The medical journal The Lancet retracted an article by urologists at the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria last week (S. Kleinert and R. Horton Lancet 372, 789–790; 2008).

The article claimed positive results for a clinical trial using stem cells to treat urinary incontinence, but this summer an investigation by the Austrian government's Agency for Health and Food Safety found serious flaws in the trial, including incomplete patient consent forms and forged insurance documents (see _Nature_ 454, 922–923; 2008). An Austrian Academy of Sciences investigation continues. The university suspended principal investigator Hannes Strasser, but took no sanctions against department head, Georg Bartsch, who was an honorary co-author on the paper. Both have denied wrongdoing.

A _Lancet_ editorial accompanying the retraction decried honorary authorships as "unacceptable" and said that such authors still have obligations in cases of flawed research: "With credit comes responsibility — always."