Rice plantsWIKPEDIA, IRRI IMAGESTwo samples of bacteria that were mislabeled several years ago have led to the retraction of two papers, including a highly-cited one published in Science.
In 2009, a team of scientists from the University of California, Davis, led by plant geneticist Pamela Ronald, identified a bacterial molecule that is recognized by the immune system of rice plants. It was the culmination of the lab’s longstanding quest to understand how this vital crop thwarts infections, and the paper has since been cited 131 times.
But when new lab members could not repeat the earlier results, the team discovered that one of the previous experiments had been done with mislabeled bacterial strains, while another had used an unreliable test. Ronald announced the problems to others in the field at conferences, and has now retracted the paper.
“There was never any question, even from the people who did the original work, that we ...
