Firing, publishing ban, 15 retractions for author who ‘defrauded’ co-authors in pay-to-publish scheme

Cureus has retracted 15 papers, including three on Covid-19, after concluding that the articles were produced in a scheme by a researcher in Pakistan who charged his co-authors to join the manuscripts, lied about the ethics approval for the studies and may have fabricated data.  

The journal says Rahil Barkat, who already had lost a pair of articles in Cureus, charged researchers – some in Pakistan, others elsewhere – “editing fees” of as much as $300 to proofread and sign on to his manuscripts.  

Barkat’s name appears on a few of the now-retracted articles but not all. However, the journal has linked him to the 15 papers. 

Barkat, an epidemiologist at Indus Hospital in Karachi, did not respond to a request for comment. We’re told that he has been fired from his institution and he, as well as the co-authors involved in the scheme, have been permanently banned from publishing in the journal. 

Here’s the notice for one of the papers, titled “Comparison of High-Statin Therapy vs Moderate-Statin Therapy in Achieving Positive Low-Density Lipoprotein Change in Patients After Acute Coronary Syndrome: A Randomized-Control Trial,” which appeared Dec. 26, 2021: 

This article has been retracted due to the unknown origin of the data, lack of verified IRB approval, and purchased authorships. While not listed as an author, it was discovered that Rahil Barkat wrote and coordinated the submission of this article. Mr. Barkat was involved in data theft and misuse in two recently published Cureus articles, which have since been retracted.

As the origin of this article’s data and verified IRB approval cannot be confirmed, we have made the decision to retract this article. Cureus has confirmed that the co-authors were asked by Mr. Barkat to proofread the article and provide payment in exchange for authorship. (Proofreading is an insufficient contribution to warrant authorship as defined by ICMJE.) These payments were made in the guise of “editing fees” but greatly exceed any editing fees paid to Cureus. While these authors may have been defrauded by Mr. Barkat, they remain complicit due to their lack of honest contributions to the article.

The other retractions are for: 

Based on the list of authors Barkat employed (quite literally), we suggest editors look into this 2021 article in the American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research on Covid-19 and women in Pakistan. 

We emailed Sohaib Tousif, a medical student at Ziauddin University in Karachi whose name appears on eight of the retracted papers. Tousif said: 

Mr Barkat was the principal investigator in all those researches. My senior introduced me to him to work for him on manuscript for authorship. I wasn’t aware of the fact that the data was not authentic. I had several times asked mr rahil about irb before but he said it is all legitimate. After not sharing irbs on future projects I decided to withdraw myself from working with mr rahil after January 2022. 

Tousif added that Barkat: 

didn’t pay me anything rather he asked money from other co authors in the name of editing fees which exceeded the journals fee.   

John Adler, the editor-in-chief of Cureus (and a purveyor of colorful quotations), told us: 

We were contacted by Dr. Naila Baig-Ansari, Chair of Research at Indus Hospital Research Center and Indus Hospital & Health Network, regarding the following two articles [of Barkat that previously were retracted]:

https://www.cureus.com/articles/71219

https://www.cureus.com/articles/68141

Dr. Baig-Ansari shared her suspicions that additional articles by Rahil and this author group were likely fraudulent and we initiated as comprehensive an investigation as we could wherein we discovered (with Dr. Baig-Ansari’s help) that the authors were almost all medical students who naively paid Barkat to help cover the article editing; these students performed very little work, essentially just proofreading. Barkat could not provide proof of IRB approval when questioned. It was also discovered that Barkat was signing in with the accounts of other authors to submit certain articles, which is why he is not listed on all of them, despite coordinating the entire effort. The “editing fees” reported by the many co-authors ranged from $85 to $300 or thereabouts. Several of these articles did require the purchase of our Preferred Editing service, but the average cost per article was in the low $200 range. Barkat has since been fired from Indus Hospital and all authors permanently banned from Cureus.

Baig-Ansari confirmed that Barkat’s firing resulted from his role in the scandal. But she had a few words for Cureus and what she called its: 

extremely lax protocols for checking authors on papers and institutional affiliations.  This is also compounded by the practice of bogus peer reviews where names of friends are given for review.  In several of these papers, there were people from all over the world and the study was a single centered study.  Or the study sites did not have author representation.  This is a gross oversight on Cureus part too.

Adler disagreed with that critique, in fortissimo, stating: 

No journal can police honesty, much less a journal that does more than any other to give a LOW COST credible scientific forum to the vast population of “voiceless” physicians in less developed countries. Like all other journals, Cureus’ default is to give researchers the benefit of the doubt; they are deemed honest until proven otherwise. How else can an editorial team that is 10,000 miles away function? It is not the responsibility of journals to know who is honest and who is not, it is the responsibility of institutional leadership, i.e. Dr. Baig-Ansari, in which these fraudsters ply their trade to teach and enforce ethical behavior. It was her employee that committed fraud under her watch, and she has the temerity to now blame Cureus.

