Retractions are a scientist's worst nightmare. In the last 10 years, at least 788 scientific papers have been pulled from the literature, according to a study linkurl:published this year in the Journal of Medical Ethics.;http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2010/10/18/jme.2010.038125.abstract Whether it is a result of research misconduct, duplicate publication, or simply sloppy data analysis, a retracted paper can devastate a scientist's research, or even impact a whole scientific field. Here are 10 of the biggest retraction stories of the last year.Highly cited retractions
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5. The mechanism of estrogen signaling -- that wasn't (232 citations)Two papers on the mechanism of estrogen signaling linkurl:were retracted;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57380/ after a former Wyeth employee, Boris Cheskis, was found to have unreliable data. The papers, published in linkurl:PNAS;http://www.pnas.org/content/106/33/14180.4.full and one in linkurl:Molecular and Cellular Biology,;http://mcb.asm.org/cgi/content/full/30/6/1568 were together cited 232 times.4. 10+ retractions from one Mayo lab (268 citations)A...
The Scientist3. I am a Rhodes Scholar...or not (perhaps up to 300 citations) Journal of Clinical OncologyNature MedicineRetraction Watch2. Stem cells turn cancerous? (317 citations) Cancer ResearchRetraction Watch1. There is no autism-vaccine link. We repeat, there is no autism-vaccine link (640 citations) The LancetMost notable retractors5. Researchers retract reactomeScienceScience4. A whoops from gene therapy expertRetraction WatchMolecular;http://www.nature.com/mt/journal/v18/n12/full/mt2010198a.html linkurl:TherapyPNASJournal of the National Cancer InstituteHuman Gene Therapy3. Cognition expert takes hard look at his dataCognition2. Rising stem cell star stumblesNatureBloodThe ScientistScienceNatureCell1. More retractions from NobelistSciencePNASNature



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