{"id":91,"date":"2011-07-21T13:56:55","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T13:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/2011\/07\/centenarian-genetics-study-retracted.html"},"modified":"2011-07-21T13:56:55","modified_gmt":"2011-07-21T13:56:55","slug":"centenarian_genetics_study_ret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/2011\/07\/centenarian_genetics_study_ret.html","title":{"rendered":"Centenarian genetics study retracted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers from Boston University today issued a retraction notice for a controversial <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/content\/early\/2010\/11\/10\/science.1190532\">paper<\/a> published last year that purportedly described a predictive test for living to and beyond 100 years. The July 2010 study <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/2010\/100701\/full\/news.2010.328.html\">identified<\/a> 150 single nucleotide polymorphisms that clustered into three subgroups. On the basis of these genetic factors, the study authors claimed that they could predict an individual\u2019s likelihood of exceedingly long life with 77% accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after being published in <em>Science<\/em>, the study\u2019s methods drew fire from genomicists and biostatisticians, which prompted the journal\u2019s editors to issue an <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/news\/2010\/11\/editorial_concern_over_controv_1.html\">expression of concern<\/a> in November. Critics argued that the sample size, at 1,055 centenarians and 1,267 controls, was not large enough to draw robust conclusions, <em>Nature<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/news\/2010\/07\/longevity_paper_sparks_debate_1.html\">reported<\/A> at the time. In addition, the researchers analyzed the two experimental groups using slightly different <span class=\"caps\">SNP<\/span> chips and in different labs, which could bias the data, <em>Newsweek<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/blogs\/the-human-condition\/2010\/07\/01\/scientists-discover-the-fountain-of-youth-or-not.html\">quoted<\/a> Duke genomicist <a href=\"https:\/\/humangenome.duke.edu\/people\/david-goldstein\">David Goldstein<\/a> as saying.<\/p>\n<p>The authors responded that they would reanalyze the data immediately in response to the criticisms, many of which were communicated over social media (see <EM>Nature<\/EM>\u2019s January 2011 news feature: \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/2011\/110119\/full\/469286a.html\">Peer review: Trial by Twitter<\/a>\u2019).<\/p>\n<p>In today\u2019s retraction notice, the authors wrote that the analysis still found disease-related genetic factors associated with long life that clustered into subgroups \u2014 but they differed enough \u201cfrom those originally published online to the point of becoming a new report.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The original paper has been cited 25 times according to Google Scholar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers from Boston University today issued a retraction notice for a controversial paper published last year that purportedly described a predictive test for living to and beyond 100 years. The July 2010 study identified 150 single nucleotide polymorphisms that clustered into three subgroups. On the basis of these genetic factors, the study authors claimed that they could predict an individual\u2019s likelihood of exceedingly long life with 77% accuracy.&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/2011\/07\/centenarian_genetics_study_ret.html#wpn-more-91\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/2011\/07\/centenarian_genetics_study_ret.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics","category-scientific-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}