We are writing to clarify several issues that have been raised in blogs regarding the retraction of Urisman et al. 2006 [1] by PLOS Pathogens.
PLOS Pathogens is a community journal and all of the editors of PLOS Pathogens are active researchers who volunteer their time. Thus our editors are also part of the community of authors and held to the same standards.
Six senior PLOS Pathogens editors unanimously agreed to retract Urisman et al. 2006. As a group they were knowledgeable about the content of the study and took advice on the process of retractions. Over seven years and thousands of papers, PLOS Pathogens has published three retractions. One was due to fraud. This present retraction is a second case of retraction because the major findings were unreliable, because of inadvertent error and in both cases a very high level of proof was manifest.
In this case, the new paper in PLOS ONE from Lee et al. 2012 [2] provided compelling proof because it re-analyzed the same samples and many key authors of Urisman et al. 2006 were also participating authors on this paper. We have the highest regard for the authors. Moreover, our retraction statement is essentially the same as the conclusion of their paper “These findings reveal no association between XMRV and prostate cancer, and underscore the conclusion that XMRV is not a naturally acquired human infection” but the identification of the virus and methodology remain valid. To ensure that this statement is correctly associated with the Urisman et al. 2006 citation at non-PLOS sites (such as Pub Med and PubMed Central) we effected a clearly stated retraction rather than a correction.
PLOS Pathogens communicates with authors through the corresponding author. This is our standard practice. We invited commentary through the corresponding author with whom we communicated during manuscript submission and review. The email address was and is current: the individual is an advisory member of our editorial board. We have apologized for not contacting the second corresponding author. Our expectation was that the first would discharge responsibilities to all remaining authors. We have since corresponded with all authors.
Kasturi Haldar
PLOS is not making a new policy here. Retractions have been used for many years by all publishers. All PLOS journals have always followed the 2009 guidelines at COPE that we have referred to before. I (Virginia Barbour) was one of the people who wrote them, they were endorsed by COPE and are now widely used by editors and publishers. To reiterate, they state, that:
- “ Journal editors should consider retracting a publication if:
they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error)”
From all the comments on all the various posts here and on other sites and from emails there is, however, a clear need to have a discussion about how to annotate the literature post publication, especially as electronic publication becomes more sophisticated and options for post publication corrections expand. Specifically, it is clear that somehow “retraction” implies “malfeasance” and although we at PLOS don’t share that view, we understand that it is others’ perception and that a discussion of what useful terms and mechanisms we can use in this fast-moving electronic age is needed.
This complicated issue is one that is unlikely to be done justice in the short responses typical of social media commenting, and so we’d like to invite longer responses for a constructive discussion on these issues at this blog. If you would like to contribute a blog post please email us on plosmedicine@plos.org and we will publish a selection of opinions over the next few weeks. If you have specific questions on PLOS policy please also contact us on plospathogens@plos.org or plosmedicine@plos.org
Virginia Barbour
1] Urisman A, Molinaro RJ, Fischer N, Plummer SJ, Casey G, et al. (2006) Identification of a Novel Gammaretrovirus in Prostate Tumors of Patients Homozygous for R462Q RNASEL Variant. PLoS Pathog 2(3): e25. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.0020025
2] Lee D, Das Gupta J, Gaughan C, Steffen I, Tang N, et al. (2012) In-Depth Investigation of Archival and Prospectively Collected Samples Reveals No Evidence for XMRV Infection in Prostate Cancer. PLoS ONE 7(9): e44954. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044954
