Table 2.

Examples of unretracted articles containing significant errors

Authors	Journal and year	Claim	Errata	Description of error
Traver (51)	Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington, 1951	The author reported a mite infestation of her own scalp that was refractory to treatment and undetectable to others.	None	The author is now felt to have suffered from delusional parasitosis (52).
Steinschneider (53)	Pediatrics, 1972	Multiple cases of SIDS were reported in a single family.	None	The children's mother was convicted of murder (54).
Davenas et al. (55)	Nature, 1988	Serial dilutions of anti-IgE that eliminated the presence of any anti-IgE molecules were reported to remain capable of stimulating basophil degranulation.	None	A team of observers visited the authors' laboratory and pronounced the results to be a “delusion” (56). An independent group subsequently failed to reproduce the original findings (57), although their conclusions were not accepted by the original authors (58).
Fleischmann and Pons (59)	Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, 1989	Nuclear fusion was reported from the electrolysis of deuterium on the surface of a palladium electrode at room temperature (“cold fusion”).	Erratum (60)	Potential sources of error were identified (61), and an independent group of physicists monitoring experiments in Pons' laboratory was unable to detect evidence of fusion (62).
Bagenal et al. (63)	Lancet, 1990	Patients treated at a complementary therapy center for breast cancer exhibited higher mortality than those receiving conventional care.	None	A statistical analysis subsequently assessed the differences between cases and controls to be “so small that no conclusion could be made.” (64)
Chow et al. (43)	Nature, 1993	Combinations of mutations conferring resistance to 3 antiretroviral drugs were incompatible with HIV replication.	Erratum (45), acknowledging that additional unrecognized mutations were present	Other groups reported that multiresistant mutant HIV is still able to replicate (44, 65).
Bellgrau et al. (66)	Nature, 1995	Expression of CD95L (FasL) was reported to prevent rejection of mismatched transplanted tissue.	Erratum (containing a minor correction only)	Other investigators were unable to reproduce the findings in other experimental systems (67–69). The author of an accompanying commentary retracted his commentary (70).
Gugliotti et al. (71)	Science, 2004	RNA was reported to form hexagonal palladium nanoparticles.	None	A former collaborator concluded that the hexagonal crystals were a solvent artifact (72, 73).
Labandeira-Rey et al. (74)	Science, 2007	Panton-Valentine Leukocidin (PVL) reported to be required for staphylococcal virulence.	None	Virulence phenotypes previously attributed to PVL found to be due to a mutation in the agr P2 promoter (75).
Wyatt et al. (76)	Science, 2010	Nonribosomal peptides (aureusimines) reported to be required for staphylococcal virulence.	Erratum (77), acknowledging second site mutation	Virulence phenotypes previously attributed to aureusimines found to be due to a saeS mutation (78).
Wolfe-Simon et al. (46)	Science, 2011	The bacterium GFAJ-1 was reported to substitute arsenate for phosphate in nucleic acids.	Editor's note (49)	Eight critical technical comments were published, followed by 2 articles showing that GFAJ-1 DNA does not contain arsenate (47, 48).
Regan et al. (79)	Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2012	CYP2D6 genotyping did not predict responsiveness of breast cancer patients to tamoxifen.	None	Deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium suggests genotyping errors (80).