; some suggest there is a significant increase in grey matter in this region during the peak oestrogen portion of the menstrual cycle (6, 7), while others find no such result and lean towards the effect of progesterone on cycle stage-dependent changes in hippocampal volume (3).
Unfortunately, the scarcity and vagueness of research on the effect of female sex hormones in the brain is in part due to the long-standing bias towards males in neuroscientific research. In recent years, researchers have been encouraged to include both sexes in their experiments, whether it is on humans or rodents. Despite this leading to an increase in female representation in sample populations, the majority of research does not then analyse sex differences - as few as 5% of papers in neuroscience and psychiatry published in 2019 included ‘optimal analysis of possible sex differences’ (8). This emphasises a very pressing issue in neuroscience research. If we aren’t including females in our sample populations and are not analysing sex differences as a variable within research, we most certainly are not taking into account sex-dependent hormone cycles. This is evident in neuroimaging, with only 0.5% of neuroimaging studies considering the effects of sex hormones and hormone transition phases on the brain (9). It is even more alarming that this has only been flagged in the past couple years, when oral contraceptives have been readily prescribed since the 1960’s.
Current trends, largely driven by female neuroscientists, are to provide more clarity on the effect of the menstrual cycle on brain structure and behaviour. The overarching flaw of most neuroimaging studies evaluating the effect of the menstrual cycle on the brain is that they only observe a snapshot of the cycle. To improve our understanding of brain changes across the full 28 days, imaging experiments need to visualise the brain at a range of time points. When neuroimaging takes into account the day-to-day hormone fluctuations over the breadth of the menstrual cycle, we can begin to see just how the brain is altered over this period of time. A number of studies by the Jacobs Lab (University of California, Santa Barbara) have done just that, looking at how oestrogen and progesterone affect functional brain networks of an individual across a 30-day cycle (10).
Now that people are becoming more aware of the sex bias in research, attention is turning to the long-dismissed importance of sex differences in neuroscience. Soon we may uncover answers as to why females make up two thirds of people with Alzheimer’s, how to help those suffering from PMDD, and other interesting differences.
References:
This article was written by Katie Mortimer and edited by Julia Dabrowska. Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch!
in Women in Neuroscience UK on 2024-03-11 14:05:43 UTC.
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Human cell lines represent key reagents for many research laboratories. Cell lines are often the first models that researchers choose for experiments such as gene manipulation and drug testing, as they are relatively accessible and inexpensive, particularly compared with mouse and other animal models.
However, cell lines also are prone to contamination by other faster growing cell lines. As a result, many human cell lines purported to represent particular tumor types have been found by genetic testing to be contaminated by other cancer cells. This potential for confusion poses a serious problem for researchers who want to study a particular cancer type but end up using cells from an unrelated disease.
Our team studies wrongly identified nucleotide sequence reagents in cancer research, such as PCR primers and gene knockdown reagents. Recently in the context of an undergraduate student project, we decided to also check the identities of cell lines in a small group of papers on the human gene miR-145, which codes for a microRNA. We found wrongly identified nucleotide sequences and cell lines in numerous articles about miR-145, but also what appeared to be five misspelled identifiers of contaminated cell lines.
This issue isn’t new – some cell line identifiers are known to be misspelled, although little has been written about such misspellings. We decided to study these apparent misspellings, and eventually found 23 published human cell line identifiers that were not recognised as cell lines in the most comprehensive cell line knowledgebase, Cellosaurus. We then studied eight of these non-verifiable (NV) cell line identifiers in detail across 420 papers.
While all eight NV identifiers likely represent misspellings in at least some papers, we also found that seven of the eight NV cell line identifiers seemed to be taking on new identities as independent cell lines. How did we separate identifier misspellings from seemingly independent cell lines? NV cell line identifiers were described as misspellings where they were only used alternately with similarly named human cell line(s), such that the misspelled identifier was never directly connected with any similarly-named cell line.
