Erratum: Retraction of the landmark glyphosate safety publication by Williams, Kroes and Munro (2000) should be reversed.
[This corrects the article on p. 1107 in vol. 25, PMID: 42517087.].
Published Erratum↗
Biomedical subjects
Mohammad Abdollahi
Publications and source records attributed to Mohammad Abdollahi.
Retraction of the landmark glyphosate safety publication by Williams, Kroes and Munro (2000) should be reversed.
The decision by the co-Editor-in-Chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, Prof. Martin van den Berg, to retract the 2000 review article by Williams, Kroes, and Munro has elicited widespread criticism within the scientific community. Issued in late 2025, the retraction decision cites procedural concerns including potential ghostwriting, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and omission of certain unpublished studies, invoking Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines despite lacking evidence of fraud or scientific flaws. This editorial argues that the retraction decision involves editorial overreach and misapplication of the guidelines. The alleged omissions stemmed from proprietary data access limitations that were disclosed in the original paper. Subsequent reviews by several independent expert panels and regulatory authorities with access to all glyphosate data, including the studies cited by the retracting editor, reached similar conclusions. Claims of ghostwriting were previously investigated and found lacking, including a declaration by EFSA as to the clarity of the conflict disclosures. The retraction's timing, reliance on litigation documents, and apparent biases that were not disclosed in the retraction notice raise questions of ideological interference. Absent substantive rebuttals based on scientific merit rather than speculative claims of inappropriate authorship and data access, this retraction decision sets a dangerous precedent for retroactive censorship, potentially chilling beneficial industry-academic collaborations and eroding trust in the integrity of scientific publishing. With the strongest conviction, we assert that retracting a paper without scientific flaws isn't protection-it is censorship. We therefore call for the immediate reversal of this flawed and unjustified retraction to preserve trust in peer-reviewed literature.
COPE↗
A Protocol for Detecting DNA Methylation Changes at CpG Sites of Stemness-Related Genes in Aging Stem Cells.
Aging adversely affects the self-renewal and differentiation capabilities of stem cells, which impairs tissue regeneration as well as the homeostasis. Epigenetic mechanisms, specifically DNA methylation, play a key role in the maintenance of pluripotency in stem cells and regulation of pluripotency-related gene expression. Age-related modifications in methylation patterns could influence the expression of genes critical for stem cell potency maintenance, including transcription factors Nanog and Sox2. The following chapter describes a step-by-step bisulfite sequencing protocol for detection of methylation changes in the aging stem cells and provides valuable insights into the stem cells epigenetic profile. Further, the methodology describes the steps of genomic DNA extraction, bisulfite conversion, real-time PCR amplification, and sequencing for an in-depth view of the epigenetic profile derived from aging stem cells.
DNA Methylation↗