Scientists Question Discovery of New Human Salivary Gland

A widely publicized paper has drawn scrutiny from physicians and anatomists about the authors’ claims regarding so-called tubarial glands.

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salivary glands tubarial glands human anatomy

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ABOVE: A 3-D reconstruction from histological slides (inset on right) of the newly discovered tubarial gland (yellow; ducts in light blue). The torus tubarius cartilage is colored dark blue and muscle is pink.
M. Valstar et al., Radiotherapy & Oncology, doi:10.1016/j.radonc.2020.09.034, 2020.

Last year, a paper reporting the discovery of a pair of salivary glands made headlines at numerous publications, including The Scientist. That manuscript, which was published in Radiotherapy & Oncology, has since received criticism from several groups of scientists who question the authors’ claims. To date, at least eight letters to the editor have been submitted to the journal in response to the paper.

“I don’t think the paper should be retracted, it should just be corrected,” says Daniel Cohen Goldemberg, an oral pathologist at the National Cancer Institute of Brazil and an author of one of the letters. “It’s a good paper, it’s just not focusing on what ...

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Meet the Author

  • Diana Kwon

    Diana is a freelance science journalist who covers the life sciences, health, and academic life.
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