Researchers have retracted a study about malaria infections in India after follow-up research unveiled problems with the data and set off a dispute among the authors.
According to the notice, when the authors continued their research on the same topic, some of the new data raised concerns about what was reported in the 2010 paper. That set off a “number of disputes between authors,” which led them to retract the paper.
This account was supported by the study’s first and corresponding author, Naitik Trivedi, from the A.R. College of Pharmacy & G.H. Patel Institute of Pharmacy in Anand, Gujarat, India. Trivedi told us he believes the previous study didn’t include some relevant parameters, which affected the results.
Trivedi noted that all the authors agree to the retraction, adding:
Presently, We did [a] study at different region of Gujarat on [the] same topic but we found some of the data is not matched with the previous study because in previous study we have not considered some of the parameter[s] like other disease status, habit of patients, environmental factor etc… So all the authors have conflict with the result.
Here’s the retraction notice, issued earlier this year:
The article titled, “Case Report and clinical databased research study on Malaria” published in pages 18-21, issue 1, vol. 1 of “Journal of Advanced Pharmaceutical Technology & Research”[1] is being retracted.
It has been reported that there is a conflict between the authors due to concerns raised during the recent studies carried out by the authors on same topics. In the recent studies, the results obtained are not reproducible and there are significant difference in the most of results and final conclusion. This creates number of disputes between authors. So, panel of authors have decided internally to withdraw the article, as the presented findings are not validated with time and may misguide scientific community.
The paper, “Case Report and clinical databased research study on Malaria,” found that more than seven percent of people screened in the Kheda District in Gujarat between 2008 and 2009 tested positive for malaria, most of whom had Plasmodium vivax.
We asked Trivedi for more details about the dispute between the authors, and he said the conflicts were
Regarding the study protocol because it [consists of] only limited parameters and from that we were unable to get the perfect result.
And when asked how he felt about the retraction, he added:
Retraction is always painful for the Author but for the betterment of the scientific research, retraction is [a] valuable process.
The Journal of Advanced Pharmaceutical Technology & Research, which published the 2010 study, is not indexed by Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, formerly part of Thomson Reuters.
We were unable to find contact details of any of Trivedi’s co-authors.
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