In contrast, NV cell line identifiers were indicated to represent independent cell lines if they were used without mentions of any similarly named human cell line; if an NV and similarly named human cell line was included in any list of cell lines studied; if results for both cell lines were shown in the same experiment(s); and/or if both cell line identifiers were directly connected in the text.
We determined that more than half of the 420 papers appeared to refer to at least one NV identifier as an independent cell line. However, we could not find any published descriptions of how these cell lines were first established. Some authors claimed to have produced genetic profiles for three NV cell lines, but we could not find such profiles for these cell lines, either in publications describing NV cell lines or elsewhere. Six NV cell lines were claimed to have been sourced from large cell line repositories such as ATCC, but we could not find any of these NV identifiers or cell lines in the claimed repository catalogues.
So why should we be concerned by NV cell lines? As the problem of cell line contamination has shown, cell line identities underpin the results of experiments conducted with these models. The inability to independently verify cell lines raises doubts about the significance of associated results, how these results might be reproduced, and even which experiments were conducted in the first place. While researchers seem unlikely to source NV cell lines for their own experiments (as we could not find them in claimed repositories), they could still risk wasting time and money by following up results from NV cell lines using cell lines that they already have on hand.
Descriptions of NV cell lines call for a zero-tolerance approach to misspelled cell line identifiers and pairing the names of all published cell lines with their corresponding Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs). In the meantime, as we have advised for nucleotide sequence identities, researchers should check the identities of any cell lines that they don’t recognize before planning any future experiments. Simple checks could avoid wasting time on cell lines that might be found on wanted posters, but not in Cellosaurus.
Jennifer Byrne is conjoint Professor of Molecular Oncology and leads the PRIMeR group at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.
in Retraction watch on 2024-03-11 14:00:00 UTC.
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in WIRED Science on 2024-03-11 12:00:00 UTC.
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in Science News on 2024-03-11 11:00:00 UTC.
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in For Better Science on 2024-03-11 06:00:00 UTC.
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in WIRED Science on 2024-03-10 19:46:06 UTC.
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in WIRED Science on 2024-03-10 13:00:00 UTC.
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Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 11 March at 1300 UTC. The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend. You can join us in the Fedora meeting channel on chat.fedoraproject.org (our Matrix instance). Note that you can also access this channel from other Matrix home severs, so you do not have to create a Fedora account just to attend the meeting.
You can use this link to convert the meeting time to your local time. Or, you can also use this command in the terminal:
$ date --date='TZ="UTC" 1300 2024-03-11'
The meeting will be chaired by @ankursinha. The agenda for the meeting is:
We hope to see you there!
in NeuroFedora blog on 2024-03-09 14:54:23 UTC.
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in WIRED Science on 2024-03-09 13:00:00 UTC.
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in WIRED Science on 2024-03-09 07:00:00 UTC.
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Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 47,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.
in Retraction watch on 2024-03-09 06:00:00 UTC.
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In a Tablet Magazine article titled “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers” posted on March 6, 2024, Professor of Statistics and Data Science Abraham Wyner from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania argues that statistical analysis of the casualty numbers reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health is “highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers”.
In the post, he shows the following plot
which he describes as revealing “an extremely regular increase in casualties over the period” and from which he concludes that “this regularity is almost surely not real.”
Wyner’s plot shows cumulative reported deaths over a period of 15 days from October 26, 2023 to November 10, 2023. The individual reported deaths per day are plotted below. These numbers have a mean of 270 and a standard deviation of 42.25:
The coefficient of determination for the points in this plot is R2 = 0.233. However, the coefficient of determination for the points shown in Wyner’s plot is R2 = 0.999. Why does the same data look “extremely regular” one way, and much less regular another way?
If we denote the deaths per day by , then the plot Wyner shows is of the cumulative deaths . The coefficient of determination R2, which is the proportion of variation in the dependent variable (reported deaths) predictable from the independent variable (day), is formally defined as where is the sum of squares of the residuals and and is the variance of the dependent variable. Intuitively, R2 is a numerical proxy for what one perceives as “regular increase”.
