In scientific publishing, as in surgery, retraction is a traumatic but revealing process. This week, George Ricaurte and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, were on the operating table. Almost a year ago, this team of neuro-scientists published a paper in Science which showed that methylene-dioxy-methamphetamine―a recreational drug more commonly known as Ecstasy―killed off brain cells that produce and respond to dopamine. This chemical is a neurotrans-mitter (a molecule that carries signals from one nerve cell to another). A lack of it is involved in Parkinson's disease, which causes tremors and twitches. The paper sparked debate both in the laboratory, where many other researchers questioned its methods and findings, and in the wider world, where the opponents of Ecstasy seized on the results as further proof of the drug's dangerous effects.
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