The American Heart Association is reviewing its decision to give an award to the architect of a controversial theory that is the subject of eight retracted papers, Retraction Watch has learned. In the meantime, the researcher is using the award to contest several of the retractions.
The Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award “recognizes the team of authors with the highest-ranked scientific abstract from every participating country for each AHA scientific meeting,” according to the award website.
At its Basic Cardiovascular Sciences 2025 conference in July, the association gave the award for best abstract from India to work describing “Sanal flow choking” theory, which is named after lead author, V. R. Sanal Kumar, a professor of aerospace engineering at Amity University in New Delhi. As we have previously reported, some scientists have denounced the concept as “absolute nonsense” and “inaccurate and paradoxical” — and earlier this year, a journal said it “fundamentally violates” a law of thermodynamics.
Following the conference, Kumar sent emails to at least three journals — Scientific Reports, AIP Advances, and Global Challenges — requesting the reversal of his retractions, citing the AHA award. He copied us on those emails.
“The importance of the Sanal flow choking concept has been further validated,” Kumar wrote in the email to editors at Scientific Reports, which retracted one of his papers in 2023. “The American Heart Association recognized this work by conferring the 2025 Paul Dudley International Scholar Award.”
Kumar told us the award “reinforces the scientific credibility and translational value” of the theory.
Suzanne Grant, vice president of media relations for the AHA, told us the award “was based on abstract scores only.” She also told us “immediately” after the meeting in July, the AHA “learned of the retraction history” of Kumar. The organization was scheduled to review the award decision this week, Grant said.
Grant also said the AHA has “revised the process for the review” of future award submitters “to focus more on the quality of science rather than solely on the highest score for each country.”
In a post on Instagram on July 26, Vyadh Aerospace, for which Kumar conducts research, said the award brought the research team “A Step Closer to the Nobel Prize.”
Previous retractions don’t always get in the way of awards. As we wrote in 2018, Carlo Croce, a cancer researcher at The Ohio State University who lost several papers for image manipulation, was awarded over $300,000 from a charitable organization after decades of misconduct allegations.
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The authors have two recent publications on Sanal flow choking as well – one in npj Microgravity and the other in Applied Thermal Engineering. It uses the same experimental setup involving a boiling experiment with no flow and yet the authors present this as “evidence” confirming the phenomenon. If these works are also retracted, which ought to be, the count would then rise to 10.