Prominent nanoscientist retracts paper after PhD students flagged error <https://i0.wp.com/retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Weiss_Paul.jpg>Paul Weiss
The authors of a 2018 nanoscience paper have retracted the article after three doctoral students highlighted a problem with its methods. The 2018 study attracted media attention <https://www.genengnews.com/topics/drug-discovery/nanospears-may-revolutionize-gene-therapy/> for suggesting that nanospears, microscopic structures similar to splinters, may be useful in delivering gene therapies. Paul Weiss <https://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/directory/weiss-paul-s/>, a nanoscientist and a corresponding author of the paper, announced <https://twitter.com/PSWnano/status/1643694132924383232> the retraction on Twitter April 5, the same day the retraction notice appeared. Weiss holds several academic positions, including Presidential Chair of Chemistry and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The study <https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.8b00763>, “Precision-Guided Nanospears for Targeted and High-Throughput Intracellular Gene Delivery,” was published in *ACS Nano,* of which Weiss was a founding editor-in-chief <http://archive.sciencewatch.com/inter/jou/2010/10sepACSNano/>. It has been cited 80 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. The retraction notice <https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.3c02453> stated: The authors retract this article (DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b00763) as the fluorescence method by which the transfection efficiency was determined is unreliable and incorrect and led to greatly overestimated values of efficiency. The original data are also no longer available and cannot be verified. We thank Drs. Jason Belling, Alexandra Mendoza, and Natcha Wattanatorn for bringing the measurement issue to our attention. We reached out to Xiaodong Chen, the journal’s editor-in-chief and a professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, for comment and heard back from an ACS spokesperson, who said: The issue you mention below was an author-requested retraction. For reference, we follow COPE’s retraction guidelines <https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines> in such situations. The three scientists the notice credited for flagging the error were PhD students at the time. One was an author of the original study, Weiss and his co-authors Hsian-Rong Tseng and Steven J. Jonas, both also at UCLA, told *Retraction Watch *in a joint email. All have since earned their degrees. We contacted Belling, Mendoza, and Wattanatorn, but have not heard back. Weiss, Tseng, and Jonas said the three then-students flagged the error about a month after the paper was initially published, preventing it from creeping into other papers. They said they had planned to repeat the experiments properly, but “the equipment and people were not available,” so they retracted the paper. They added: We plan to repeat these experiments with the correct measurements to determine accurate efficiencies. We did a thorough search for the original data and could not find it as, at the time, the data on the microscope used were not archived. We have addressed this issue throughout our laboratory. We very much appreciate the support the community has shown since we published and publicized this retraction. After Weiss posted the retraction note on Twitter, several scientists tweeted in support. KR Last year Dr Weriss new research stated that by changing the gene and deliver as anew, many new things can be brought over in evolution and under the medical treatments. Dr weiss after careful reading and data finalised the theory and brought it to the world. However his PH D students 3 in number, tried the experiments with the values providwed in those data, but never worked; and all that data changed now as diffrent values; this wa sbrought before his professor Dr weisss. Where the data value keep changing , Gene delivery is a doubtful pheneomena as of now. So Dr Weiss withdrew the reaasearch reports from the science society, showing his grace. KR IRS 14 5 23 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CAL5XZooMFRxj1s5ONE8MYv-KdOrXF6LQXJEN2ZkGo%3DPjv7NREw%40mail.gmail.com.
