Guest post: A call to end the ‘impact on conclusions’ test for retraction

The Ship of Theseus paradox asks, if you replace all the wood in a ship, is it still the same ship? Likewise, is it possible to change all the facts inside an article without altering its conclusions? Wikimedia Commons

As a lawyer representing whistleblowers of problems in the scientific literature, I follow the arc of many fierce disputes over potentially flawed research articles. I was intrigued to see last year that the National Academies had convened a Committee on Corrections and Retractions to take on the question of “recommending improvements to the processes used to correct errors in scientific articles.” The group is nearing the end of its work. 

One of the most important issues that I hope the committee will address is the pervasive “impact on conclusions” test. This is the idea that the authors of a challenged article can make as many post-publication corrections to their methods or data as they like, as long as these have no impact on their conclusions. Indeed COPE guidance states that “retraction might not be appropriate” if “correction would sufficiently deal with the errors or concerns raised, provided that the main results and conclusions are not unduly affected by the correction.”

This focus on conclusions reminds me of the Ship of Theseus paradox. If the ancient Athenians were able to replace all the wood in the ship of their hero without changing its identity as the Ship of Theseus, is it possible to change all the facts inside an article without altering its conclusions? 

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Physicists flag over 50 papers on superheavy elements, leading to 3 retractions

A physicist in India has accumulated three retractions and 13 expressions of concern for papers on superheavy elements after three researchers in the field began to flag issues with his work. 

H.C. Manjunatha, the common author on the articles, is with the physics department at the Government First Grade College in Devanahall, according to his most recent papers, including eight published this year. 

The three retracted papers originally appeared in Springer Nature’s The European Physical Journal A in 2017. According to the retraction notices, a post-publication review found “serious flaws in the research methodology, numerical results, and interpretation of findings.” All pertain to the discovery and synthesis of superheavy elements, which are unstable elements with large numbers of protons. 

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Weekend reads: How to buy a scientific paper; creating responsible authorship culture; sanction authors for hallucinated references?

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 63,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

I Support Retraction Watch

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

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Technology journal pulls papers for unauthorized author changes, fictitious emails

An Elsevier energy-technology journal has retracted six papers from 2022 whose authors changed without editorial approval during revision of the manuscripts.

The authors also provided fictitious email addresses during the submission process, but changed them after the papers were accepted, according to retraction notices in the February issue of Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments.

While the issues don’t necessarily indicate foul play, authorship changes and the use of non-institutional email addresses can be signs of paper-mill involvement. In 2021, we reported on a website in Iran that listed “articles ready for acceptance,” including one to appear in Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments. The year after our story, the journal pulled the paper, whose author list had also changed at the revision stage.

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Most editors at math journal resign over multiple reviews, ‘cloak-and-dagger’ removal of EIC

Nearly two dozen editors of a mathematics journal have resigned after its publisher removed the top editor and implemented a multiple review system, “running roughshod over the standard practices of the refereeing process in mathematics.”

Of the 31 members of the Communications in Algebra editorial board, 23 signed a March 10 resignation letter sent to Taylor & Francis, which publishes the journal. In the letter, the editors said the publisher “unilaterally” implemented a system in which more than one reviewer would be expected to look over a paper. 

The peer review process in mathematics is more labor-intensive than for other topics, the editors said, including “not only an assessment of the impact and significance of the results but also a line-by-line painstaking check for correctness of the results. This process is often quite time-consuming and makes referees a valuable commodity.” The letter continues: “Doubling the number of expected reviews will quickly either deplete the pool of willing reviewers or vastly dilute the quality of their reviews, and both of these are unacceptable outcomes.”

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University of Melbourne opens formal investigation into education researcher John Hattie 

John Hattie

The University of Melbourne has opened a formal investigation into the prominent Australia-based education researcher John Hattie, backtracking on a decision months ago that concerns about his work didn’t warrant further scrutiny. 

The investigation, confirmed in a letter seen by Retraction Watch, was triggered by allegations made by Stephen Vainker, a teacher and former doctoral researcher in the United Kingdom, who documented what he says are hundreds of instances of plagiarism and data errors across Hattie’s body of work. The investigation also follows our coverage last August. 

Vainker also discovered what seems to be a hallucinated reference in one of Hattie’s recent writings, prompting a book publisher to remove it from the work.

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Weekend reads: ‘Don’t hate the replicator, hate the game’; Crossref finds 150K incorrect citation links in database; Announcing our Ctrl-Z award

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Plus:

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 63,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to nearly 650, and our mass resignations list has 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

I Support Retraction Watch

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

Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Don’t hate the replicator, hate the game’; Crossref finds 150K incorrect citation links in database; Announcing our Ctrl-Z award

Embattled journal brand mistakenly invites out-of-scope researchers to join board

Springer Nature has launched a new agriculture journal under the troubled Cureus brand. As part of its launch, the publisher invited at least one researcher with irrelevant specialities to join its editorial board, Retraction Watch has learned. 

The new journal comes after Clarivate’s Web of Science delisting the original and long-embattled Cureus Journal of Medical Science in October for concerns about article quality. 

The flagship Cureus was founded in 2009 by John Adler Jr., a Stanford University neurosurgeon, as an open-access journal for clinicians who didn’t have grants. Springer Nature acquired the journal in December 2022. In 2024, the publisher launched Cureus Journals — open-access journals on engineering, computer science and business  — using the brand name.

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Controversial editorial practices boost plastic surgeon’s publishing empire

Riaz Agha

In the summer of 2022, a researcher in Indonesia submitted a case report to Annals of Medicine and Surgery, one of several open-access journals founded and edited by Riaz Agha, a plastic surgeon and publisher in London. The manuscript, Agha responded, needed various changes to be considered for publication. 

Among them: It should cite Agha’s paper on how to write surgical case reports, published two years earlier in the highly ranked International Journal of Surgery (IJS), the plastic surgeon’s flagship publication.

“Thanks Sir,” the Indonesian researcher replied. “I’ve added [the reference] to the manuscript.”

Although practices vary, the journals Agha founded aren’t alone in requiring authors to follow, and sometimes even cite, reporting guidelines. But a conflict of interest can arise when an editor demands authors reference guideline papers published in the editor’s own journals – as Agha does in his instructions to authors, reporting guidelines and editorial correspondence. 

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Former Mount Sinai postdoc falsified images in grant updates, ORI says

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has sanctioned a former postdoctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York for manipulating images in two grant updates and a manuscript.

Chen-Yeh “George” Ke committed research misconduct by intentionally falsifying images in an unpublished manuscript supported by federal funds and by reporting the fabricated results in two research performance progress reports, according to a summary published March 10 on the ORI website and to be published in the Federal Register.  

Ke, now a manager at Level Biotechnology in Taiwan, according to LinkedIn, did not return messages seeking comment. A spokesperson from Mount Sinai acknowledged our message but did not comment before our deadline. 

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