A group of data sleuths is calling for the retraction of seven articles by an exercise physiologist in Brazil whose data they believe to be “highly unlikely” to have occurred experimentally.
In a preprint posted to the server SportRxiv, the group — led by Andrew Vigotsky, a biomedical engineer at Northwestern University — details their concerns about the work of Matheus Barbalho, a PhD student at the Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, part of the Universidade da Amazônia, in Belém. Barbalho’s mentor is Paulo Gentil.
In addition to the preprint, titled “Improbable data patterns in the work of Barbalho et al,” Greg Nuckols, one of the coauthors, has posted a lengthy “explainer” about the analysis.
The Brazilian group already has one retraction, for a study in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance titled “Evidence of a ceiling effect for training volume in muscle hypertrophy and strength in trained men—less is more?” According to the notice:
This article has been retracted at the request of the authors on April 16, 2020. They performed an a posteriori analysis of the data and identified inconsistencies that changed their evaluation of the results. The authors apologize for the inconvenience.
That’s not quite the whole story. According to James Steele — of ukactive Research Institute in England and a co-author of the preprint — who posted under his own name on PubPeer:
the reason for this retraction was confirmed to me by the senior author of this paper as being the result of a research assistant who was responsible for the transfer of paper records to the spreadsheet having “made much of the data” because he was “too busy to do the job.”
As Jane Fonda used to say, feel the burn.
Even before the retraction, the paper came under scrutiny of a different sort on Reddit, where posters to a bodybuilding forum expressed doubts not about the data but the exercise regimen in the study. As one Reddit user wrote:
I’m just going to go ahead and say it: This is garbage.
The critiques in the preprint and the explainer are somewhat more nuanced. The authors, who include James Heathers, lay out their case that the Brazilian group’s results can look “outrageously consistent” and “astounding.”
As Nuckols relates, the preprint authors gave Barbalho and Gentil several deadlines to respond to their concerns, which they effectively ignored — prompting them to call for the retractions earlier this month:
[W]e’re not trying to levy any accusations. The data simply are atypical, improbable, and to put it bluntly, pretty weird. And if they’re weird for totally explainable and innocent reasons, we’re open to hearing those reasons. We just haven’t been presented with an adequate explanation yet.
Here’s the list of the nine articles the preprint addresses:
- The Effects of Resistance Exercise Selection on Muscle Size and Strength in Trained Women.
- Back Squat vs. Hip Thrust Resistance-training Programs in Well-trained Women.
- Evidence of a Ceiling Effect for Training Volume in Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength in Trained Men – Less is More? [already retracted]
- Single joint exercises do not provide benefits in performance and anthropometric changes in recreational bodybuilders.
- Evidence for an Upper Threshold for Resistance Training Volume in Trained Women.
- Does the addition of single joint exercises to a resistance training program improve changes in performance and anthropometric measures in untrained men?
- Effects of Adding Single Joint Exercises to a Resistance Training Programme in Trained Women.
- Influence of Adding Single-Joint Exercise to a Multijoint Resistance Training Program in Untrained Young Women.
- There are no no-responders to low or high resistance training volumes among older women. [reportedly under investigation by the journal]
The papers have been cited a total of about 50 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
We emailed Barbalho for comment but have not heard back.
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