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Does your work need IRB approval? Better check, says author of retracted paper
Does an article that discusses anonymized student projects about how to catalog data count as research on human subjects?
One of the students included in the paper thought so, and complained to the journal after learning that it had published the case study of the program without the approval required for studying people. The authors admitted they didn’t get consent from participants, because they didn’t realize the work required it. The mix-up has prompted both them and the journal to reconsider their policies regarding ethics approval of studies.
In the meantime, “A Project-Based Case Study of Data Science Education” has been retracted, with this notice:
IRB mishap costs MD Anderson team a paper on prostate cancer
A group of researchers from MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has lost a 2013 paper in BJU International for running afoul of their institution’s ethics review board, and of military reviewers, as well.
The paper, “Many young men with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screen-detected prostate cancers may be candidates for active surveillance,” looked at prostate cancer screening in men 55 and under — considered young for the older-man’s disease. According to the abstract: Read the rest of this entry »
IRB issues force retraction of ulcer bug bacteria paper
A group of Turkish researchers has had a paper retracted on how to treat the bacterium that cause ulcers after the journal’s editors found “issues related to the institutional review board approval” of the project.
Here’s the retraction notice from the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition: Read the rest of this entry »
Three more Fujii papers fall for lack of IRB approval
Three journals under the JAMA umbrella are retracting papers by Yoshitaka Fujii, the Japanese anesthesiologist accused of research misconduct so sweeping that it might net him the record for most retractions by a single author.
The papers, in the Archives of Surgery, Archives of Ophthalmology and the Archives of Otolaryngology — Head & Neck Surgery, were published in 2001 and 2005.
Here are the notices, which are essentially identical but for the titles of the articles: Read the rest of this entry »
Circulation retracts four papers by author who misled on IRB approval
Circulation has retracted four articles by a pediatric cardiologist in Japan who failed to obtain ethics approval for the studies in question but evidently lied about it to the journal.
The researcher, Hideaki Senzaki, of Saitama Medical University, is a highly-published investigator who trained for a time with at Johns Hopkins.
According to the Circulation notice: Read the rest of this entry »
Another retraction of IRB-free paper from Aussie sports medicine group
There’s another retraction from the Australian researchers who failed to obtain institutional review board (IRB) approval for their studies of rugby players and footballers.
The 2010 paper, in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders — which had already retracted two other articles from the group — was titled “The effect of a sports chiropractic manual therapy intervention on the prevention of back pain, hamstring and lower limb injuries in semi-elite Australian Rules footballers: A randomized controlled trial.”
The editor of the journal had added this comment to the PDFs associated with the paper on August 3, a day after our post on the previous two retractions: Read the rest of this entry »
A dingo ate my IRB form: Journal cries foul over Aussie-rules football and rugby papers that lied
Toronto Dingos, photo by Ovesny Navarro http://bit.ly/nRirhi
If there’s any group of subjects a scientist wouldn’t want to piss off, it would have to be Aussie-rules football and rugby players, who are tough enough to make a saltwater crocodile wish it was a belt. And when those guinea pigs are suffering from low back pain — well, we shudder to think.
The journal BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders has retracted two papers from a group of Australian researchers who appear to have lied about having received IRB approval for their studies of back pain in rough-sport athletes.
According to the first notice, for “Low back pain status in elite and semi-elite Australian football codes: a cross-sectional survey of football (soccer), Australian-Rules, rugby league, rugby union and non-athletic controls:” Read the rest of this entry »
A retraction gets retracted — but the first author’s contract is still terminated
After issuing a retraction notice May 30 for a biomedical engineering paper, the journal has since pulled the notice, citing “a potential problem.”
After doing some digging, we’ve learned more about the “potential problem.”
Apparently, the retraction was requested by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. NTU has been investigating the first author for months, after it received an allegation about an unrelated manuscript. As a result, NTU terminated first author Hamidreza Namazi‘s contract as a research fellow earlier this year.
As part of the investigation, NTU began to look at Namazi’s other papers, and discovered several with potential problems — including this one, which NTU believes did not receive proper ethical approvals. So it contacted the journal to raise its concerns.
Namazi, however, told us that he and his colleague obtained approval from another organization, but didn’t make that clear in the paper — so the journal has retracted its retraction notice while it investigates Namazi’s claim.
In place of the original retraction notice, a notice now reads:
Journal retracts Ohio State CrossFit study at center of lawsuits
The fallout continues for a study conducted at a local CrossFit gym by researchers at The Ohio State University. First it was corrected, now it’s been retracted, and it continues to be the basis of litigation against both the authors and the publisher.
Editors at the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research have decided to pull the 2013 study after learning that the research protocol had not been approved by Ohio State’s institutional review board (IRB).
Over the past few years, the study has spawned several lawsuits, including a defamation suit brought by gym owner Mitch Potterf against Ohio State that landed him a six-figure settlement, as well as an ongoing suit by Potterf against the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA, which publishes the journal). The CrossFit brand has also sued the NSCA. [See update at end of post for more on that case.]
An NSCA statement issued May 30 describes what happened: Read the rest of this entry »
Weekend reads: New calls for retraction; more on fake peer review; how long does peer review take?
The week at Retraction Watch featured a look at how long journals take to respond to retraction requests, and news of a $10 million settlement for research misconduct allegations. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Read the rest of this entry »
