The above-cited article has been retracted by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the publisher of Diabetes. This article was previously the subject of an expression of concern in the February 2018 issue of the journal (Diabetes 2018;67:346–347. DOI: 10.2337/db17-ec2017c. PMID: 29109244).
On November 6, 2017, ADA contacted the corresponding author’s institution, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (Naples, Italy), to request an investigation into the possible duplication of several images presented in this article. These instances include the following:
Figure 4A appears to contain several potentially duplicated images:
∘ In the “I.P.α-IR W.B. α-IR” strip, all lanes on the blot image appear to be duplicated.
∘ In the “α-actin” strip, lanes 1, 3, and 5 and lanes 2, 4, and 6 appear to be duplicates.
The “α-actin” strip in Fig. 2B appears to be republished as lanes 1–3 of the “I.P.α-IRS1 W.B. α-IRS1” strip in Fig. 4A, with size and contrast adjustments. These images (including lane 4 of the “I.P.α-IRS1 W.B. α-IRS1” strip in Fig. 4A) appear to have been previously published—with size, brightness, and sharpness adjustments—as the “α–14-3-3β” strip of Fig. 4A and the “α–PKC-α” strip in Fig. 6D of the following paper:
∘ Oriente et al. J Biol Chem 2005;280:40642–40649. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.M508570200. PMID: 16216880
These images also appear to have been later published as the actin panel in Fig. 2C of the following paper:
∘ Iovino et al. Cell Death Differ 2012;19:1127–1138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/cdd.2011.201. PMID: 22281705
Lanes 4–6 of the “I.P.α-IRS2 W.B. α-IRS2” strip in Fig. 4A appears to have been republished as lanes 1–3 the “α-actin” strip in Fig. 6C of this article. These images (including lane 4 of Fig. 6C) appear to have been later published, with size and contrast adjustments, as the “SMAD 3” strip of Fig. 2C in the 2012 Cell Death and Differentiation article cited above.
In March 2018, the University informed ADA that a three-person committee had been appointed to investigate the issues cited above, but since then the University has not responded to requests for information on the status of the investigation. Therefore, ADA’s Panel on Ethical Scientific Programs (ESP) has independently reviewed these issues. The ESP determined that the concerns cited above are valid and that these and other instances of potential image duplication compromise the overall reliability of the study. ADA has chosen to retract this publication on the basis of the ESP’s assessment.
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.
