joachim boldt retractions – Retraction Watch

A retraction milestone: 200 for one author

Numbers are everywhere in retraction land lately: A record 10,000-plus retractions in 2023. 19 journals shut down at Wiley. Now here’s another.

Readers who have checked the Retraction Watch leaderboard lately may have picked up on something notable: One researcher, Joachim Boldt, has now been credited with 210 retractions – making him the first author (to our knowledge) with more than 200 retractions to his name.

Boldt’s new tally – representing about half of his roughly 400 publications – admittedly is an accounting change rather than new problems being identified. Some journals have only now come around to acting on the corrupt articles. In that sense, it reflects both progress and a frustrating lack of concern-slash-urgency on the part of the journals that have taken more than a decade to resolve the case.

The new retraction record holder is a German anesthesiologist, with 184

The German anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt has lost 20 more papers since January 2023, earning him the top spot in our leaderboard, with 184 retractions.

Boldt, readers may recall, was once one of the leading international figures in perioperative medicine. His work, particularly studies involving the use of fluid management during surgery, helped inform clinical guidelines that, thanks to his misdeeds, some experts believe may have put patients at risk for serious harm and even death.

Boldt has vaulted over another anesthesiologist, Yoshitaka Fujii, to take the crown (more on that in a moment) – although one might fairly ask: Why did it take so long?

Anesthesiologist loses 50 more papers in 12 months

A decade has passed since the breaking of the scandal involving Joachim Boldt, a world-renowned critical care specialist who has held steady as the number two author on the Retraction Watch leaderboard. But the case continues to produce developments that have dramatically increased Boldt’s retraction tally.

Journals have retracted at least 53 papers by Boldt since May 2020, bringing his total number to 153, by our count. That includes 24 articles removed so far in 2021. In September 2020, the British Journal of Anaesthesia announced that it was retracting all but one of the more than two dozen Boldt papers that it had published — leaving the last one standing because it didn’t have solid evidence that it contained fabricated data.

The impetus for the purge was a 2018 report from Justus Liebig University (JLU) Medical School, where Boldt worked between 1982 and 1996. The university concluded that, among other things, Boldt appears to have fabricated data from several theses of students he helped supervise, publishing the doctored results without their knowledge.

A ‘very cautious’ process: Journal retracts reviews by anesthesiologist found to have committed fraud a decade ago

A journal has retracted three review articles by Joachim Boldt, the German anesthetist who currently occupies the second spot on the Retraction Watch leaderboard with 103 retractions.

The reviews, which appeared in Intensive Care Medicine, cover articles by Boldt that were published both well before and the same year as his scandal broke in 2010.

One article, from 2000, was titled “Volume therapy in the intensive care patient – we are still confused, but.” According to the retraction notice:

Anesthesiologist joins the 100-retraction club

Until this year, only one researcher — Yoshitaka Fujii — had eclipsed the century mark for retractions. But Fujii can no longer claim dibs on being the only scientist to lose three digits worth of papers.

Joachim Boldt, a fellow anesthesiologist fraudster, recently notched three more retractions, bringing his tally, by our count, to an even 100.

Boldt was one of Europe’s leading anesthesiologists for decades. A critical care specialist, he was internationally known for his work on the use of substances called volume expanders that are used during surgery to preserve blood pressure. That fame was replaced in the early part of the last decade by questions about his work, and findings of misconduct.

When it comes to retracting papers by the world’s most prolific scientific fraudsters, journals have room for improvement

Journals have retracted all but 19 of the 313 tainted papers linked to three of the most notorious fraudsters in science, with only stragglers left in the literature. But editors and publishers have been less diligent when it comes to delivering optimal retraction notices for the affected articles.

That’s the verdict of a new analysis in the journal Anaesthesia, which found that 15% of retraction notices for the affected papers fail fully to meet standards from the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE). Many lacked appropriate language and requisite watermarks stating that the articles had been removed, and some have vanished from the literature.

