The Funding Statement for this article [1] states that the study received funding from the Smoking Research Foundation, which according to [2] has received financial support from the tobacco industry. In light of this issue the PLOS ONE article [1] does not comply with the journal’s policy on Funding from Tobacco Companies [3] which was implemented in 2010. Therefore, the PLOS ONE Editors issue this Expression of Concern.
In post-publication discussions the corresponding author stated that Smoking Research Foundation funding did not support this study and was reported in error.
We regret that this concern was not identified and addressed prior to the article’s [1] publication.
References
- 1. Kanda T, Nishida A, Ohno M, Imaeda H, Shimada T, Inatomi O, et al. (2016) Enterococcus durans TN-3 Induces Regulatory T Cells and Suppresses the Development of Dextran Sulfate Sodium (DSS)-Induced Experimental Colitis. PLoS ONE 11(7): e0159705. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159705
- 2. Iida K, Proctor RN. (2018) ‘The industry must be inconspicuous’: Japan Tobacco’s corruption of science and health policy via the Smoking Research Foundation. Tobacco Control 27:e3–e11.
- 3. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/disclosure-of-funding-sources#loc-funding-from-tobacco-companies
Citation: The PLOS ONE Editors (2023) Expression of Concern: Enterococcus durans TN-3 Induces Regulatory T Cells and Suppresses the Development of Dextran Sulfate Sodium (DSS)-Induced Experimental Colitis. PLoS ONE 18(1): e0279800. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279800
Published: January 11, 2023
Copyright: © 2023 The PLOS ONE Editors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.