In the plots above, the are roughly the same, however is much, much, higher for the yi in comparison to the xi. This is always true when transforming data into cumulative sums, and is such a strong effect, that simulating reported deaths with a mean of 270 but increasing the variance ten-fold to 17,850, still yields an “extremely regular increase”, with R2 = 0.99:
in Bits of DNA on 2024-03-08 19:29:42 UTC.
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On Sept. 2, 2021, a professor at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City, emailed a biochemistry journal asking to correct a paper she had published the previous year. An experiment had “unintentionally” been omitted from a figure, Isabella Grumbach explained, and a comparison of experimental groups contained “a minor error in the degree of statistical significance.” A correction ensued.
But the problems with the article, “Inhibition of CaMKII in mitochondria preserves endothelial barrier function after irradiation,” appear to have been more deep-rooted than the email suggested. An anonymous commenter on PubPeer had first raised concerns about the article, which had appeared in Free Radical Biology and Medicine (FRBM), in July 2021, more than a year after it was published. The commenter claimed error bars between two figures were vastly different, even though they were meant to be related data points.
Grumbach, the corresponding author of the paper, promised to investigate. A month later, she wrote to Rafael Radi, an editor at the journal, saying she had omitted an experiment from the paper by mistake, according to documents Retraction Watch obtained through a public records request. But, she noted, “the data interpretation or overall conclusion from these data are not impacted by this error.”
Grumbach, who is interim chair of internal medicine at the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, said the repeated analysis had strengthened the paper’s conclusions and requested a corrigendum. The correction was published in November 2021.
But that didn’t make the problem go away. Within a month of the correction, another comment appeared on PubPeer claiming the revision didn’t explain the errors the first comment had flagged. Again, the commenter requested the authors share the raw data. This time the authors did not respond to the post.
Then, in January 2022, a sleuth contacted the editor-in-chief of FRBM, Kelvin J. A. Davies, claiming:
All figure in this paper have data and statistic method that is manipulated or falsified. Paper say “independent experiment” but honestly data not from independent experiment. Actually data show replicate reading of same sample from same experiment. This false statistic analysis make very small error bar so statistic significance is reached. If data points from independent experiment analyze then there is big variation and no statistic significance so major conclusions of paper not valid.
Check original data and see how statistic falsified to reach desired conclusion.
The email was appended with the comments from PubPeer.
A month later, the chair of the journal’s ethics committee, Giovanni E. Mann, wrote to Grumbach saying the committee had reviewed the case following the sleuth’s email. Mann noted the authors did not respond directly to the commenter’s request for raw data. He also flagged statistical concerns and added, “We do need to see the individual data points on which these figures and statistics were based.”
Grumbach said she would perform a comprehensive review and prepare a reply to the queries. In her email, she also wrote, “we have seen a very unusual increase in activities regarding the manuscripts from a select group of investigators in the Dept. of Internal Medicine.”
Grumbach did not respond to our queries about the “unusual increase in activities.” She is listed as an author on two other papers that were called out on PubPeer around the same time. One was issued an erratum and another an expression of concern, both related to the inclusion of duplicate data.
A spokesperson for Elsevier, the publisher of FRBM, said the editors were not aware of the PubPeer comments before the sleuth’s email, and made the decision to publish a correction “based on mistakes raised by the author.”
In April 2022, Grumbach officially requested to retract the paper, which has been cited 14 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. She told Davies: “I analyzed these data and inaccurately pasted the data into the analysis software, leading to an incorrect grouping of the data. I apologize for the inconvenience. Please advise me on the next steps.”
The retraction notice, published online in May 2022, stated:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Authors and Editor-in-Chief.
Some of the data presented in Figure 6C, F and G of the above-titled paper were reported incorrectly in the published article. After being contacted by the Journal, the authors discovered an unintentional error in how the original data were analyzed that could affect the accuracy of the subsequent analysis. The raw data were incorrectly grouped in the analysis software, thereby altering the comparisons. Therefore the authors wish to retract the paper and will recollect and reanalyze the data appropriately. The authors apologize for any inconvenience.
