We have heard back this morning from the publisher of a journal that yanked a paper that linked 5G cellphone technology and the novel coronavirus last week — a paper that scientific sleuth Elisabeth Bik mused was the “worst paper of 2020.”
The response to our request for comment from editor in chief Pio Conti reads a bit like a Mad Libs of excuses we hear from publishers when something goes wrong. Read carefully for:
- “too many papers during the pandemic“
- “our first retraction” (that we bothered to make)
- “it wasn’t really published yet because it was only online“
- “the real problem is social media” (where readers performed the peer review we claimed to have performed)
We are heavily inundated with papers this year, you can imagine I presume.
We rely on the best peers in each field for review and send our papers to at least 3.
Some papers can slip through the net, I’m sure you know this more than us, it is the first time in 30 years that our journal has retracted a paper.
After probing the results before being published (it was ahead of print) we had it peer-reviewed again and the reviews contrasted in such a way that the Editor felt that best thing to do was retract.
Unfortunately, publishers today have a very narrow time frame that does not allow solid scientific rebuttal or an article in response, or a letter to the editor that confutes the publication…due to the overwhelming hurricane that is social media and that can destroy an honest ongoing company.
The response from the editor came, we note, from Connie De Vincentis, whose title is “Accounts Supervisor, FINANCIAL DEPARTMENT.” While we are accustomed — unfortunately, we would argue — to having editors refer our requests for comment to publishing company spokespeople instead of responding themselves, this may be the first time we have had a response from someone in the financial department of a publisher.
De Vincentis ended the note with
I hope that I have now responded to your queries?
Alas, the accounts supervisor had not. We had also asked whether the journal planned to post a retraction notice. We jogged De Vincentis’ memory with a follow-up. The response:
yes we do. Please allow this week for it to appear.
We await the notice.
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In other news, the editors of European Review for Medical & Pharmacological Sciences recently depublished some 65 papers, a week or so after previous tranches of depublication, involving similar numbers.
They explained in an Editorial: https://www.europeanreview.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/7908-7908.pdf
“In the last years, we have observed a dramatic increase of fake articles published in several medical journals. Thanks to the crucial work of Dr. Elisabeth Bik, a California-based microbiologist and image-analysis expert, who shed light on research misconduct and figure manipulation, we investigated about the fraudulent reuse of images and data in articles published in the European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences journal. Surprisingly, we found a consistent number of articles displaying those characteristics. Unfortunately, similarly to what happened in other journals, anti-plagiarism program was not able to capture corrupted images, as it works only on the verification of the text.
We have immediately initiated a strong action against this phenomenon, by contacting all corresponding authors of the faulty articles, asking them to provide raw data, proof of originality and ownership of their researches. After this investigation, we retracted 65 papers, due to ambiguous replies and missing data from corresponding authors. But our job continues; other papers are under investigation. In the meantime, we will keep enforcing all peer review processes to avoid further misconduct. We firmly disapprove any kind of data manipulation and thank again Dr. Bik for her valuable activity that will be a real benefit for the whole scientific community.”
Some might say that many of these now-retracted papers (not in the RW database, alas) were transparently bogus but evidently the journal’s editors & reviewers disagree.
Great work by Bik and collaborators. It’s just the beginning.
Great work everyone! Please do reach out on social media for help, there are many people frustrated with all this fake, baseless papers. I am willing to help in anyway I can to stop this cancerous plaque that is hurting real science.
Some of the other standard excuses are listed in this article.
https://www.nature.com/articles/onc2017390
The irony that an article listing standard excuses is authored by someone with problematic articles who as an editor will not take any action on a paper with obvious image manipulation. From PubPeer
https://pubpeer.com/publications/BBC278257761C0C12E5D38844873DF
Letter sent by email to Justin Stebbing and George Miller asking for action on this paper in accordance with COPE guidelines on October 24, 2017.
https://www.nature.com/onc/editors
Unfortunately, as yet no reply nor action, and as noted by readers at Retraction Watch
http://retractionwatch.com/2017/10/26/dog-ate-data-eight-excuses-editors-hear/
Justin Stebbing has several problematic papers, e.g.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/1CCAC58543784D1B17C8416A6D97C2
https://pubpeer.com/publications/47CFEDD17549A3F59BAD66BA37FFB9
https://pubpeer.com/publications/24909178
so is currently listed in the “Problematic data from editors-in-chief” topic
https://pubpeer.com/topics/1/631E6AF6F96933B7B9946C90F1D23B
Meanwhile this paper continues to garner more citations.
Problematic papers not dealt with by problematic editors. Most unfortunate that scientific publishing is so tarnished at this point.
Anything you can do to move this along David Sanders?
I think the paper has wrongly chased a wrong trail. 5G/4G can cause cancer is true; but which 5G/4G ? Not the mobile tower radiation or mobile technology type 5G/4G.
it is the genetic polymorphism that goes by the same name 5G/4G, that is causing more susceptibility to cancer. Read here the link
PAI-1 4G/5G polymorphism contributes to cancer susceptibility: evidence from meta-analysis https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23437240/
More interesting is that 4G mutation is more susceptible to cancer than the 5G one. Read the last line of conclusion of this meta-analysis from Shangqian Wang, [1st author]
And those with 4G allele have a high risk to develop colorectal cancer and endometrial cancer.
So there you are 4G 5G genetic polymorphism confused with 4G 5G mobile tower radiation.