Elsevier is investigating a case report of a person with aggressive cancer, written by three plant researchers working far afield of their specialty.
The three authors of the study, published June 2024 in Oral Oncology Reports, purport to diagnose a 63-year-old man with a rare, aggressive form of oral cancer. The journal is a companion title to Elsevier’s Oral Oncology according to the homepage, but is not indexed in Clarivate’s Web of Science.
Corresponding author Velmani Sankaravel told Retraction Watch he and his colleagues found the case report from an “online open-access source” and then used it “to support our research on plant-based diagnostics for oral cancer.” However, the paper lists CT scans, biopsies, and other routine diagnostic tests and makes no mention of plant-based diagnostic tools.
Sankaravel also told us the article was originally conceived as a “comprehensive review article,” but the authors “later adapted it into a short communication due to our limited research experience.” Sankaravel and coauthor Arumugam Arunprasath are assistant professors in the botany department at PSG College of Arts and Science in Tamil Nadu, India. The third author, Sudhir Sreeram, was a postdoctoral researcher at PSG at the time the article was published, according to his ORCID profile.
Rebecca Clear, a communications director at Elsevier, told us the journal has “received reports from readers” and is actively investigating the paper.
Clear also said Elsevier is looking into a discrepancy between the “Highlights” section of the paper, which lists the subject as a 60-year-old female, and the paper, which describes a 63-year-old male.
That discrepancy, Sankaravel told us, was due to a “typographical error.” He says the authors have reached out to the journal to correct the Highlights section.
Sankaravel is also an author on another article on oral cancer, published earlier this year in the Oriental Journal of Chemistry, whose coauthors include biotechnologists and biochemists.
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