The notice added that the authors would “recollect and reanalyze the data appropriately.”
Grumbach declined to be interviewed for this story but a spokesperson passed on a statement from her:
I take research integrity very seriously, which is why I asked for a retraction of this paper when I realized there were errors in the data and analysis after I had submitted an erratum.
Since its retraction, the paper has also been included among the references in another paper by the group, although that “manuscript was drafted and submitted for initial review before the retraction,” according to the university spokesperson.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.
in Retraction watch on 2024-03-08 12:24:39 UTC.
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Meghna Solanki explores the life and work of Rita Levi-Montalcini, a 'trailblazer' in the field of neuroscience, renowned for her discovery of nerve growth factor.
"...let us continue to honour her memory by fostering an inclusive environment where all scientists...can thrive and make meaningful contributions..."
In the archives of neuroscience, Rita Levi-Montalcini's name shines brightly as a beacon of innovation, resilience, and gender equality. Born on April 22nd, 1909, in Turin, Italy, Rita defied societal norms and overcame numerous obstacles to become one of the most influential neuroscientists of the 20th century. Her remarkable journey and groundbreaking discoveries not only revolutionised our understanding of the nervous system, but also inspired generations of female scientists to pursue their passions, despite adversities.
Rita Levi-Montalcini's early years were marked by a fierce determination to pursue her scientific interests in a male-dominated field: "At 20, I realised that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career." Despite facing opposition from her traditional family, she pursued her education, obtaining a degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Turin in 1936. However, her journey as a female scientist was fraught with challenges: discrimination and prejudice against women in academia were rampant, yet Rita refused to be deterred. She persevered, determined to make her mark in the scientific world. She published the groundbreaking paper titled "Effects of mouse tumour transplantation on the nervous system" in 1951, which laid the foundation for her later work on nerve growth factor.
One of Rita Levi-Montalcini's most significant contributions to neuroscience was her discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF) in the early 1950s, alongside colleague Stanley Cohen. Rita Levi-Montalcini discovered NGF using a pioneering method, which involved studying the effects of mouse tumour transplantation on the nervous system. She observed that the tumours stimulated the growth of nearby nerve fibres, which led to the identification and isolation of NGF. This groundbreaking discovery - for which she and Stanley were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986 - fundamentally transformed our understanding of how nerve cells develop, grow and function, laying a foundation for modern neuroscience. NGF's role in promoting the survival and growth of neurones paved the way for countless studies relating to neurodevelopmental disorders, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.
"Her life story serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of diversity and inclusion"
Beyond her scientific achievements, Rita Levi-Montalcini's legacy as a woman in neuroscience is equally profound. She shattered glass ceilings and paved the way for future generations of female scientists to thrive in a field historically dominated by men. Through her tenacity, brilliance, and unwavering dedication to her craft, she inspired countless women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Her life story serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of diversity and inclusion in scientific research, highlighting the invaluable contributions that women can make to advancing our understanding of the world.
In addition to her scientific endeavours, Rita Levi-Montalcini was a fervent advocate for education, gender equality, and social justice. She used her platform and influence to champion causes close to her heart, tirelessly advocating for the rights and empowerment of women in STEM fields. Her philanthropic efforts, including the establishment of the Rita Levi-Montalcini Foundation, continue to support scientific research and education initiatives aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion in the scientific community.
Rita Levi-Montalcini's contributions to neuroscience, and as a woman in STEM, are nothing short of extraordinary. Her groundbreaking discoveries, unwavering determination, and advocacy for gender equality have not only advanced our scientific knowledge, but also inspired countless individuals, particularly women, to pursue careers in science and medicine around the world. As we celebrate her legacy, let us continue to honour her memory by fostering an inclusive environment where all scientists, regardless of gender, can thrive and make meaningful contributions to advancing human knowledge and understanding by breaking barriers and stereotypes along the way.
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This article was written by Meghna Solanki and edited by Rebecca Pope. Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch!
in Women in Neuroscience UK on 2024-03-08 09:31:08 UTC.