There shouldn’t have been many differences between the women recruited for the three clinical trials: All of them gave birth at the same two Cairo hospitals over a period of less than three years, and all of them were treated to prevent or manage postpartum bleeding. Three samples from this pool of patients, Ben Mol felt, should have had largely similar baseline characteristics.
Yet, mysteriously, the women’s mean age and BMI varied markedly across the studies—from 25 to 34 years and from 25 to 29 kg/m2, respectively—as did the birthweight of their babies.
So the researcher turned data sleuth began digging. His worries only grew. Eventually, he would come to question the integrity of nearly two dozen randomized controlled trials led by Ahmed Maged, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Egypt’s top medical school, Kasr AlAiny at Cairo University.
Now, based in part on Mol’s findings, two journals published by Taylor & Francis have issued a retraction and nine expressions of concern for the following papers:
- “The effect of hyoscine butylbromide on the duration and progress of labor in primigravidae: a randomized controlled trial”
- “Role of antioxidants in gestational diabetes mellitus and relation to fetal outcome: a randomized controlled trial”
- “Carbetocin versus syntometrine for prevention of postpartum hemorrhage after cesarean section”
- “Carbetocin versus oxytocin for prevention of postpartum hemorrhage after vaginal delivery in high risk women”
- “The role of three-dimensional ultrasonography fetal lung volume measurement in the prediction of neonatal respiratory function outcome”
- “Fetal middle cerebral and umbilical artery Doppler after 40 weeks gestational age”
- “Subcuticular interrupted versus continuous skin suturing in elective cesarean section in obese women: a randomized controlled trial”
- “Maternal, fetal, and neonatal outcomes among different types of hypertensive disorders associating pregnancy needing intensive care management”
- “The value of amniopatch in pregnancies associated with spontaneous preterm premature rupture of fetal membranes: a randomized controlled trial”
“What we see here, nine expressions of concern in one month, is really a breakthrough,” Ben Mol, who leads the Evidence-based Women’s Health Care research group at Monash University, in Australia, told Retraction Watch.
“Among these titles, there are papers that inform the treatment of postpartum hemorrhage, which is maternal-mortality cause number one around the world,” he said. “This stuff ends up in meta-analyses.”
This is the first time a journal has publicly expressed concern over Maged’s work. Mol, however, has taken aim at research from Egypt several times before, using statistical techniques and simple reasoning to flag potential fraud.
The editor and publisher of The European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care, which retracted a 2018 report by Maged and his colleagues titled “Benefits of vaginal misoprostol prior to IUD insertion in women with previous caesarean delivery: a randomised controlled trial,” state:
Since publication, significant concerns have been raised about the integrity of the data and reported results in the article. While the authors have fully cooperated with the investigation and provided information in response to our queries, they have not been able to adequately address the concerns raised. As we cannot verify the validity of the published work, we are therefore retracting the article. The authors listed in this publication have been informed, and they do not agree with the retraction.
The paper has been cited 13 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science; the nine papers that earned expressions of concern from The Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine have been cited 86 times in total.
In each of these nine cases, the journal notes that the authors have provided their raw data, adding:
We have also referred concerns about this paper to the authors’ institution, in order to conduct a full investigation. As this investigation may take some time to resolve, we advise readers to interpret the information presented in the article with due caution.
Sabina Alam, director of Publishing Ethics and Integrity at Taylor & Francis, told Retraction Watch by email:
The retraction and expressions of concern notices have come about as a result of an investigation being carried out by my Publishing Ethics & Integrity team. This investigation does stem partly from concerns raised by Ben Mol about specific papers, but also partly from issues raised through internal audits of our journals. We take cases of unethical conduct very seriously and comply fully with COPE guidelines in any investigation we undertake.
She added that her team nearly doubled in size last year, reflecting a growing industry trend:
Taylor & Francis has been investing in resources for ethics and integrity so that my team is now able to lead all large or complex ethics cases, like this one. This brings more expertise and consistency to the investigations and subsequent resolutions of such cases.
