Exclusive: Elsevier to retract paper by economist who failed to disclose data tinkering

A paper on green innovation that drew sharp rebuke for using questionable and undisclosed methods to replace missing data will be retracted, its publisher told Retraction Watch.

Previous work by one of the authors, a professor of economics in Sweden, is also facing scrutiny, according to another publisher. 

As we reported earlier this month, Almas Heshmati of Jönköping University mended a dataset full of gaps by liberally applying Excel’s autofill function and copying data between countries – operations other experts described as “horrendous” and “beyond concern.”

Heshmati and his coauthor, Mike Tsionas, a professor of economics at Lancaster University in the UK who died recently, made no mention of missing data or how they dealt with them in their 2023 article, “Green innovations and patents in OECD countries.” Instead, the paper gave the impression of a complete dataset. One economist argued in a guest post on our site that there was “no justification” for such lack of disclosure.

Elsevier, in whose Journal of Cleaner Production the study appeared, moved quickly on the new information. A spokesperson for the publisher told us yesterday: “We have investigated the paper and can confirm that it will be retracted.”

We first contacted Heshmati after a PhD student tipped us off about his dubious research practices. The student had obtained Heshmati’s dataset, which, along with email correspondence between the professor and the student, revealed how Heshmati had approached the numerous missing observations in the data. 

When we presented Heshmati with the criticism leveled against him, the researcher stood by his methods, but said they should have been “acknowledged and explained.” He had missed doing so “unintentionally in the writing stage of the paper,” he said.

It’s a mistake Heshmati has made twice, it turns out. In 2020, he and two colleagues published a paper in Empirical Economics, a Springer Nature title, that bore strong resemblance to the 2023 article and relied on the same patched-up dataset. The article mentioned neither the data gaps nor the Excel operations.

The 2020 paper, “Green innovations and patenting renewable energy technologies,” has been cited 23 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

A spokesperson for Springer Nature told us:

Thank you for bringing these concerns to our attention. We are now looking into the matter carefully following an established procedure and in line with best-practice COPE guidance. We would be happy to provide an update when we have completed our investigation.

When we reached out to Heshmati about the 2020 paper, he told us he used the same data as in the later article, but with some “differences in the way the variables are defined and transformed.” As such, he said, the description of the data was similar between the two papers:

The first paper is cited in the second paper. Journal of Cleaner Production has strict control of similarity rate and decline [sic] papers with high rate of similarity regardless of their authors.

Heshmati also said he was “disappointed” by Retraction Watch’s “approach and clearly implied false accusations”:

As you well know, I was open to supporting [the PhD student who contacted Heshmati], after exchanging some e-mail [I] sent him a zoom link and had a long zoom meeting with him explaining the reason of imputation of missing observations and their benefits and harms. I shared the data with him where all imputed points are highlighted in yellow color to allow future replacement. I have been all the way open, honest, and willing to share information without fear of negative publicity. I still believe that I did right and would use the technique again on same data but with deleting years and countries with high frequency of missing values and produce sensitivity analysis of the result with full and restricted sample.

Esfandiar Maasoumi, a professor of economics at Emory University in Atlanta and first author of the 2020 paper, said he believed Heshmati to be “honest and reliable,” but denied involvement in and knowledge of the data imputation. He told Retraction Watch:

I take data accuracy and transparency very seriously. I did not have any hand in data and code/implementation parts of the paper, and relied on my coauthors for these components. I regard my coauthor, Dr. Heshmati, as very honest and reliable and well informed. I would reject any implication that he has intentionally done anything improper.

Maasoumi also characterized Retraction Watch’s coverage of Heshmati’s research as “sensational” and “rather uninformed” and said we jumped to conclusions about intentions:

The criticism of lack of reporting should be placed on both authors and journals that do not allow or accommodate full descriptions of work in scarce journal pages. I noted that Dr. Heshmati had willingly, and openly engaged with [the PhD student who approached Heshmati about the missing data] and completely cooperated with him/her. This is clear indication of his good and honest intentions. Personally, my experience with other authors for the last 50 years is that it is next to impossible to get data, code, and meaningful correspondence with authors of papers, published or otherwise.

He elaborated, quoting experts we spoke with:

Any reader of your work here, and generally, would note that the central, key message, is ” dishonesty”, or ” cheating” as you put it and imply it very strongly. Given that those implications are categorically false, will you write a retraction, a correction, and contact the same sources immediately?

Heshmati did hand over his data to the PhD student, if grudgingly.

“I have the excel data file but do not distribute it as I may update and use it again in research,” Heshmati wrote in an email seen by Retraction Watch. “Now I have teaching and a busy schedule, but if your intension [sic] is to learn I may show you the file.”

The student vowed not to share the spreadsheet with others – a promise he later broke after realizing just how appalling Heshmati’s methods were. So much of the data had been filled in by Heshmati it felt to the student like “fabrication” warranting a retraction.

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