The editors at Cell Metabolism were contacted by concerned readers in 2016 about irregularities in Figures 3 and 4 of the paper “The Cancer-Associated FGFR4-G388R Polymorphism Enhances Pancreatic Insulin Secretion and Modifies the Risk of Diabetes,” which was published in the June 2013 issue of Cell Metabolism. After reviewing the concerns, we asked the authors for the original data, which they provided. Upon inspection of the primary data, our conclusion was that not all the images provided matched the assembled figures. We therefore referred the authors to their research integrity office at the University Health Network (UNH) in December 2016. We were notified in September 2018 that the UNH had not reviewed the data pertaining to the paper.
In 2019, the journal asked the authors to provide detailed files of how the images for the published figures had been assembled. The authors explained that splice sites had not been disclosed for Figure 3E and provided the original scan of the western blot, which we were able to verify.
Our analysis concluded that the IR data in Figure 4D had a high probability of being a flip of the Grb14 blot in Figure 4C. The authors were unable to provide the original data for Figure 4. Given these concerns surrounding data collection and figure preparation, which undermine our confidence in the conclusions of the paper, the editors at Cell Metabolism have decided to editorially retract the paper.