Nobel Laureate Linda Buck Retracts Two Studies on Sense of Smell in Brain
Linda Buck, co-winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, retracted two papers on nerves that carry scents from the nose to the brain, according to scientific journals.
The papers appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005 and Science in 2006. They were retracted because the scientists couldn’t reproduce findings by Buck’s former postdoctoral researcher Zhihua Zou, the journals said in statements posted on their websites today. Zou didn’t sign either retraction.
Buck, 63, shared her Nobel Prize with Richard Axel for “discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system,” according to the Nobelprize.org website. A study published in 2001 by Nature about how odors are carried from the nose to the brain in mice was withdrawn in 2008, also because Buck, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, couldn’t reproduce findings.
A call to Buck’s office wasn’t immediately returned.
After completing his research with Buck, Zou worked as an assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He was laid off from the institution in November 2008, along with 2,400 others, after Hurricane Ike destroyed facilities in September, said Kristen Hensley, a spokeswoman for the medical branch. Zou “returned to China” and his whereabouts today are unknown, Hensley said.
Zou ‘Disappointed’
Martha Canwright, who at the time was a spokeswoman for Zou, said in 2008 that he was “disappointed” the Nature paper had been retracted.
“Dr. Zou has not admitted any wrongdoing and remains confident in the conclusion made in the published paper,” she said at the time.
Buck and Axel won the Nobel for a 1991 paper describing roughly 1,000 genes related to odorant receptors. Axel is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, as well as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Lopatto in New York at elopatto@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net.
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