A prominent biochemist and his co-author are pulling one of their papers in
the Journal of Biological Chemistry because…well, we’re not sure.
That’s because the retraction note is – as we’ve come to expect from JBC
– not very informative.
Here’s the only explanation for the retraction of “The Down Syndrome Cell
Adhesion Molecule (DSCAM) Interacts with and Activates Pak”:
This article has been withdrawn by the authors.
The corresponding author, Kun-Liang Guan, earned a MacArthur “genius”
grant in 1998 at the ripe age of 35, amounting to $230,000 over five years.
(Disclosure: Retraction Watch is also supported by a two-year $400,000 grant
from a different MacArthur Foundation program.) The following year, Guan
received a $5,000 award from the American Society for Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology, which publishes JBC.
The paper focused on the signaling mechanisms of Down syndrome cell adhesion
molecule (DSCAM) which, when mutated, leads to mental retardation. It’s
been cited 35 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get much clarity from the journal about why this
paper bit the dust. Here’s what we were told by Kaoru Sakabe, Manager of
Publication Issues at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology:
It is JBC policy to maintain confidentiality in such matters.
Guan has another retraction under his belt, also from JBC. Here’s more from
the note for “AMP-activated protein kinase contributes to UV- and H2O2-
induced apoptosis in human skin keratinocytes,” which is fairly informative:
This article has been withdrawn at the request of the authors.
Reason: To demonstrate that the activation of AMPK is mediated by EGFR
activation, the authors included data in Fig. 2 (A, G, and H) that had been
used in a previous publication. After publication of the above article, the
authors were made aware of this and are therefore withdrawing this paper.
Despite these errors, the authors stand by the reproducibility of the
experimental data and the conclusion.
The first author on the AMPK paper, Cong Cao, was recently named in a
lawsuit between a former postdoc and his advisor, in which the former
postdoc claims to have “detected fabrication and falsification of data” by
Cao.
Guan is currently based at the University of California, San Diego. We’ve
asked him for more information, and will let you know if he responds.
