Retraction Watch

‘Relieved’: BMJ retracts and replaces article on unexpected weight loss as a sign of cancer

The British Medical Journal has retracted an article examining when unexpected weight loss could be a warning sign of cancer after the authors found an error in their work. The journal published an updated version of the analysis with different conclusions, which the authors think could influence patient care.

The retracted paper, “Prioritising primary care patients with unexpected weight loss for cancer investigation: diagnostic accuracy study,” appeared Aug. 13, 2020. The researchers, led by Brian D. Nicholson, a general practitioner and associate professor in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford, England, used electronic health records data to look for people diagnosed with cancer within six months after a recording of unexpected weight loss.

The authors were attempting to replicate their results in another dataset when they found “some differences in the study findings and study population that we could not easily explain,” Nicholson told Retraction Watch. He continued:

Cancer specialist faked data in at least ten papers, VA and UCLA find

A multiple myeloma specialist “recklessly“ falsified data in at least 10 published articles, according to a joint investigation by the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.

The institutions found Alan Lichtenstein, a former staff physician at the VA, committed research misconduct by reusing images “to falsely represent the results” related to 26 pairs of experiments, according to a notice published in the Federal Register.

At least one of the sets of images in each of the pairs “is inaccurate,” the notice stated. The institutions found Lichtenstein had falsified data in “at least ten” of the 13 articles in which the images appeared, perhaps because the investigators could not determine which images, if any, were original.

Wiley corrects retraction notices for ‘inaccurate’ description of why articles were pulled

The Journal of Biochemical and Molecular Toxicology, a Wiley title, has corrected a pair of retraction notices in which “the reasons for the retraction were described inaccurately,” according to the corrections. The original notices also did not include “the authors’ disapproval of the retraction.”

The retracted articles, “The cardioprotective effects of a combination of quercetin and α-tocopherol on isoproterenol-induced myocardial infarcted rats,” and “Protective effects of caffeic acid on lactate dehydrogenase isoenzymes, electrocardiogram, adenosine triphosphatases, and hematology on isoproterenol-induced myocardial infarcted rats,” both appeared in the same journal in 2011, but in different issues. They have been cited 35 times, collectively, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

In 2020, Elisabeth Bik posted about the papers on PubPeer, pointing out figures in the articles, which have the same corresponding author, were “unexpectedly similar” to each other. “Note that the lanes represent very different experiments,” she wrote.

Weekend reads: RFK Jr’s 2011 retraction; ‘the great AI witch hunt’; scientific misconduct in Switzerland

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 50,000 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 — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

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

Engineering publisher pulled 57 papers in a day for peer review ‘irregularities’

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers retracted 57 articles on October 1 for inadequate peer review, according to the publisher.

The papers appeared in the journal IEEE Access between July and September of 2020. The journal is open-access, with a current article processing charge of $1,995. It appears to have published more than 10,000 articles so far this year.

The notices retracting each article were identical, and stated:

eLife won’t get an impact factor, says Clarivate

Clarivate, the data company for scholarly publications, has decided to continue indexing some content from eLife in Web of Science, after reevaluating the open-access biology journal’s unusual practice of publishing articles without accepting or rejecting them. The journal will not receive an Impact Factor.

Last month, Clarivate paused indexing new content from eLife, citing a policy on “Coverage of journals/platforms in which publication is decoupled from validation by peer review.”

eLife last year adopted a new model in which it publishes every manuscript its editors send out for review, along with the text of the reviews and an editor’s assessment of the significance of the findings in the paper and the strength of the evidence presented. The editorial assessments of the paper can be “exceptional,” “compelling,” “convincing,” “solid,” “incomplete,” or “inadequate.”

Retraction Watch is hiring! Two journalism jobs available

Thanks to generous support from the WoodNext Foundation and ongoing support from individual donors, as well as revenue from journalism partnerships and speaking fees, Retraction Watch is hiring for two roles: managing editor and staff reporter. If you’re interested in accountability science journalism with impact that drives the conversation around scientific integrity and is frequently picked up by local, national and international news outlets, these roles are for you.

The managing editor will:

‘All the red flags’: Scientific Reports retracts paper sleuths called out in open letter

Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature title, has retracted an article a group of sleuths described as “a kind of case study of all the red flags for fraud that we look for” in an open letter to the publisher’s head of research integrity.

The article, “Hybrid CNN-LSTM model with efficient hyperparameter tuning for prediction of Parkinson’s disease,” appeared in September 2023. It has been cited 11 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

In December 2023, a PubPeer user commented on 13 tortured phrases the Problematic Paper Screener had flagged in the article, such as the use of “Parkinson’s illness,” “Parkinson’s infection,” and “Parkinson’s sickness” rather than Parkinson’s disease.

Weekend reads: Top Alzheimer’s researcher on leave; president calls for superconductivity researcher to be fired; continued citation of retracted papers

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

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

Complaint from engineering software company prompts two retractions

An engineering journal has retracted two papers after a company complained the authors of the articles used its software without a valid license.

Both retracted papers were published by Ain Shams Engineering Journal in the last couple of years by different authors based in Egypt. Both papers used FLOW-3D, software that is used to simulate the dynamics of liquids and gasses, which is developed by the firm Flow Science, Inc., in Santa Fe, N.M.

Tom Jensen, vice president of Flow Science, told Retraction Watch the firm offered the authors of both studies to legalize their version of the software by purchasing a license.

But the company didn’t receive a response, Jensen said, despite informing the researchers a retraction would be sought from the journal without a valid license. “We offer greatly reduced prices for licenses for academic institutions and we have numerous academic users around the world,” he added.

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