Sharing blame when a paper is retracted

Nature News has a report about the retraction of a paper published some seven years ago. This case is likely to attract some attention because it's from the group of Linda Buck, a Nobel winner,who admitted, "... we have totally lost confidence in the conclusions of that paper."

While we wait for the details of the real story to emerge, what is interesting is the way the blame for the fiasco is being assigned.

A synopsis of author contributions, published together with the retraction, ... lists co-first-author Zhihua Zou as solely responsible for providing data and figures for the paper. Zou, now a researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, did not respond to Nature's requests for comment. Lisa Horowitz, who shared first authorship with Zou and continues to work in Buck's lab, was credited only with providing reagents and designing experiments.