Thank you for bringing this to my attention. We will look closer into this seriously and carefully. I agree that they look similar. However, apparently they might not be identical. It may take us some time to dig out the original data obtained about ten years ago and find out what had happened.
Retraction: October 31, 2022
"We have been alerted that in Fig. 1B, the lysate panels for the positive and negative controls PACT and dsm are more similar than expected. An error was possibly introduced when the figure was assembled from results obtained from experiments that were repeated several times. However, since 8 years have passed since publication, investigation with original research materials is impossible. Therefore, we now retract this paper in full to correct the literature."
When Dr. Elisabeth Bik raised a concern in PubPeer in August, I promised to look closer into this. We admitted that an error was introduced and I take full responsibility for it as corresponding author.
Internal investigation within my research group came to the conclusion that this was an honest error introduced unintentionally when gel images were scanned. One co-author who prepared this part of the figure misaligned and mis-identified the scan. Unfortunately, we were not unable to dig out all uncropped images since the experiment was done 9 years ago. None of the other authors can identify the error without the help of a software, which was not commonly used when our paper was submitted. The author who prepared the figure was also unaware, otherwise it could be easily corrected at any stage. He apologized for the error and I accepted his explanation based on the following reasons:
The images were indeed very similar and he had tens of them.
The error was introduced when the gel was scanned upside-down. Gels were placed in opposite directions commonly in the process of development or visualization. He had no intention or need to turn one gel image 360 degree just to get another image, particularly because too many different but similar images were available.
I personally asked him to repeat the experiments several times since the results were surprising with one 4a protein being unable to bind RNA. So we have confidence that the results are reproducible.
He is a careful person and this is an isolated case that is not seen in his other papers.
Since we do not have all uncropped images to support the data presented in this part of our figure, we retract the paper in full. This is just to correct the error in the literature. We stand by all conclusions of our paper, most of which have also be confirmed independently by other groups.
We have taken actions to prevent this from happening in more recent years. Since 2016, we have asked everyone to keep all uncropped gel images in a server permanently. We have used electronic software to check for errors more often. We have also enhanced our training of students and staff in the area of research integrity, ethics and responsibility. We will use this as another example to educate our trainees and to promote careful conduct of research.
The LKS Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong has set up a panel to investigate this and other papers. The panel found no evidence of fabrication or misconduct from any author. The panel also noted that the main conclusions of the paper were not based on the Western blot data concerned, and thus members were convinced that the conclusions drawn in the paper were valid and credible.
Thank you so much, Dr. Jin, for writing this. Much appreciated.
A longer response by Dr. Jin can be found here:
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