Wang X, Song H, Zhao S, Guan W, Gao Y. Infect Drug Resist. 2021;14:3341–3355
The Editor and Publisher of Infection and Drug Resistance wish to retract the published article. Following a request from the authors to replace several images within the article it was found several images from the article appeared to have been duplicated with those from other publications by the same authors. Specifically:
Figure 5A Sham group appears to have been duplicated with Figure 4B LPS from Wang et al. Sci Rep 11, 17772 (2021) (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97101-0).
Figure 6D Sham group appears to have been duplicated with Figure 5E Con group from Wang et al. Sci Rep 11, 17772 (2021) (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97101-0).
Figure 7A Sham group appears to have been duplicated with Figure 6C Ex group from Wang et al. Sci Rep 11, 17772 (2021) (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97101-0).
Figure 3D Sham 24 h appears to have been duplicated with Figures 2a and 2c Con group and Ex group, respectively, from Wang et al. Research Gate (2021) (https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-289593/v1).
Figure 4E LPS group appears to have been duplicated with Figure 7b LPS group from Wang et al. Research Gate (2021) (https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-289593/v1).
Figure 5A Sham group appears to have been duplicated with Figure 4c Ex group from Wang et al. Research Gate (2021) (https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-289593/v1).
Figure 7A Sham group appears to have been duplicated with Figure 6c Ex group from Wang et al. Research Gate (2021) (https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-289593/v1).
The authors responded to our queries but were unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the alleged image duplication or provide the original images from the study. This raised concerns over the reliability of the findings reported and the Editor requested for the article to be retracted.
Our decision-making was informed by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retraction.
The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.