ABOVE: The long pepper plant produces piperlongumine, a compound several studies, including the retracted one, found to selectively kill cancer cells.
ISTOCK, VARAPORN_CHAISIN
Nature has issued a retraction of a cancer study today (July 25), seven years after its publication, citing issues with two figures and the unavailability of original data for them.
“There were clearly multiple oversights with regard to what was being done [in this study] and how it was being vetted,” says cancer biologist William Murphy, professor and chair of dermatology and internal medicine at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the study.
The paper, led by Harvard Medical School biologist Sam Lee, is among several publications from his group to be retracted. Molecular Cell and the Journal of Biological Chemistry have each withdrawn one of Lee’s studies in recent years due to “inappropriately assembled” data and figure manipulation, respectively. In addition, Current Biology ...
