Retraction Watch

Exclusive: Iraqi university forcing students to cite its journals to graduate

To earn their degrees, graduate students at the University of Technology in Baghdad not only must publish research in indexed journals. They also are required to cite articles in their school’s own publications, a document obtained by Retraction Watch shows.

Experts who reviewed the document called the citation requirement “deceptive and despicable” and said it could carry a steep price for the journals involved, one of which is indexed in Scopus.

Coercive citation is widespread in academia and can help boost the rankings of publications, institutions and individual researchers. The practice is considered unethical and may trigger heavy penalties.

Controversial Paxil “Study 329” earns expression of concern after critic sues publisher

After more than 20 years of criticism and calls for retraction, a journal has placed an expression of concern on a study of the antidepressant Paxil in teens that critics say has led to unwarranted and potentially harmful prescribing of the drug to youth.

The 2001 paper, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), reported findings from a randomized trial known as “Study 329,” which concluded the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective in kids ages 12 to 18.

In 2012, Paxil maker GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $3 billion to settle civil and criminal charges that included “unlawful promotion” of the drug for adolescents, for whom the product was never approved, and allegations the company “participated in preparing, publishing and distributing a misleading medical journal article” — the JAACAP paper. A reanalysis in 2015 found the drug was “ineffective and unsafe” for the age group studied.

Sleuth loses paper for duplicate publication after flagging hundreds of untrustworthy articles

A sleuth who has identified several hundred articles describing clinical women’s health research with untrustworthy data, leading to nearly 300 retractions, has now lost one of his own papers for duplicate publication.

Ben Mol, who leads the Evidence-based Women’s Health Care Research Group in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Monash University in Australia, has worked to raise awareness of problematic data informing medical recommendations for women’s health care, and to cleanse the literature of unreliable studies, with major media outlets covering his work.

Mol told Retraction Watch about 50 of his papers have been investigated since 2020, usually after anonymous complaints. “It is clear that somebody had been screening my papers … in a systematic way to find any wrongdoing,” he said. His only other retraction came after he and colleagues found an error in their own work and requested the action.

Iraqi dean earns another retraction for paper posted for sale on Facebook

A dean and professor at a public university in Iraq has lost another paper just weeks after we reported he was up to 16 retractions for authorship manipulation, fake peer review and other problems.

Yasser Fakri Mustafa of the University of Mosul was a coauthor of the newly retracted article, a review of how aerosol boxes affected intubation during the COVID‐19 pandemic. He denied wrongdoing.

As stated in the retraction notice, online September 23, the article’s title matched an authorship ad posted on social media on March 9, 2022, eight months before the paper appeared in Taylor & Francis’ Expert Review of Medical Devices.

A peer-reviewed paper claimed a researcher was an expert in sex robots. He’s not.

What would you do if you discovered your name in a list of experts on sex robots despite having never studied sex robots?

That was the situation for one rather panicked researcher who reached out to us in late September after discovering his name among several singled out in a review article for the “greatest number of published works” on sex robots.

Published in February in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, the bibliometric analysis of the field aimed “to provide a clearer understanding of the issues surrounding sex robots,” the original article stated.

Weekend reads: PubMed during the US shutdown; EU commissioner ‘appears to cite’ discredited study; KPMG corrected ‘phantom’ reference in gov’t report

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

$1.5 million program targets changes to academic incentives
Editors of criminology journal resign amid concern about review times
‘Cosmic magnet’ study retracted after cleaning agent wipes away results
Deputy minister in Iraq losing papers with signs of paper mill involvement
Soil scientist previously named in citation scandal appointed to editor role at Elsevier journal

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 60,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Soil scientist previously named in citation scandal appointed to editor role at Elsevier journal

A soil scientist who resigned from several journals in 2017 after being linked to manipulated citations has been appointed to the editorial board of a journal copublished by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media.

International Soil and Water Conservation Research announced in April that Artemi Cerdà would serve as an editorial board member, describing him as a “renowned researcher” in the field of soil erosion and land management. The appointment comes eight years after Cerdà, of the University of Valencia, in Spain, was found to have manipulated citations in favor of his own work and journals with which he was associated.

While Cerdà has not responded to our questions about his appointment, a spokesperson for Elsevier acknowledged Cerdà’s history but defended the decision, writing that researchers “grow into their roles through participation and learning.” The spokesperson continued:

Deputy minister in Iraq losing papers with signs of paper mill involvement

A high-ranking official at Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has earned six retractions over the past two years for issues including citation stuffing and “suspicious” authorship changes after articles were accepted.

Both practices are warning signs of a paper mill at play. At least two of the official’s retracted works appeared in a special issue edited by an academic who has been accused of being part of authorship-for-sale networks.

But Hayder Abed Dhahad, Iraq’s deputy minister for scientific research affairs, who was a corresponding author on two of the articles and a coauthor on the rest, told us the “retractions were not due to fabricated results or research misconduct on my part.” He added that “as a public figure currently involved in national projects,” he had been the target of “politically motivated campaigns aimed at damaging my reputation.”

‘Cosmic magnet’ study retracted after cleaning agent wipes away results

Electron diffraction patterns of an alloy before (left) and after (right) cleaning revealed the cleaning agent was was responsible for reflections (circle, right) reported in the original study. *O.S. Houghton et al/Adv. Sci. 2024*

When measuring the properties of a particular material, you want to make sure your sample is as clean as possible. But sometimes a well-intentioned effort to purify can make things worse.

Just ask Lindsay Greer, a professor of materials science at the University of Cambridge. He and his colleagues discovered measurements they reported in 2022 were actually an artifact of a cleaning agent used to prepare their sample.

Greer became aware of the issue during unsuccessful attempts to replicate his lab’s discovery of magnetic properties in an alloy their collaborators had made. Instead, they found oxidation from a cleaning product had contaminated their original results. The error led to a retraction, a declined grant, a commentary describing their troubleshooting — and a story about science working as it should.

Editors of criminology journal resign amid concern about review times

The top editors of a criminology journal have stepped down after the society in charge of the publication assessed concerns about manuscript review times.

The board of the American Society of Criminology decided “a change of leadership was required due to some ongoing operational issues with the Criminology journal,” according to an announcement on the society’s website. “We appreciate the contributions of the prior editors.”

Kelly Vance, associate director of the society, said the organization had no further comment beyond the announcement.

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