The corresponding author notified PLOS ONE of errors in patient data reporting in Table 1 and Fig 3 of this article [1]. They noted that Fig 3 is mislabeled and duplicates a figure published in [2], and that errors were made in collecting, recording and reporting patient data for this study [1]. The corresponding author requested the article’s retraction on behalf of the author group.
In PLOS’ internal assessment, we noted that the studies reported in [1] and [2] are partially redundant. The two articles address highly similar research questions and report overlapping conclusions and datasets. Table 1 in each article reports the same kyphotic angle data for 11 patients (participants #1, 2, 4–12 in [1]), but for six of these participants the two articles report different age or sex data. The PLOS ONE article reports different follow-up timepoints for these 11 participants and also reports data for participants that were not included in [2]. Nevertheless, the PLOS ONE Editors concluded that the degree of redundancy between the two articles is not acceptable, particularly given that the reuse of data and/or participants across the two articles was not declared.
Furthermore, there is no participant listed in Table 1 for whom the data aligns with those reported in the Fig 2 legend. This issue, the author’s comments discussed above, and the differences in demographic data reported for participants in Table 1 of [1] versus [2] call into question the overall reliability of the study’s dataset.
In light of the above concerns, the PLOS ONE Editors retract this article.
All authors agreed with retraction.
Fig 3 reports material from [2], published in 2012 [Springer-Verlag] and which is not offered under a CC-BY license. Fig 3 is therefore excluded from this article’s [1] license. At the time of retraction, the article [1] was republished to note this exclusion in the Fig 3 legend and the article’s copyright statement.
References
- 1. Huang J, Zhang H, Zeng K, Gao Q (2014) The Clinical Outcomes of Surgical Treatment of Noncontiguous Spinal Tuberculosis: A Retrospective Study in 23 Cases. PLoS ONE 9(4): e93648. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0093648 pmid:24699518
- 2. Zhang H-q, Lin M-z, Shen K-y et al. (2012) Surgical management for multilevel noncontiguous thoracic spinal tuberculosis by single-stage posterior transforaminal thoracic debridement, limited decompression, interbody fusion, and posterior instrumentation (modified TTIF). Arch Orthop Trauma Surg 132, 751–757. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00402-012-1473-z pmid:22350053
Citation: The PLOS ONE Editors (2021) Retraction: The Clinical Outcomes of Surgical Treatment of Noncontiguous Spinal Tuberculosis: A Retrospective Study in 23 Cases. PLoS ONE 16(6): e0253035. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253035
Published: June 4, 2021
Copyright: © 2021 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.