Saudi researchers have lost a pair of papers in a spectrometry journal for errors the editors found fatal but the authors apparently dismiss as trivial.
The articles appeared in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in the United Kingdom. The principal author on both papers is Mohammad Gondal, of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dharhan. According to his website, Gondal is a highly decorated physicist, with
7 papers listed in 25 hot papers as cited by Science Direct and two papers awarded as Top cited by Elsevier
It’s unclear what those figures refer to, as Elsevier — which owns the ScienceDirect platform — does not use the terms “hot papers” or “top cited.”
In a comment on one of the now-retracted articles, “Laser produced plasma diagnosis of carcinogenic heavy metals in gallstones,” a group of authors from Russia wrote:
We suppose that the above-mentioned spectroscopic mistakes along with a lack of clarity of analytical aspects of calibration curve plotting are intolerable in a scientific journal on analytical spectroscopy.
The retraction notice for that paper reads:
The Royal Society of Chemistry hereby wholly retracts this Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry article due to concerns that the paper has crucial errors in the data. There is disagreement over the identification of spectral lines, as they do not agree with reference standards. The procedures used are not fully explained with regards to conditions and controls. This suggests that the elements have been misidentified which calls into question the conclusions of the paper. The authors’ explanation for this discrepancy has been unsatisfactory. The editor is therefore retracting the paper to maintain the validity of the scientific record.
The authors, Mohammad A. Gondal, Mohamed A. Shemis, Ahmed A. I. Khalil, Mohamed M. Nasr and Bilal Gondal, do not agree with the retraction.
The second notice, for “Novel techniques for enhancing the performance of support vector regression chemo-metric in quantitative analysis of LIBS spectra,” published in 2017, is similar:
The Royal Society of Chemistry hereby wholly retracts this Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry article due to concerns that the paper has crucial errors in the data. There is disagreement over the identification of spectral lines, as they do not agree with reference standards. The ‘main’ lines for some elements are missing/weaker than the ‘minor’ lines of the same element. This should not be possible, regardless of the chemometrics used and suggests that the elements have been misidentified, which calls into question the conclusions of the paper. The chemometric approach is not fully explained with regards to details of line identification and calibration. The authors’ explanation for this discrepancy has been unsatisfactory. The editor is therefore retracting the paper to maintain the validity of the scientific record.
The authors, Taoreed Olakunle Owolabi and Mohammed Gondal, do not agree with the retraction.
We asked Gondal by email why he disagreed with the retractions, but he did not reply to a request for comment.
We also wondered why the journal didn’t flag the papers during peer review. Jeanne Andres, the executive editor of the journal, told us:
While the peer review on the papers raised some questions, it was initially felt that the revisions suggested had been addressed in the final versions. We were of course extremely grateful that a member of the journal readership pointed out that fundamental problems remained, which led to our decision to issue editor’s retractions. This type of case is thankfully rare, so gives us the chance to reflect on where we can look to make improvements to processes, to ensure the scientific record is maintained.
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