The expressions of concern include two of the three studies of women with postpartum bleeding. The third was published in the Springer journal Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
Mol emailed Maged with his concerns in the summer of 2020, two months before he and his colleagues submitted the paper detailing their findings to the American Journal of Perinatology. Later, he also shared his misgivings with the 13 journals that have published the dozens of reports spawned by Maged’s clinical trials. So far, Taylor & Francis is the only publisher to have taken visible measures as a result.
Maged has defended his work vociferously on PubPeer, but appears to have offered little by way of evidence or scientific explanations. Instead, in an August email to Monash that Retraction Watch has seen, he accused Mol of “racist behavior” and “hate speech.” He sounded the same notes in an email to Retraction Watch, adding several unsubstantiated claims and noting that he and his coauthors:
… completely refused the retraction as no evidence that require retraction was proved by either the complainer or the editor. The authors believe that if all these issues undergo a fair, ethical, and unbiased investigations, the journal will withdraw the retraction and expression of concerns.
Wait for the new evidence and changes of these decisions within the near time
Mol told Retraction Watch what drives him “is that I’m very concerned actually about the impact [scientific misconduct] has on the outcomes of meta-analyses and therefore guidelines all around the world.”
He believes fraud is much more widespread in the literature than most people realize and that blindly trusting the data is a risky proposition:
So it’s nice to say that we should work on trust, but whether you talk about your tax return or sports or the safety of airplanes, right, there are controls and checks there … I think that nobody actually has really considered that this happened on such a large scale, and I think that is still part of the problem that editors and publishers do not believe that it’s happening on such a big scale.
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Ben Mol
Criticism directed toward a certain population based on their color, race, or religion is the identical definition of racism, and all your criticisms are0 directed toward Egyptian Muslim researchers.
Only Taylor and Francis publisher agreed with your defamations based on your personal relationship with them. All other publishers investigated your issues and found them completely untrue.
All concerns were published only after changing of the editorial board of the journal of maternal-fetal and neonatal medicine based on your relationship with the new editor and the similarity between you in hating Egyptians based on your political view.
Religion is not race.
The definition of racism is targeting particular population based on a specific character and that is not limited to race. Its broad meaning include targeting them on base of race, sex, geographical area, color ,religion or any specific characteristics.
What can you call Ben Mol behaviour that is targeted only against Egyptian Muslims
Ben Mol
None of the expressions or even the retraction were related to data integrity representing your project. All were defamations about protocol and consent.
Leaving the judgment of the researchers. Is it logical for the abrupt appearance of 9 expressions of concerns shortly after the change of editorial board.
Dear
Dr. Maged – I appreciate your willingness to address the concerns.
Taking just one of the papers with concerns identified on PubPeer (link https://pubpeer.com/publications/71AE55E05D2B3060AB08DBBE190D9B), could you answer the questions that have been posed?
1. Why is there a difference in the sample size between the ClinicalTrials.gov and the paper?
2. Can you provide the correct dates for this particular study? Why is there a difference between the end dates identified in the paper and the ClinicalTrials.gov site?
3. If the end date of the study was actually March 31, 2017, how could the manuscript have been submitted on May 28, 2017, when the protocol required a 12-week follow-up?
4. Do you have any comment on the concern that the p-values have been incorrectly calculated?
These seem to be simple questions about this study that do not seem to have been publicly addressed (and do not involve any element of conspiracy or ill intent).
Again, thank you for your willingness to address this example of the concerns.
Thank you for your interest. We actually replied to all these issues in our letter to editor submitted to American journal of perinatology. This letter was submitted 16 months ago but Ben Mol and his followers are preventing its publishing . I am willing to reply once the letter is published.
But now is your opportunity to see the letter published! Surely you have a copy that we could see?
I agree.
Dr. Maged, you can publish your letter here or at PubPeer. Certainly, if you have a strong rebuttal to these concerns, it seems you should want to share it publicly so other people can support your claims.
