A public health journal intends to retract an article that estimated how many unintentional pesticide poisonings happen each year worldwide, Retraction Watch has learned.
In response, the authors hired a lawyer to represent them in contesting the retraction, and maintain the journal’s decision “undermines the integrity of the scientific process.” This is the second time within a few months that the journal retracted an article through a process authors said was problematic.
BMC Public Health published the article, “The global distribution of acute unintentional pesticide poisoning: estimations based on a systematic review,” in December 2020. It has been cited 145 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
The authors are all affiliated with the Pesticide Action Network, a collection of organizations “working to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives,” as they disclosed in the paper. In their review, they concluded that unintentional pesticide poisoning “is an ongoing major global public health challenge” and “a problem that warrants immediate action.”
In a statement to Retraction Watch, first author Wolfgang Boedeker called the journal’s process for deciding to retract the paper “problematic from the beginning.” He wrote:
There was no information provided to the authors about any kind of investigation into our paper prior to being informed about the planned retraction. We, the authors, were piece-wise informed about the reasons, only after repeatedly asking for them. We learned by email that the details of the investigation remained confidential.
The paper previously attracted criticism from the pesticide industry. In October 2021, the journal published a letter to the editor in which employees of Bayer and CropLife International claimed the numbers in the article “appear to overestimate the global burden of pesticide poisonings.” The authors responded that the critics “do not seem to have understood our estimation method.”
Earlier this year, the journal informed Boedeker’s group of a separate critique from a reader alleging they had overestimated the number of pesticide poisonings in France. The authors responded, but their response was apparently unsatisfactory. In April, an editor told the authors that the journal would retract their article.
According to the authors’ rebuttal to the retraction, they were told the decision was based on the assessment of one editorial board member. After further back-and-forth, the authors learned the critical reader and editorial board member had concerns about the data the authors had sourced for other countries in addition to France. They defended their methods in detail in their rebuttal.
Boedeker told us:
The critique suggests that using an ‘ever’ prevalence of poisoning to denote annual frequency may result in an overestimation. We agreed on this and discussed this at length as a possible source for bias in our publication. However, the question is if such an overestimation has taken place. We detailed in our rebuttal that the prevalences used in our extrapolations are not higher than “true” annual ones and therefore no overestimation has taken place. For countries without a strict annual prevalence the effect on the extrapolations is negligible.
On May 24, Natalie Pafitis, senior editor of BMC Public Health, emailed the authors saying the journal would still retract the article following “further advice” from an editorial board member on their rebuttal. Pafitis shared the editorial board member’s comments and wrote:
As stated previously, and in light of the advice received above, we no longer have confidence in the data you are reporting in your study and will be proceeding with a retraction using the following text:
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The Editor has retracted this article because concerns were raised about the use of ‘ever’ prevalence of pesticide poisoning to represent annual frequency in the extrapolations. Expert assessment has confirmed the validity of this concern and also concluded that the assumption of annual exposure for countries where the time frame is not reported is unreliable. The Editor therefore no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions presented. [The authors agree/do not agree with this retraction].
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Pafitis has not responded to our request for comment. Last month, the journal retracted a paper on e-cigarettes and smoking rates, also following a reader critique and assessment by an editorial board member, which the authors of that paper said was flawed.
The authors of the pesticide paper responded to the editorial board member’s new comments, disputing them.
On July 14, their lawyer sent the journal a letter arguing that the retraction would be “inappropriate.” The lawyer proposed that the paper receive an expression of concern instead of a retraction notice, and that the authors be allowed to republish it elsewhere. The letter stated:
The Authors feel strongly that the importance of the topic of their work requires more scientific debate, not the complete elimination of their findings from scientific discourse.
Boedeker said the journal should have asked the critical reader to submit a letter to the editor, “which would have generated an interesting dialogue on the science around estimations of pesticide poisoning,” and “could have encouraged further discussion of how to improve on data collection on pesticide poisonings, by governments and other institutions, in order to work towards preventing harm.”
Even if the critique of the paper was correct, Boedeker said, the effect on the study’s results would be negligible, and the journal’s decision to retract wouldn’t line up with its own policies. “The retraction of our paper is an unacceptable result from an unacceptable process,” he said.
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And here we go again with the legal shenanigans from authors that simply don’t like the fact that they’ve racked up a retraction. I really don’t know why Publishers don’t simply insert a Mandatory Arbitration clause in their author agreement and stop these legal shenanigans from occurring in the first place. In today’s litigious world they’d have to be insane not to do so. But here we are and there you go.
“Legal shenanigans” might be minimized if journals were more transparent about their processes/procedures for retraction and appeal. For a journal in this disclipline, where findings can affect government policy [and corporate profit], the journal website should publically disclose potential conflicts of interests of Editors and Editorial Board Members. Then Authors might also have more trust in the process, and might also choose to submit their work elsewhere is they do not trust the process. In this era of open science, it is not only Authors whose behavior needs to be subject to scrutiny – it is Editors also. If this makes any Editorial Board Members who are reading this post uncomfortable, well…
Full disclosure: I make my comments as a scientist who does not work in Public Health. Nor do I have any connection at all with the Pesticide Action Network. I just want to ensure that corporate interests do not quash work that has scientific merit, just because findings are “unfavorable” to their cause – for selling more of their product & maintaining/increasing their profits.
Their activist involvement should have been sufficient conflict of interest to have thwarted publication.
And what should be done to all articles with conflicts of interest, including financial conflicts of interest, in many areas of medicine?
I highly suggest a look at ‘science as a social process’, among other sources. We definitely need science coming from different sources – and science coming from activists in less powerful positions – as is the case for activists from the Pesticide Action Network.
Or should we believe activists worried about the effects of pesticides are more powerful than the multinational companies promoting pesticides and often campaigning against any science that raises flags about their negative effects on health and the environment?
I disagree.
Since this was disclosed, the reviewers and editors could approach the publication with full knowledge that author bias may have affected the research. At least, one would hope so. Ideally, the paper should be reviewed based on the content, not the identity of the authors.
A conflict of interests is simply something to be disclosed, to give the reader some context for the extent of which they can trust the findings, not something to reject a paper for.
Anyone with experience of publishing books or articles even remotely critically of a major pharmaceutical company should read this carefully and remain at the least sceptical
Authors are routinely expected to disclose at least funding sources and current financial conflicts of interests. Reviewers and associate editors are seldom asked to disclose anything.