---
title: "Retraction in academic publishing"
chunk: 2/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retraction_in_academic_publishing"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:28:31.503137+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Retraction for error ===
2025 - A controversial paper claiming that the ancient village of Tall el-Hammam in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea was destroyed by a cosmic airburst was retracted by the journal because the evidence did not support the conclusions; the authors maintained their position, and intended to republish the original article with new data.
2013 - Study on the Mediterranean diet published in New England Journal of Medicine and widely covered by media was retracted due to unreported non-random assignments. This was part of a larger effort by anesthesiologist John Carlisle to verify proper randomization in thousands of studies; he found problems in about 2% of those analyzed.
2012 - Séralini affair - Article suggesting reported an increase in tumors among rats fed genetically modified corn and the herbicide RoundUp retracted due to criticism of experimental design. According to the editor of the journal, a "more in-depth look at the raw data revealed that no definitive conclusions can be reached with this small sample size".
2003 - A study on the relationship between use of the drug ecstasy and dopaminergic neurotoxicity in primates published in Science was retracted, due to methamphetamine unintentionally being used in the experiment instead of ecstasy. See Retracted article on neurotoxicity of ecstasy.