The article was written by U. M. McHugh, of University Hospital in Galway, Ireland, and Steven Yentis, a consultant anaesthetist at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital in London. Yentis was editor of Anaesthesia during the three scandals and had a first-hand view of two of the investigations. He also is the editor who unleashed anesthetist and self-trained statistician John Carlisle on the Fujii papers to see how likely the Japanese researcher’s data were to be valid (answer: not very likely). Continue reading When it comes to retracting papers by the world’s most prolific scientific fraudsters, journals have room for improvement

When you have 94 retractions, what’s two more?

Attention Joachim Boldt: The 1990s are calling, and they want their papers back.

The Annals of Thoracic Surgery has retracted two papers from the early 1990s on which Boldt was the first author – bringing the retraction tally for the disgraced German anesthesiologist to 96, by our count. Both articles were found to contain manipulated data.

The first paper, from 1990, was titled “Acute Preoperative Plasmapheresis and Established Blood Conservation Techniques,” and was written when Boldt was on the faculty at Justus-Liebig University, in Giessen.

According to the notice:

Continue reading When you have 94 retractions, what’s two more?

Boldt’s retraction count upped to 94, co-author takes legal action to prevent 95th

We’ve found two recent retractions and an expression of concern for Joachim Boldt, former prominent anesthesiologist and currently Retraction Watch leaderboard’s 2nd place titleholder. He now has 94 retractions.

One of the retracted articles contains falsified data, along with a researcher who didn’t agree to be a co-author, according to an investigation by the Justus Liebig University Giessen, where Boldt used to work. The expression of concern is regarding some questionable data. The other new retraction is actually one of 88 papers that a group of editors agreed to retract back in 2011, after they were “unable to verify” approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the studies.

One of those 88 papers, we’ve discovered, has still has not been retracted. According to an editor at the journal, they haven’t removed it because one of Boldt’s co-authors has threatened them with legal action. Continue reading Boldt’s retraction count upped to 94, co-author takes legal action to prevent 95th

Three more retractions for former record-holder Boldt, maybe more to come

Justus Liebig University in Germany has been investigating concerns that Joachim Boldt, number two on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard and now up to 92 retractions, may have “manipulated” more data than previously believed.

Until now, the vast majority of Boldt’s retractions were thought to have involved inadequate ethics approval. However, new retraction notices for Boldt’s research suggest that there’s evidence the researcher also engaged in significant data manipulation.

The first retraction from the university investigation emerged last year. Two of three new notices cite the investigation specifically, and an informant at the university told us that there are more retractions to come.

Here are the retracted papers that are freshly on the record, starting with an August retraction for a 1991 Anesthesiology paper (cited 37 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge):

Continue reading Three more retractions for former record-holder Boldt, maybe more to come

Boldt’s data were fake in 1996 paper

Ludwigshafen Hospital, via Wikimedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Klinikum_Ludwigshafen_Nordseite.jpg

Update, 4 p.m. EST, 10/29/14: As a commenter points out, we didn’t quite get this one right. The Boldt paper that has been retracted was not previously retracted for lack of IRB approval. Rather, it was a heretofore unretracted article, from 1996, which German investigators have determined contained faked data. We’ve made edits below using strikethroughs, and have changed the headline to better reflect the content. We apologize for the errors.

We’ve commented before on the fact that we’ve noticed there’s often more to retractions whose stated reason is lack of institutional review board (IRB) approval. We can understand editors’ inclination to act as quickly as possible to issue a retraction, the scientific publishing equivalent of jailing Al Capone for tax evasion. But we appreciate it even more when said editors return to the scene of the crime, as it were, when new important details come out.

Case in point: Anesthesia & Analgesia has amended its retraction of a ~~2009~~ 1996 study by Joachim Boldt — who with nearly 90 retractions once held the record in that department — based on findings that the data in that paper were fabricated.

The article was titled ~~“Cardiopulmonary bypass priming using a high dose of a balanced hydroxyethyl starch versus an albumin-based priming strategy,”~~ “The effects of albumin versus hydroxyethyl starch solution on cardiorespiratory and circulatory variables in critically ill patient.” ~~had previously been retracted because Boldt had failed to obtain adequate ethics approval for the research. But now comes this,~~ According to the retraction notice from editor in chief Steven Shafer: Continue reading Boldt’s data were fake in 1996 paper

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