Science expresses concern over controversial chemistry paper
'RNA nanoconstruction' has been the focus of a decade-long controversy.A long-running battle over findings reported in a 2004 chemistry paper in Science1 may finally be drawing to a close.
On 21 January, Marcia McNutt, the journal’s editor-in-chief, published an ‘editorial expression of concern’ saying that Science would either retract or correct the paper, which described using RNA to assemble nanoparticles made of palladium.
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the research, and in 2013 the agency's inspector-general recommended that it make a finding of research misconduct, alleging that the authors had falsified data in the paper. In a final report in 2015, the NSF concluded that the evidence did not support that misconduct charge.