Weekend reads: Our cofounder credited in fake citation; ‘Substantial’ undisclosed COIs in psychiatry research; an AI threat to online surveys

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Did you know that Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are  projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity?  Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.   

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: Our cofounder credited in fake citation; ‘Substantial’ undisclosed COIs in psychiatry research; an AI threat to online surveys

Exclusive: Reviewer recommended against publishing paper on DNA in COVID vaccines

Rolf Marschalek was on vacation when he saw a new paper had been published in the journal Autoimmunity. Marschalek, a biochemist at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany, was “very upset,” he told Retraction Watch – because he’d peer-reviewed the manuscript and had recommended against publication. 

The authors of the paper claimed to find DNA in mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines above regulators’ suggested amounts. The article appeared online September 6, and within weeks the publisher began an investigation into concerns about its content, as we reported previously.

In Marschalek’s initial review, which he provided to us, he detailed how Qubit fluorometry, one of the methods the authors used to measure the amount of DNA in the vaccine vials, was “not suited” for use when samples contain much higher amounts of RNA than DNA, as is the case with mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. He cited a paper he and colleagues had written about methods of quantifying amounts of RNA and DNA in mRNA vaccine vials, including Qubit. 

Continue reading Exclusive: Reviewer recommended against publishing paper on DNA in COVID vaccines

COVID-19 paper by scientists at Harvard, Duke gets expression of concern for ‘unreliable’ data

A Science journal has issued an expression of concern over questions about the data in a paper reporting the discovery of an antibody that neutralized all COVID-19 variants in mice.

The article appeared in Science Immunology in August 2022 and has been cited 36 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. The study lists 30 coauthors from Boston Children’s Hospital and Duke University. An article by Boston Children’s published at the time said the findings could “contribute to new vaccine strategies.” 

According to the expression of concern, published November 21, the authors informed the journal of “potential data reliability concerns” with two of the figures. The journal is in the process of determining an “appropriate course of action,” the notice continues. 

Continue reading COVID-19 paper by scientists at Harvard, Duke gets expression of concern for ‘unreliable’ data

Springer Nature flags paper with fabricated reference to article (not) written by our cofounder

Tips we get about papers and books citing fake references have skyrocketed this year, tracking closely with the rise of ChatGPT and other generative large language models. One in particular hit close to home: A paper containing a reference to an article by our cofounder Ivan Oransky that he did not write.

The paper with the nonexistent reference, published November 13 in DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, criticizes platforms for post-publication peer review — and PubPeer specifically — as being vulnerable to “misuse” and “hyper-skepticism.” Five of the paper’s 17 references do not appear to exist, three others have incorrect DOIs or links, and one has been retracted. 

One of the fabricated references credits our cofounder Ivan Oransky with a nonexistent article, “A new kind of watchdog is shaking up research,” purportedly published in Nature in 2019. 

Continue reading Springer Nature flags paper with fabricated reference to article (not) written by our cofounder

Lancet journal retracts COVID-19 metformin paper nearly 2 years after authors request correction

A paper on a clinical trial of metformin for the treatment of COVID-19 has been retracted nearly two years after the authors flagged data issues that resulted in an expression of concern. 

The results of the Brazil-based TOGETHER trial, published in December 2021 in The Lancet Regional Health–Americas, found metformin was no better than placebo at improving health outcomes in people with COVID-19. The study has been cited 45 times, 25 of which came after the expression of concern was published, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

Early observational studies in people with COVID-19 found positive effects of metformin, an oral medication most often used for type 2 diabetes, including reduced disease severity and mortality rates. But clinical trials, including the now-retracted study and a more recent randomized trial, found no differences in time to recovery or disease severity between patients who got metformin and those who received placebo. 

Continue reading Lancet journal retracts COVID-19 metformin paper nearly 2 years after authors request correction

AI unreliable in identifying retracted research papers, says study

LLMs don’t reliably identify retracted papers, a new study finds. (Image: DALL-E)

Large language models should not be used to weed out retracted literature, a study of 21 chatbots concludes. Not only were the chatbots unreliable at correctly identifying retracted papers, they spit out different results when given the same prompts.

The “very simple study,” as lead author Konradin Metze called it, used LLM chatbots like ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and others to see whether they would successfully identify retracted articles in a list of references.

Metze and colleagues compiled a list of 132 publications. The list comprised the 50 most cited, retracted papers by Joachim Boldt, a prolific German researcher who also sits at the top of the Retraction Watch Leaderboard. Another 50 were Boldt’s most cited non-retracted papers. The rest were works by other researchers with the last name “Boldt” and first initial of “J.” The study authors prompted each chatbot to indicate which of the listed references had been retracted.

Continue reading AI unreliable in identifying retracted research papers, says study

Research integrity conference hit with AI-generated abstracts

The first of three themes for next year’s World Conference on Research Integrity will be the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence for research integrity. In an ironic and possibly predictable turn of events, the conference has received “an unusually large proportion” of off-topic abstracts that show signs of being written by generative AI.

The call for abstracts for the conference, set for May in Vancouver, closed a month ago. Last week, peer reviewers received an email with “URGENT” in the subject line.

“If you haven’t already reviewed the 9th WCRI abstracts that have been allocated to you, please take note of the following,” the email read. “We’ve received several signals that an unusually large proportion of the abstracts are completely off-topic and might have been written by some form of generative AI.”

Continue reading Research integrity conference hit with AI-generated abstracts

Computing society pulls works for ‘citation falsification’ months after sleuth is convicted of defamation

Solal Pirelli

An international computing society has begun retracting conference papers for “citation falsification” only months after the sleuth who flagged the suspect articles was convicted for defamation in a lawsuit filed by one of the offending authors.

So far, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has pulled at least 27 of the papers, but dozens more remain, according to Solal Pirelli, a software engineer in Lausanne, Switzerland, who raised concerns about the articles more than two years ago. Some of the proceedings allegedly include plagiarized works, while others are plagued by citation stuffing.

The retraction notices from September 10 state:

Continue reading Computing society pulls works for ‘citation falsification’ months after sleuth is convicted of defamation

Weekend reads: Debunking ‘When Prophecy Fails’; ‘Godfather of AI’ first to reach 1 million citations; ‘Cake causes herpes?’

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Did you know that Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are  projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity?  Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.   

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: Debunking ‘When Prophecy Fails’; ‘Godfather of AI’ first to reach 1 million citations; ‘Cake causes herpes?’

Botanists plant a stake in oral cancer research with case report, now under investigation

Elsevier is investigating a case report of a person with aggressive cancer, written by three plant researchers working far afield of their specialty. 

The three authors of the study, published June 2024 in Oral Oncology Reports, purport to diagnose a 63-year-old man with a rare, aggressive form of oral cancer. The journal is a companion title to Elsevier’s Oral Oncology according to the homepage, but is not indexed in Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

Corresponding author Velmani Sankaravel told Retraction Watch he and his colleagues found the case report from an “online open-access source” and then used it “to support our research on plant-based diagnostics for oral cancer.” However, the paper lists CT scans, biopsies, and other routine diagnostic tests and makes no mention of plant-based diagnostic tools.

Continue reading Botanists plant a stake in oral cancer research with case report, now under investigation