A journal has republished an edited version of a paper it retracted after a distributor of a chiropractic product the paper criticized wrote in to complain.
The distributor accused the publication of making “very serious, incorrect and libelous statements” and threatened legal action, Retraction Watch has learned.
Last week, we reported the Journal of Clinical Imaging Science retracted the paper, “An investigation into the chiropractic practice and communication of routine repetitive radiographic imaging for the location of postural misalignments,” because it contained “controversial statements regarding the commercial product Denneroll,” according to the retraction notice.
Deed Harrison, a chiropractor who is a distributor of Denneroll, “claimed that the data presented against this product lacks scientific backing,” the notice stated. “The authors of the manuscript acknowledged the error. Therefore, on ethical grounds, the article is being retracted.”
We have now obtained an email, dated June 15, in which Harrison accused the journal of making a “serious Libelous statement” against himself and the maker of Denneroll. “I do not wish to involve my legal team in this issue nor the legal team of Denneroll Industries, however, if nothing is done regarding the above we will be compelled to pursue legal counsel and appropriate action,” he wrote.
Harrison called the statements in the published paper about him and the company “false,” and said the researchers “provide no reference for the support of their statements.”
In the email, Harrison stated his family does not own Denneroll Industries, as the original paper asserted. He also criticized the article’s use of the word “pillow” to describe the cervical chiropractic device. Rather, he called Denneroll a “prescription only based orthotic used by physicians (prescribed to their patients) to improve the cervical lordotic curvature.”
“The statement is not only false by Williams et al, but it is damaging to the scientific truth and the reputation of the Denneroll product, which in turn are damaging to Denneroll Industries,” Harrison wrote.
In the retracted version of the paper, still available online, the researchers cited three papers critical of the Denneroll and a 2005 study Harrison coauthored. Harrison noted that the quotations the retracted paper attributed to the critical articles it cited “can’t be found as a quotation by those sources.”
Another apparent quotation about the purported effects of the Denneroll is “not properly referenced and is made to appear as if it were nothing but conjecture from the ‘Harrisons’–being me Dr. Deed Harrison.”
“The libelous statements made by Williams et al in your journal are not referenced by them and it appears as though they made these up without proper citation,” he wrote.
One week after Harrison’s email to the journal, on June 22, the journal retracted the paper.
On August 1, the day we published our report, the journal republished the article without the offending statements, or any apparent reference to the original article or retraction notice.
Neither Vikram Dogra, the editor-in-chief of the journal, nor the corresponding author, Brogan Williams, a researcher at the Association of Musculoskeletal Sports Physiologists in Auckland, New Zealand, immediately responded to our request for comment.
The republished version of the article still cites four papers by Harrison in the introduction as examples of researchers “commonly drawn to communicate the patient’s overall spinal curvature and increased weight-bearing that may be occurring at specific structures.” Harrison’s papers were also used as examples of research that used “postural analysis of the lumbopelvic region” to “validate treatment approaches and communicate a patient’s spinal health.”
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The journal publisher describes themselves: “Scientific Scholar, USA, was established with the aim of publishing scientific journals. The mission of the company is ‘Share, Learn and Improve’.”
I’m not sure at what stage the company is now. 🤔
This comment makes no sense.
They obviously haven’t learnt to ignore anti-scientific quacks.