He ticked off a lengthy point-by-point rebuttal of her claims, including a defense of its “anti-racist” editorial policies:

We are not a major publishing house yet we have gone out of our way to be fair to all authors regardless of national origin. However the extent of cheating we have encountered coming out of South Asia, especially Pakistan, is grossly disproportionate to the number of articles submitted from other regions of the world. We could, like many other journals, stereotype and reject out of hand articles from these countries but  out of a sense of decency to innocent individuals, we try our darndest to give everyone a fair shot. … Clearly there are innocent authors punished by this decision but we had no way of assuring the integrity of authorship from that medical school. Perhaps we will now need to do the same for Baig-Ansari’s medical school……this is a very sad state of affair. My suspicion is that this represents a systemic problem inside medical schools which mandate that medical students, residents and faculty publish no matter what. Given Cureus’ mandate to be anti-racist, this state of affairs pains me to no end.

Cureus idealism is being abused by fraudulent ass..les, and yes that pisses me off!!

Update, 3/30/22, 1630 UTC: We struck through a line that was based on material in the retraction notice that Cureus now tells us was unclear.

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6 thoughts on “Firing, publishing ban, 15 retractions for author who ‘defrauded’ co-authors in pay-to-publish scheme”

  1. One problem may have been their (apparently now-changed) peer review process that I had previously criticized: “Two completed [peer] reviews are required in order to proceed, one of which must be from a reviewer invited by Cureus. This requirement will be waived after 21 days if two author-invited reviews have been submitted.”

    via (as of November 21, 2021): https://web.archive.org/web/20211127032743/https://www.cureus.com/author_guide#!/overview/introduction

    Now the peer review process is described as: “Two completed reviews are required to satisfy peer review and one of these reviews must be from a Cureus-invited reviewer. (Articles with a Cureus Laureate author are exempt from the Cureus-invited reviewer requirement.)” Still not as rigorous as might be desirable.

    Via (dtd March 30, 2022): https://www.cureus.com/author_guide#!/author-instructions/submitting-an-article

    Reply

    1. As you note, “Still not as rigorous as might be desirable.”

      All you need to be a Cureus Laureate appears to be that you have had one article published as first or last author.

      Reply

      1. While Dr. Adler is perhaps understandably strong in hi defensive of the journal, it sounds as if he is very new to academic publishing. For example:

        “My suspicion is that this represents a systemic problem inside medical schools which mandate that medical students, residents and faculty publish no matter what. Given Cureus’ mandate to be anti-racist, this state of affairs pains me to no end.”

        The first sentence suggests that he has little familiarity with the phenomenon of paper mills, citation rings, “publish or perish,” or common fraudulent practices in academic publishing. Perhaps he could learn by becoming a regular reader of this site.

        The second sentence seems pulled out of thin air. Where did racism enter the equation? Regardless of the race of the author, different countries and different cultures have different access to research facilities, different incentives for researchers, and different views of ethics. Being aware that there are differences is not the same as being racist.

        He also says, “Like all other journals, Cureus’ default is to give researchers the benefit of the doubt; they are deemed honest until proven otherwise.” I don’t think that is how “all other journals” perform at all. Many have more rigorous peer review than Cureus and many now have editorial processes that commonly include plagiarism checks and use tools to review images: for prior publication, manipulation, or duplication. An attitude of “trust but verify” seems to be more prevalent than trust until proven untrustworthy.

        Reply

  2. My thoughts:
    1. Why did the medical students opt for a shortcut: Foreign medical school should provide opportunities for their students to learn the basics of research and how to publish. Lack of opportunities and knowledge= bad and desperate actions by some. There are some students/companies taking money to teach and together publish properly while assigning roles to each authors, which satisfies the criteria for authorship (maybe include a section where they also have to declare that when submitting, eg Dr XXXX acknowledges receiving funds to teach the coauthors and help them publish while adhering to the rules of authorship set by ICMJE), while there are some like Barkat who are just selling ready to go articles.

    2. various authors from different institutions and countries, and none from the centre where the study was done. Red flag but a possible situation. The editor handling that article should have caught that red flag. It is possible to have such situations if the authors were using a public database or legally available one. However, their methodology did not say so. Their methodology talked about conducting the study themselves. Red flag missed by Cureus editors. Maybe consider improving on that part Dr. Adler.

    3. Fake IRBs. This needs to be addressed. I would like to encourage Dr. Adler to consider this suggestion: all authors should be required to submit a proof of their IRB approval, a proof of their ethic clearance, and a proof of clearance from the hospital or university, all of them with proper letterhead, signed properly, and all the authors should also be listed in the approvals (my work needed all info about my coauthors when I sent for ethic clearance, so I dont think that this is a weird suggestion). The authors should be strictly warned about faking these paperworks, and if there is ever any misconduct in those paperworks, this also gives the University and hospitals grounds to pursue criminal charges. This will strongly deter many from misconduct. Warn the students well before they confirm their authorship and submission. Many are ignorant of what scientific misconduct is, and opt to use such scammers because their friends used them too.

    4. Remove that exemption for the Laureate users on Cureus. Avoid giving people loopholes to exploit.

    English is not my first language, and I would like to apologize for any typo and grammar mistakes.

    Reply

  3. I meant “warned against faking these paperworks” ,not about

    As i said english isnt my first language and kindly edit it accordingly if possible. i hope the main message is understood.

    Reply

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