A lung specialist who has held positions in Iran’s Ministry of Health and National Medical Council now has two retractions and five corrections of his published papers for re-using text.
In the case of the retractions, the re-used text was an entire paper.
Esmaeil Idani (who also spells his last name “Eidani”), now affiliated with Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, is a middle author on two papers retracted for republication, and corrections to two of his papers acknowledge duplicated text with each other and a third paper.
According to an online CV, Idani has worked as “Deputy Secretary of the Medical Education and Training Council” for Iran’s Ministry of Health and Medical Education, and from 2013-2017 was chairman of the Supreme Medical Council of Iran. He has not responded to our request for comment.
In 2019, Idani and colleagues published “The Effects of Family-Centered Education Based on the Health Belief Model on Knowledge and Attitude Among the Parents of Children with Asthma: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial” in the Jundishapur Journal of Chronic Disease Care.
A year later, an article with an identical title was published in Nursing and Midwifery Journal. That paper was retracted last August, according to our database, with no notice published.
The retraction notice for the first paper, published in January, tells the story:
We have retracted this article (1) due to the Editor-in-Chief request on behalf of the editorial board and the second committee of Ethics in the Publisher. To read more retraction regulations in the publisher, please read it at https://brief.land/jjcdc/knowledgebase/category/tree.html#retraction_regulations.html. This article is retracted from our journal following a report from a whistleblower (December 6, 2020) and because it was already published in another journal (http://unmf.umsu.ac.ir/article-1-3851-fa.html) and is a case of “republishing.”
Based on our policy (https://brief.land/jjcdc/knowledgebase/category/tree.html#republishing1.html), any republishing (in other languages) is prohibited. Furthermore, the author(s) failed to explain why it is relevant to present it again in a different context in another journal without permission from the first journal. Besides, the case was not correctly cross-referenced in the acknowledgment section. We are committed to following any suspected malpractice case in primary and secondary committees. To read more about the way of approaching ethical claims (allegation of misconduct), please read the below page: https://brief.land/jjcdc/knowledgebase/category/tree.html#allegations_of_misconduct.html.
Last August, the International Journal of Biometeorology published identical corrections for two papers that had been published in 2018 on which Idani was a middle author, “Health risk assessment on human exposed to heavy metals in the ambient air PM 10 in Ahvaz, southwest Iran,” and “Association between cancer risk and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons’ exposure in the ambient air of Ahvaz, southwest of Iran.”
The corrections acknowledged duplicated text with an earlier publication in another journal:
Although the focus of our article (Goudarzi et al. 2018a) reports novel data and has a different focus compared to our other publication in International Journal of Biometeorology (Goudarzi et al. 2018b) and our publication in Toxin Reviews (Goudarzi 2017), we acknowledge that we have duplicated some text. We apologize for the inappropriate overlap between our three publications and our lack of transparency about the similarities between these articles.
A correction to the 2017 Toxin Reviews paper referenced, “Association of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of the outdoor air in Ahvaz, southwest Iran during warm-cold season,” was published last October 12th. It did not mention duplicated text with the other papers, but it did add disclosure statements for Idani, the second author:
Since publication, queries were raised regarding the specific timelines for when the study was conducted, details on ethical approval and competing interests information.
The authors have now provided the required information. In addition, a paragraph which was erroneously placed within the “Ethical considerations” section, has now been moved to the end of the “Statistical analysis” section.
The changes within the each of the sections are listed below:
Methods
In this retrospective study, we used an active sampling system for measuring the amount of PAHs of air at industrial, high traffic and residential areas in southwest of Iran during the warm (1st September–20th November) and cold (1st December–28th February) seasons of 2016–2017.
Ethical considerations
The Ethics Committee of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences approved the study protocol. This study was originally approved by the Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences with code IR.AJUMS.REC.1395.492.
Statistical analysis
Sampling and data collection were done by researcher and we analyzed the PAHs data by Excel and SPSS software (SPSS version 16; SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL). We estimated the level of PAHs and compared with national standard of outdoor air at industrial, high traffic and residential areas.
Disclosure statement
E. Idani has held several government positions in the Ministry of Health and National Medical Council, and was the Governmental University Chancellor of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, which provided financial support for the study. The authors confirm that these roles and any other governmental positions or membership of relevant committees, did not influence the outcomes of the research.
We asked the editor-in-chief of Toxin Reviews why the correction did not mention duplicated text with the International Journal of Biometeorology papers, but did not hear back.
Another Toxin Reviews paper, “Characteristics, sources, and health risks of atmospheric PM10-bound heavy metals in a populated middle eastern city,” which has Idani as the first author, was corrected on the same day last October with similar language:
Since publication, queries were raised regarding the specific timelines for when the study was conducted, details on ethical approval and competing interests information. In addition, Figure 1 was originally published in an earlier publication by the author group, but a reference to the original source had not been included.
The authors have now provided the required information. In addition, a sentence which was erroneously placed within the “Ethical considerations” section, has now been moved to the end of the “Statistical analysis” section.
Idani’s fifth correction, to the 2019 Atmospheric Environment paper Do Conocarpus erectus airborne pollen grains exacerbate autumnal thunderstorm asthma attacks in Ahvaz, Iran? details “some small mistakes in terms of unit expression.”
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The minister of education of that country is no stranger to PubPeer. Everyone is welcome to look it up.