A public health journal will be retracting a paper that argued for the adoption of homeopathy in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, according to the editor in chief.
We reported on Saturday that the Journal of Public Health: From Theory to Practice, a Springer Nature title also known by its German name, Zeitschrift für Gesundheitswissenschaften, had published “Homeopathy combat against coronavirus disease (Covid-19)” on June 5.
At the time, we had not yet heard from Joachim Kugler, the journal’s editor, about how this might have happened. Today, Kugler told Retraction Watch:
You are tipping the finger in an open wound. Over the last weeks, we experienced an overflow of manuscripts, esp. with regard to COVID-19. The paper was reviewed by two reviewers who were obviously biased. Unfortunately, our quality control was not properly working, so the manuscript got accepted. We are now discussing with the publishers to retract this article soon.
In any case, I will write an editorial note.
Earlier, Dimitris Kalliantas, the corresponding author of the paper who appears to publish often on the subject, told us:
Of course, this paper was published in a peer-reviewed journal and this is a small part of many a year’s investigation work related to homeopathy and its medicines (ultra high diluted succussed medicinal products) at National Technical University of Athens. The results of our research showed that homeopathy is something much more than it seems. Classical homeopathy broke the timeless mistake made by established medicine in therapeutic. This mistake is related with the linearly approach of disease, which as a phenomenon is non-linear. The results’ phenomenology from the applications of classical homeopathy is fully supported by mathematics. Because they are unpublished works I cannot tell more. Today, when humanity is being severely tested by Covid- 19 and no effect has emerged, except from the thousand’s dead peoples every day, the correct application of classical homeopathy by professionals would be an oasis.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
My feeling is that editors need to do better. Somehow most of the ‘policing’ work rests on peer reviewers who do this on the sidelines and are not paid for their work/time. In almost every journal I have reviewed for, the editor handling the manuscript did not exercise any independent judgment of the reviewers’ comments or the manuscript quality. Given the vast number of journals with overlapping content around, alot of the resources could be pooled to ensure a more rigorous and smoother reviewing and publication process. The publication system has been broken for far too long.
If editors’ compensation was rewarded for honoring their obvious accountability, and reduced for shirking such responsibility by blaming retraction watch, science would be better served.
Kalliantas’s website opens thus: “it is more important to be kind than to be right.” The statement speaks for itself.
But this paper is the most egregious example of pseudo-mathematics I’ve ever seen! It would be hilarious it if did not also reveal a horrific lack of any sort of vigilance on the part of the editorial process.
Putting things that look like formulas and equations into a paper does not make it mathematical, no more than using Times New Roman makes it literature.
Oh, now I have to read it, but one thing first — the initial word in Times New Roman gives away what it was designed for.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10389-020-01305-z ist still online today . Don’t believe they really will retract it. They don’t want to ruin their business with the quackery medicine industry.
A lot is heard about and against homoeopathy. However, seems to me the supporters and practitioner of the field are pushed to defend it with instruments that cannot assess the field – a case of “ecological fallacy” to use what Thorndike’s (1939) caution – as was evident in the other retraction of “Memory of water” (by Nature?). Without going into the arguments of bioresonance and response of the structure of water to music or verbal stimuli as shown by Japanese scientists, for instance, which might start to show the fallacy in our current ‘proof’, I wonder why animals respond to homoeopathic treatment. Any idea?
Also, I think it would be better to mention ‘dilution’ along with ‘succussion’ so as not to quickly reach commonsensical and likely biased conclusions of no ‘molecules’ present should make higher potency homoeopathic medicines ineffective. This relates to the bioresonance, etc, mentioned in my earlier post. My enquiry stems from an open approach.