A 2020 paper that claimed to discover a hyperlink between microbial genomes in tissue and most cancers has been retracted following an research that referred to as the effects into query.
The paper, “Microbiome analyses of blood and tissues recommend most cancers diagnostic means,” was once revealed in March 2020 and has been cited 610 instances, in keeping with Clarivate’s Internet of Science. It was once retracted June 26. The find out about was once additionally key to the formation of biotech start-up Micronoma, which failed to in an instant reply to our request for remark.
Rob Knight, corresponding writer and researcher on the College of California San Diego, additionally didn’t in an instant reply to our request for remark.
In October 2023, mBio, a magazine from the American Society for Microbiology, revealed “Main knowledge research mistakes invalidate most cancers microbiome findings.” The paper identified a number of primary flaws within the the sooner article by way of Knight’s crew.
After downloading and examining the unique knowledge, “we discovered virtually in an instant that the authors of the Nature paper had made some massive errors – that lots of the micro organism they discovered merely weren’t there, or else have been found in amounts that have been 100s of instances smaller than they reported. Oops,” Steven Salzberg, a researcher at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and corresponding writer of the 2023 paper, advised Retraction Watch in an e mail.
Salzberg and his colleagues discovered “a few of these species have been ‘nonsensical,’” he advised us. For instance, the Knight paper discovered that Hepandensovirus was once a very powerful species to spot adrenocortical carcinoma. “Smartly, that’s a shrimp virus! Is not sensible because it doesn’t exist in people,” he advised us.
Knight’s crew spoke back to the grievance in a follow-up paper, “Robustness of most cancers microbiome alerts over a huge vary of methodological variation,” revealed in February 2024 in Oncogene. In it, they defended their unique findings: “Those intensive re-analyses and up to date strategies validate our unique conclusion that most cancers type-specific microbial signatures exist in TCGA, and display they’re powerful to technique.”
The retraction understand cites Salzberg’s paper and the reaction from the authors. It reads:
The Editors have retracted this newsletter. After e-newsletter, considerations concerning the robustness of particular microbial signatures reported as related to most cancers have been delivered to the eye of the Editors. The authors have equipped responses to the problems in a separate e-newsletter.
Skilled post-publication peer overview of the problems raised and the authors’ responses has showed that one of the vital findings of the item are affected and the corresponding conclusions are not supported. All authors consider this retraction.
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