If you prefer to keep the letter private for now, it isn’t clear why responding to the four questions posed above would compromise any decision-making by the journal. These questions are simply requests for clarification.
You ll see it very soon. If no pressure was expected by Ben Mol, this should has been published 16 months ago. And the clarification about retraction is going to be published soon . Don’t you think that sudden appearance of 9 expression of concerns in the same journal shortly after changing the editorial board toward an author published 71 more publications in other 21 journals doesn’t carry a targeted behaviour
I am no expert to review the claims of misconduct nor the defence against those, but the way this report is written is entirely problematic, stereotyping, and careless about power dynamics pertaining to racialisation, gender, and other marginalisations; not to mention how multiple comments under this very page are transparently racist. All of which is a trend on this otherwise valuable website. You people should really consider hiring the services of someone who could prevent you from harming the scholarly community like this. I wish to be able to follow a publication like this without being subjected to a barrage of microaggressions and other aspects of white supremacy and patriarchy (which are also pretty core issues of metascience).
Marxist musings have no place in a fact based discipline.
Facts are a social construct.
Facts are reproducible observations.
Reproducible by whom?
Do you truly believe that you can change the laws of physics, not solely their language but the realities imposed by them, through cultural marxism?
This has got to be a Poe, but well done, it’s not very different from some word salad that seeks to change reality by words alone.
Bravo, but please try and save this for locations where facts are indeed totally a construct.
It’s not a “word salad” just because you are ignorant and/or bigoted.
At no point I said universe is shaped by our constructs. That’s not what “facts are social constructs” means. And I didn’t even say the claims of misconduct here are necessarily wrongful allegations. They can well be right and the person in question might well deserve some consequences, but RW and Ben Mol can still be racist in how they talk about it, in how they distribute focus, in how consequences differ for one group or another, and so on.
It is very simple. But you folk are badly trained and insufficiently motivated to be honest and complete scientists. You don’t even bother to understand what you read, you just parrot ideology when you see some keywords, like a primitive copy pasta generator. Embarrassing.
You people should really consider hiring the services of someone who could prevent you from harming the scholarly community like this.
Job applications are down the hall, second door on the left.
A big part of it is indeed a job racket that many times is not much different than paying protection.
All editor realize that abrupt appearance of 9 expressions of concerns about studies with different designs and subject areas un the same journal shortly after changing of its editorial board with an editor sharing your behaviour and in personal relationship with Ben Mol against the same author ,who have another 71 publications , before completing the investigations and not related to data integrity followed by publishing this raise many questions
Dr. Maged: I do not understand why you do not address the 4 concerns posted above. Yes, these were originally posed by Ben Mol on PubPeer over 5 months ago. They are legitimate questions and it is puzzling that you are willing to spend time writing about conspiracies rather than answering these simple questions about just one of your papers (International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics (2018)).
1. Why is there a difference in the sample size between ClinicalTrials.gov and the paper?
2. Can you provide the correct dates for this particular study? Why is there a difference between the end dates identified in the paper and the ClinicalTrials.gov site?
3. If the end date of the study was actually March 31, 2017, how could the manuscript have been submitted on May 28, 2017, when the protocol required a 12-week follow-up?
4. Do you have any comment on the concern that the p-values have been incorrectly calculated?
From https://pubpeer.com/publications/71AE55E05D2B3060AB08DBBE190D9B
When Ben Mol published 10 articles about data integrity ,all of them are targeted about Egyptian researchers, is really a fishy behaviour and raise many questions about his hidden aims
Only if you assume his intent through a lense of victimhood. Defend yourself with science, not feelings.
There is nothing about feelings. It’s pure science. This paper was retracted on no scientific basis violating the COPE guidelines that there must be clear evidence of data issues. All the editor’s expressions were based on assumptions as Ben Mol guided him. many even numbers. Anyway the reply to all editorial conceerns is under review now and will bve published soon together with decalring all these defamations raised by Ben Mol. After the editor who helped Ben Mol to achieve his goal by retraction quit from the journal. The new editorial board are reevaluating the decision based on the new evidences.
