Retraction for Cox et al., Pan-viral-microRNA screening identifies interferon inhibition as a common function of diverse viruses

MICROBIOLOGY Retraction for “Pan-viral-microRNA screening identifies interferon inhibition as a common function of diverse viruses,” by Jennifer E. Cox, Lydia V. McClure, Andrei Goga, and Christopher S. Sullivan, which appeared in issue 6, February 10, 2015, of Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (112:1856–1861; first published January 26, 2015; 10.1073/pnas.1417891112).

The authors wish to note the following: “After publication, we were alerted to anomalous and duplicated immunoblot bands in Figs. 3D and 4C, for which we immediately contacted PNAS. Further investigation revealed additional band irregularities in both the immunoblots and Northern blots presented, including those in Figs. 3E, 4D, 5 A, B, and D and Figs. S1 and S4B. When asked, the experimentalist could not provide key original non–computer-manipulated immunoblot and Northern blot data that were consistent with the experimental results being obtained as claimed in the paper. We note that the three nonexperimentalist authors were unaware that the data presented were not reflective of original Northern blot and immunoblot data. We continue to investigate how this occurred and whether any of the remaining data are credible. For these reasons, all conclusions in the work must be viewed with skepticism unless independently validated. Accordingly, we are retracting this paper. We deeply regret publishing with these deficiencies and apologize to the readers for not catching these problems sooner, and for all the wasted effort this has caused.”