Embattled researcher Didier Raoult earns more than 100 expressions of concern and another retraction

An Elsevier journal has issued just over 100 expressions of concern for papers published by a group of researchers led by the French microbiologist Didier Raoult, who also notched a new retraction – his tenth – in a separate publication.

As we and others have reported, Raoult’s work during the COVID-19 pandemic drew intense scrutiny from data sleuths, most notably Elisabeth Bik – whose critiques, which extended beyond his COVID studies, were met with vicious online trolling and a legal complaint filed by Raoult himself. 

The allegations prompted an ethics investigation by the French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products into Raoult’s research during his tenure at the IHU Méditerranée Infection, in Marseille, which he led between 2011 and his retirement as director in 2022. That inquiry found “serious shortcomings and non-compliances with the regulations for research involving the human person.”

The 101 expressions of concern come for papers Raoult and his colleagues published in New Microbes and New Infections. Here’s an example of one of the EoC’s, for “Genome sequence and description of Anaerosalibacter massiliensis sp. nov.,” which Raoult’s group published in March 2016:

Concerns have been brought to the attention of the journal regarding potential non-compliance with Elsevier’s publishing ethics policies regarding the appropriate conduct of research involving human participants. 

The journal is investigating the concerns as detailed in the recent Publisher’s Note [1], including contacting the authors, in line with Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and Elsevier’s policies. 

The Expression of Concern will remain appended to the article until the investigation has been completed. If the journal can reach a conclusion, it will take any action that is deemed necessary. If the journal determines that it cannot reach a satisfactory conclusion with the information available to it, a further notification will be published to update the community.

That publisher’s note, which posted last November, reads: 

Concerns have been raised about a number of articles authored by researchers affiliated with Aix-Marseille Université IHU – Méditerranée-Infection, Marseille that have been published in New Microbes and New Infections (NMNI). The substance of these concerns relates to the articles’ adherence to Elsevier’s publishing ethics policies and the appropriate conduct of research involving human participants.

New Microbes and New Infections, supported by Elsevier’s Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics (RI&PE) Centre of Expertise, has launched an investigation into these allegations, following due process outlined by the Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE) by confidentially consulting with the authors and, where necessary, liaising with the institution where the studies took place.

We have appointed Dr. Jim Gray, Consultant Microbiologist at the Birmingham Children’s and Women’s Hospitals, U.K. in the role of independent Publishing Ethics Advisor, to support the investigation.

If necessary, corrections will be made to the scientific record when the investigation into each article is completed, in accordance with the journal’s Publishing Ethics policy.

Other researchers found issues with the ethics approvals of 456 studies published by researchers affiliated with the IHU Méditerranée Infection, including “248 [that] were conducted with the same ethics approval number, even though the subjects, samples, and countries of investigation were different.”

Raoult also had nearly 50 papers in PLOS journals subjected to expressions of concern for ethical issues in 2022.

The new retraction involves a 2017 paper in Scientific Reports titled “Culturomics and Amplicon-based Metagenomic Approaches for the Study of Fungal Population in Human Gut Microbiota.” According to the notice: 

Editors have retracted this Article.

After publication of this paper concerns about ethical oversight of this study were brought to the attention of the Editors. The paper cites approval from an institutional ethics committee in France, but samples used in this study were also sourced from Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Niger. The Authors were not able to provide documentation of approval from ethics committees in these countries, or of compliance with local regulations regarding the use of such samples in research.

Stéphane Ranque, Esam I. Azhar, Muhammad Yasir, Asif A. Jiman-Fatani, Didier Raoult, and Fadi Bittar disagree with the retraction. Ibrahim Hamad and Hervé Tissot-Dupont did not reply to the correspondence from the Editors.

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