Well look at this. Possible image plagiarism from an earlier and unrelated paper. Why would this be necessary if the study was conducted as claimed?
https://pubpeer.com/publications/8142D7E25DA836645F27D0CD6A3E20#2
The possibility of publishing 10 articles against the same country among the 195 countries is less than 1 in 10 million
When you find an article that seems dodgy, what do you check? Bad actors often act badly, so examining other work by their group seems a very useful strategy to clean up the literature. Or are you suggesting that reviewing Diederick Stapel’s work was just anti-Dutch racism?
All against the same nationality. What a coincidence
The author has replied to one of the PubPeer threads.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/71AE55E05D2B3060AB08DBBE190D9B#2
Concerns are raised about some of Dr. Ben Mol”s RCTs. Journals and Universities started to request explanations from him about possible data flaws. Dr Ben Mol has had his name listed on 16 papers last January. It is implausible to even being able to read them not only scrutinizing their contents. We will keep you posted on the details.
As a patient, I’ll simply say ‘and you wonder why we don’t follow your instructions’! Seriously, just ANSWER the questions….nothing more. Be humble, be kind….
Karen, could you drop me an e-mail at [email protected] as I need your help in this case.
Dr. Mol published 2274 research article during his career as shown in research gate website. If he spent 30 years as an active researcher, this means that he published on the average 75 article/year or 1.5 article/week. Does this make sense to anyone?
Yes, he’s busy. And therefore?
And he’s not alone. For example, look at this paper on highly prolific researchers. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06185-8
Again – your point? And what bearing does that have on Dr. Maged’s work?
Of course no, except in one case; a guest author in most of trials in different continents due to his strong relations with journals’ editors…Anyone can look to the lag period between date of submission and date of acceptance of most of his trials to understand how he published thousands of articles
In the preprint entitled “Could the Trustworthiness in RAndomized Controlled Trials (TRACT) checklist be trusted?” (attached), we become aware of possible integrity breaches on 16 trials co-authored by professor Ben Mol
The link:
https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-2823793/v3/b7b217bb-fb21-41b3-a9a5-920b081b2b16.pdf?c=1681847478
Comments are appreciated
You and your associates’ efforts are laughable. Rather than expending time attempting to besmirch the reputation of a researcher aiding in cleaning up the scientific record, perhaps you could use that time to assist Dr. Maged in his attempts to address the concerns expressed about his research. Evidently, some journals and editors share Dr. Mols concerns and have retracted and expressed concern about some of Dr. Maged’s studies – more seem to have similar issues. Maybe Dr. Maged could use your help.
As far as the preprint – I highly recommend submitting that to an MDPI journal. That would seem to be the best fit.
I think you who should help your colleague in his clear breaches of research integrity and a lot of guest authorship studies instead of your blind defense
The Trustworthiness in RAndomized Controlled Trials (TRACT) checklist examines RCT integrity through an assessment covering seven domains. While the authors claim that it can identify problematic trials, it has never been validated. When applied the checklist to 16 RCTs coauthored by the checklist developer identified potential violations related to retrospective registration, ethical implications, authorship, methodology, implausible timeframes, zero participants to follow-up, implausible baseline characteristics, and excessive inter-group within trial as well as inter-trial similarities. In addition, there were inconsistencies between the trials’ registration and data in the final published manuscripts. If the checklist is valid, then a formal institutional investigation into the trial portfolio its developer is warranted; especially targeting these 16 trials objectively shown to be problematic.
One of the repeated accusations made in your document is that there are ethical violations with respect to authorship, specifically accusations of guest authorships to professor Mol – however, this is not part of the TRACT checklist, meaning you did not apply the TRACT checklist, but added further points.
I am not the author of the preprint and it is not my document. You can check with the owners.
Irrelevant. He could even be a person with personal feud with you.
What matters for science is if his criticisms have or have not merit and the merit of your work.