A scientist who lost 11 papers for fake peer review and other reasons went to court to pin the misconduct on a coauthor – and received a favorable judgment.
The retractions for Aram Mokarizadeh, a biomedical researcher previously affiliated with the Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences in Iran, were part of a batch of 58 papers in seven journals that Springer and BioMed Central pulled in 2016 after an investigation found “evidence of plagiarism, peer review and authorship manipulation, suggestive of attempts to subvert the peer review and publication system to inappropriately obtain or allocate authorship.”
After our story on the case appeared, Mokarizadeh told us that a coauthor was “responsible for all problems associated with retraction,” and that he had brought a case to court in Iran to prove it.
Six years later, in a decision dated Oct. 3, 2022 that Mokarizadeh shared with us but said was confidential, a judge of the Tehran Criminal Court found that the coauthor, Javad Javanbakht, had committed forgery of computer data “by creating fake emails attributed to reputable authors and reviewers.” Javanbakht was ordered to pay a fine of one hundred million Rials, about $2,360 USD. Javanbakht, who has 16 retractions in our database from the 2016 investigation, has not responded to our requests for comment.
Javanbakht “had submitted papers through creating fake email addresses without informing me,” Mokarizadeh told us. “I was absolutely in the dark concerning conducted violations.”
But when we pointed out that Javanbakht was a co-author on only three of Mokarizadeh’s papers that were retracted, and asked whether Javanbakht had submitted those papers on which he was not named, Mokarizadeh did not respond. [Update, 1800 UTC, 11/21/22: Following publication of this post, Mokarizadeh said he did not receive our email with this question, and answered: “all 13 retracted papers were submitted by Javanbakht as investigations performed by court proved it.”]
We asked a Springer Nature spokesperson if the publisher would update the retraction notices, and got this response:
The notices remain a clear and full description of why we published the retractions in 2016, and as such we are not in a positon [sic] to amend them.
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Kudos to this scientist!
The convicted person (Mr. Javad Javanbakht) which was a Ph.D student previously affiliated with University of Tehran has been identified as responsible for the most majority of Iranian retracted papers in November 2016 through creating fake email addresses.
The relevant news is published in Persian as below:
https://brieflands.com/scinews/posts/133679.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mglh_87_s_n_oz_sdor_r_d_d_h_tklb_r_n_dr_n_r_s_z_6_s_l_zn_khtr_gd_br_nm_h_shdn_mgl_t_r_n_nm_h_shdn_h_r_mglh_d_r_z_ntsh_r_t_br_flndz&utm_term=2023-07-05
How very convenient, just one bad apple in the whole of Iran.
“The court’s judgment on the true identity of the author responsible for identity fraud and the consequent batch retraction of Iranian’s papers in the journal of diagnostic pathology” (Mokarizadeh, 2024).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13000-024-01459-4
Complicated case and a web of deception is discovered here. No question about the genuine intentions of Dr. Aram Mokarizadeh. What puzzels me:
-Why no one of the other (co-)authors joined his crusade for justice
-What did the accused tried to achieve
-Is it to boost citations (and sell them?)
-Was the co-authorship for sale (like a paper mill kind of scam)
I suspect the latter possibility makes the most sense (the combination of manipulating the peer review system and ‘composing’ papers with plagiarised material is their way of operation).
In other words I guess there is more to it than ‘just’ retracting the papers. I suspect there is more to uncover here.
It appears to me that javanbakht was committed to sell papers as he misused the identity of reputable authors ( like Dr. Mokarizadeh) to decieve both journals and coauthors contributed to papers by paying money.
Frauds conducted by “Javad Javanbakht”
“A statement regarding the mass retraction of Iranian papers in November 2016 (Mokarizadeh, 2023)”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37125598/
Interestingly, the phrase “The authors / We thank Dr. Javad Javanbakht…” has been frequently mentioned in “Acknowledgement” section of numerous retracted papers including but not limited to:
1. Adib-Hashemi F, Farahmand F, Hesari SF, Rezakhaniha B, Fallah E, Fayyaz AF, Dadpay M. Retraction note: Anti-inflammatory and protective investigations on the effects of Theranekron® “an alcoholic extract of the Tarantula cubensis” on wound healing of peritoneal in the rat: an in vivo comparative study. Diagn Pathol. 2016 Nov 2;11(1):118. doi: 10.1186/s13000-016-0575-2. PMID: 27802821; PMCID: PMC5090874
https://ovarianresearch.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13048-014-0105-3
2. Bahrami, A.M., Khaki, F., Zehtabian, S. et al. RETRACTED ARTICLE: Uterine mast cell tumor: a clinical and cytohistopathological study. J Ovarian Res 7, 105 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13048-014-0105-3
3. Ostvar O, Shadvar S, Yahaghi E, Azma K, Fayyaz AF, Ahmadi K, Nowrouzian I. Effect of platelet-rich plasma on the healing of cutaneous defects exposed to acute to chronic wounds: a clinico-histopathologic study in rabbits. Diagn Pathol. 2015 Jul 2;10:85. doi: 10.1186/s13000-015-0327-8. Retraction in: Diagn Pathol. 2016 Nov 2;11(1):113. doi: 10.1186/s13000-016-0556-5. PMID: 26134399; PMCID: PMC4487960.
4. Ziari K, Zarea M, Gity M, Fayyaz AF, Yahaghi E, Darian EK, Hashemian AM. Downregulation of miR-148b as biomarker for early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma and may serve as a prognostic marker. Tumour Biol. 2016 May;37(5):5765-8. doi: 10.1007/s13277-015-3777-4. Epub 2015 Jul 24. Retraction in: Tumour Biol. 2016 Nov 05. doi: 10.1007/s13277-016-5477-0. PMID: 26206498.
5. Hassan MA, Raoofi A, Hosseini A, Mehrara MR, Amininajafi F. Prevalence of ixodid ticks on cattle and sheep northeast of Iran. J Parasit Dis. 2016 Sep;40(3):772-773. doi: 10.1007/s12639-014-0576-6. Epub 2014 Sep 24. Retraction in: J Parasit Dis. 2016 Dec;40(4):1642. doi: 10.1007/s12639-016-0858-2. PMID: 27605782; PMCID: PMC4996189.
In these retracted papers “Javad Javanbakht” was not mentioned as a co-author but he was always acknowledged.