The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation (JHLT) has decided against retracting a November 2024 paper that violated the ethics policy of the publication.
After publishing the paper, which describes a new mechanical circulatory support device used to treat heart failure that was developed in China, staff at the journal realised two of the patients in the study had received organ transplants in that country.
Dozens of research articles have been retracted or flagged for appearing to have used organs procured from executed prisoners in China, and many journals around the world have introduced policies to avoid such research. JHLT’s ethics statement, published in 2022, bans data on human organ transplants from journals or scientific sessions when they originate from countries, particularly China, where organ procurement from prisoners has been observed.
The study, “Long-term outcomes of a novel fully magnetically levitated ventricular assist device for the treatment of advanced heart failure in China,” has been cited twice, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
The study’s abstract was initially presented at the annual meeting of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, which runs the journal, said cardiologist Joseph Rogers, president and chief executive officer of the Texas Heart Institute and the editor-in-chief of JHLT.
After a “lengthy debate,” Rogers said, the editors decided retracting the paper would be an “inappropriate response” despite the journal’s ethics statement.
“We didn’t want to convey to the readership that there was something scientifically invalid about the paper,” Rogers said. “That’s not true. The paper was scientifically valid.”
The journal also printed two editorials, one by the journal’s then interim editor-in-chief, Michelle Kittleson of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who initially accepted the study, and the other about the journal’s ethics statement, signed by the JHLT’s ethics committee.
Retraction Watch has reached out to Savitri Fedson, of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and a co-author of the editorial about JHLT’s ethics statement.
Rogers said the journal published the editorials to recognise JHLT missed the issue and had violated its own ethics commitments. If the issue was spotted beforehand, he noted, JHLT would have rejected the study. Going forward, the journal has put in “additional safeguards” to prevent violation of the ethics statement, Rogers said.
Shengshou Hu, the study’s corresponding author, who is based at Fuwai Hospital in Beijing, has not responded to a request for comment from Retraction Watch.
As part of the safeguards, all papers are now sent to Rogers, who desk-rejects any papers involving human organ transplants in China, he said. That step is particularly important, he noted, because peer reviewers working for the journal are not required to read the publication’s ethics statement.
Rogers said the journal contacted the study’s authors. “What we really wanted to do was reassure them that the reason that we were editorializing their paper in this manner was not because of the scientific content of the paper,” he added. “It was really a failure of our internal checks and balances that allowed that paper to move forward.”
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“We didn’t want to convey to the readership that there was something scientifically invalid about the paper,” Rogers said. “That’s not true. The paper was scientifically valid.”
This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding about the ethics of research.
Ethics don’t invalidate results, they hurt feelings.
exactly, the only reason a paper should ever be retracted is if it is not a valid addition to human knowledge. it should only ever be done for bad data itself, never something like failing to buy the right software license or working with institutions that world governments don’t like.
The issue is the amount of damage that can be done once that is known, to the point you actually know encourage the behavior elsewhere if they know they’ll get published and build their career.
So Ethics are a nice-to-have and they’re happy to waive them if the data is really good?
Nah. This paper has 2 citations. I’m sure it’s hardly crucial work. Besides, the idea is out there now and can be tested in an ethical research study.
But this is why transparency in retraction notices is so important, particularly to document the reasons for retraction.
This unethical practice is rampant in China. If journals don’t take a stand, the practices will continue.
i disagree, retracting a paper means it is so flawed that it should be stricken from the body of human scientific knowledge. it’s a dire thing.
it should only ever be done because the data is invalid. no one is saying the paper fabricated data or that the conclusions it made are not factual.
unethical papers can still be good science, if they are methodologically sound. They should not be retracted as if they are not.
the only reason a paper should ever be retracted is that the science itself is flawed, never for political (which is what this is) reasons or even worse because of something like failing to buy a software license.
this is not to say that they should just be let off the hook, there are many other punishments. but the researcher should be punished not their conclusions. retracting such a paper obliterates punishes the data itself, not the researcher. it’s an act against the conclusions of the study not the author.
*”retracting such a paper obliterates punishes the data itself, not the researcher.”*
I like anthropomorphizing as much as the next person, but the data isn’t real nor sentient and you can’t punish it just like you can’t punish a rock. I can punish a cat, but again not data.
As a thought experiment, let’s say a guy in Boston decided to kidnap children as they go by and run all kinds of horrible experiments on them to see how long they can live without various organs or treatments to specific diseases. They create a scientific paper detailing it, which results in their arrest and prosecution but also their fame and wealth within specific communities that they care about more than the broader condemnation. Sure their travel is heavily restricted, but they never cared much. Someone in Chicago wants that same fame and wealth, so does their own version of it harming more people in horrific ways. Someone in Miami does the same. Would journals basically decide that by publishing these types of horrors, while there may be a benefit to the addition of the scientific body there is also a high incentive to induce malpractice and unethical behavior and eventually lead to serious legal issues? Historically they have, though it becomes sticky sometimes with the Nazis and say, Tuskegee.
I generally fall on the side of “yeah, we may learn something but the consequences are too great so we will forego this so we aren’t encouraging people to do this.” You differ, but I’d prefer an argument that didn’t require me to attach googly eyes to the data and pretend it cared
So Editors at The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation (JHLT) have ethics . . . until they don’t. And apparently will publish articles that violate their ethics statement on human transplantation as long as the article is “scientifically valid”. Not sure that says anything good about the editors of this journal. But there you go and here we are.
Wonder if this journal would also publish papers if they contained data from the nazi human experiments conducted by doctors during the third reich. I’m assuming they would have no problem with such a paper as long as it was scientifically valid paper. But I could. be wrong.
Conjuring the image of nazi boogeymen doesn’t validate erasing medical studies from the sum of human knowledge. Would you call on the National Library of Medicine to burn all of their questionable data (e.g., the Tuskeege experiments)? Much of the foundational medical knowledge that you benefit from has questionable ethics. Punish the evil scientists, not the science.
The question really becomes if you are encouraging those types of experiments and unethical behavior, which many seem to want to sidestep. I don’t think many journals would want to publish Nazi experiments while they were happening, but finding the data and talking about it is a trickier issue. This doesn’t fall into the latter…
Happy to see people agree that vaid science is in this case more important.
Punishing these kind of moral issues are not the burden of the scientific community but the legal system. The adoption of that ethics clause was not correct in my opinion to begin with.
Lots of people commenting here that retraction means it is erased from the scientific literature. It isn’t. It will still be available, just with a clearly marked “retracted”.
Those who think that unethical science is OK as long as the data is valid also do not understand how unethical science casts doubt on the validity of the data. If people are willing to violate the ethical rules, how can we trust them to with the data? I appreciate there may be a question regarding the ethics here (it is far from sure that those who received transplants received them from executed prisoners), but the general concept should stand that violation of ethical rules is simply not acceptable.
“That step is particularly important, he noted, because peer reviewers working for the journal are not required to read the publication’s ethics statement.”
Is that really too much to ask?
Separately, the comments section on RW is frequently brigaded on social and political issues. Just putting that out there.