The above-cited article has been retracted by the American Diabetes Association, the publisher of Diabetes. This article was previously the subject of an expression of concern in the March 2015 issue of the journal (Diabetes 2015;64:1068–1070. DOI: 10.2337/db15-ec03).
As noted in the March 2015 expression of concern, the American Diabetes Association asked the corresponding author’s institution, the University of Campinas, to review the following issue with the article:
Bands 2 and 4 appear to be duplicated in the immunoblot images of Figs. 7B and 8C.
The issue described in the March 2015 expression of concern has been reviewed by an investigative commission appointed by the University of Campinas. The university commission correctly pointed out that the expression of concern mistakenly stated that bands 2 and 4 were potentially duplicated in Figs. 7B and 8C; the expression of concern should have stated that bands 2 and 3 appear to be duplicated in these images. The university commission concluded that bands 2 and 3 are similar but not duplicates and that the figure should be kept as is.
Despite the university commission’s assessment, the American Diabetes Association’s Panel on Ethical Scientific Programs (ESP) remains concerned that bands 2 and 3 in Figs. 7B and 8C are duplicate images, particularly because the evidence submitted by the corresponding author does not appear to match the images presented in the article. The presence of error bars in Fig. 8, which is based on two experiments, magnifies the Panel’s concerns about the reliability of the quantification and analysis described in the article.
On the basis of these concerns, the ESP believes that the only responsible course of action for updating the status of Diabetes 1997;46:1950–1957 is to issue a full retraction. The American Diabetes Association, the publisher of Diabetes, approved the Panel’s recommendation.
Diabetes is a member journal of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (publicationethics.org). As such, the editors of the journal and the ESP refer to COPE’s guidelines and recommendations when reviewing such matters.
