Fol. Biol. 2013, 59, 138-138
Retraction: DNA Analysis of Ancient Skeletal Remains
Following publication of the report: Eliášová I., Mazura I., Smejtek L.: DNA analysis of ancient skeletal remains, Folia Biologica (Praha), 2010; 56(2): 47-50, Folia Biologica was notified by Dr. Daniel Vaněk with the request to retract the publication for the reasons of plagiarism (inappropriate use of data and of the intellectual content of a former coauthor, who was eliminated from the published report) and strong accusation that the data are incorrect and do not support the conclusions of the report. Folia Biologica notified the institutions of all authors with the request to carry out an investigation concerning the work leading to the publication. The investigation was conducted at the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, the main institution linked to the reported work.
The investigation concluded that there were no signs of plagiarism or inappropriate use of data, but certainly the input of Dr. Vaněk was inappropriately acknowledged and there were some indications of data overinterpretation. Folia Biologica offered the Authors to publish a Correction and Addendum, which appeared in Folia Biologica 2013; 59(1): 51.
Folia Biologica was contacted again by Dr. Vaněk with the request to retract the original publication and reject the acknowledgement.
Folia Biologica therefore invited all authors and Dr. Vaněk to settle the dispute. Only the first author of the original publication and Dr. Vaněk accepted the invitation.
This debate pointed out possible inaccuracies of data in the original publication, especially concerning the Father – Son relationship and the frequency of investigated alleles in the studied material. The investigation also showed that Dr. Vaněk was inappropriately removed from the list of authors in the final stages of manuscript preparation.
Folia Biologica requested reexamination of the potentially erroneous or insufficient data with the aim to publish their appropriate correction. One party of the dispute, Dr. Vaněk, agreed to this solution, but the other party stated that the cooperation after almost two years of continuing allegations and investigations was not possible.
Since there is no indication that the situation may be clarified in a foreseeable time frame, and Folia Biologica cannot support the full content of the publication, the original publication as well as the Correction and Addendum are retracted by the journal.
Copyright
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
