The new retraction record holder is a German anesthesiologist, with 184

The German anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt has lost 20 more papers since January 2023, earning him the top spot in our leaderboard, with 184 retractions. 

Boldt, readers may recall, was once one of the leading international figures in perioperative medicine. His work, particularly studies involving the use of fluid management during surgery, helped inform clinical guidelines that, thanks to his misdeeds, some experts believe may have put patients at risk for serious harm and even death.

Boldt has vaulted over another anesthesiologist, Yoshitaka Fujii, to take the crown (more on that in a moment) – although one might fairly ask: Why did it take so long?

The bulk of the recently retracted papers appeared in Intensive Care Medicine, a European title published by Springer Nature. Since March, the journal has pulled 15 articles by Boldt, whose misdeeds – including but not limited to fabrication of data and lack of ethics approval in his clinical trials – first came to light in 2010. Five more came in the journal Chest.

Here’s one notice, for “Right ventricular function and cardiac surgery,” which Intensive Care Medicine published in June 1988. (Note that the statement from Justus Liebig University dates to 2020.)

The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article. A statement by Justus Liebig University (JLU) [1] on the scientific credibility of articles by Joachim Boldt has recommended that journal editors consider retracting all articles “where Boldt is the responsible author even if there is no obvious indication of falsification”. Given the concerns about the studies performed by Joachim Boldt the Editor-in-Chief no longer has confidence in the work reported in this article. J. Boldt has not responded to correspodence [sic] from the Publisher about this retraction. The Publisher was not able to obtain a current email address for T Wollbrück, S. Sonneborn, A. Welters and G Hempelmann.

The paper has been cited seven times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. The new retracted article with the most citations (27) is “Thrombomodulin in intensive care patients.” Of those, eight came in the years since the Boldt scandal broke, and once came after 2020, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. 

We asked the editor of the journal about the delay. He passed us along to someone else at Springer Nature, who didn’t reply. We eventually got this statement from a spokesperson for the publisher: 

The Editors of Intensive Care Medicine and its publisher Springer Nature have been aware of concerns regarding the integrity of the work of Joachim Boldt for some time. When we were first made aware of the concerns we carefully investigated – in line with COPE best practice – and acted to retract nine articles by Boldt in 2011. A further three articles were retracted in 2020; these were review articles which were deemed to be unreliable as their content relied on articles reporting studies that had been retracted. However, a number of papers by Boldt remained unretracted as our investigations were unconclusive and the allegations could not be confirmed.

Subsequently, the Editors were made aware of a statement by Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen (JLU) recommending the retraction of any article for which Boldt is a responsible author. Upon further assessment, the journals Editors and the Springer Nature Research Integrity Team decided to proceed with the retraction of the remaining articles where Boldt is the responsible author. These retractions are in the process of being completed.

We are committed to maintaining the integrity of the scientific record, and although evidence of fraud cannot be ascertained in all cases, the Editors and Springer Nature considered it prudent to proceed with these retractions and warn readers about the unreliability of this research, in line with the recommendations of Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen (JLU). 

We wondered about the journal’s investigation into “unconfirmed allegations” against Boldt and why the letter from JLU would have affected those investigations, but did not receive a reply to that follow-up question.  

Meanwhile, at this point, we need to make something of an apology. For the last several years, we have listed the number of retractions attributed to Yoshitaka Fujii as 183. (We also included this figure in a 2015 article for Nautilus.)

That figure came from the list of Fujii’s paper investigators – from the Japanese Society of Anesthesiology in particular – had marked for retraction. But as we know all too well, journals don’t always act, even when asked. More than a decade after that report, and now that the dust has (mostly) settled, we have records of only 172 retractions.

Although Boldt now beats the incorrect 183, and while Fujii was indeed the most-retracted researcher until Boldt’s recent bolus, details are important. We’ve updated our leaderboard accordingly.

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