The authors of a controversial genetic article published last year in Science published a retraction today, recognizing "technical errors" in their investigation gene strategy. The work, led by Paola Sebastiani and Thomas Perls of Boston University, claimed to have found a "signature" of 150 genetic variants that together could help predict whether a person could live to 100.
But in the days of the appearance of paper, critics charge that the authors had not taken into account the intrinsic defects microarray gene they used to find these variants, among other problems. Last July, Perls and Sebastiani said Science they were not aware of problems in microarrays and have worked hard to check their results.
In the withdrawal of today, the authors do not reveal how severely their initial findings were affected by errors. "We believe that the main scientific findings remain supported," they write, but "the specific details of the new analysis change substantially from those originally published." In an exchange e-mail, Perls wrote that researchers "are very eager to get our adjusted results outside the scientific literature," and so far, can not say more about what they are.
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