In the fall of 2024, Matt Williams was grading papers at Massey University in New Zealand when he noticed something off in a study one of his students had cited.
The study, published in 2016, reported overwhelming evidence suggesting that eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR, is an effective treatment for depression. But the roughly 85% drop in symptoms of depression linked to the therapy struck Williams as implausible.
“That’s way too big to have that kind of effect,” Williams recalled thinking as his first impression of the study. “Because I love to procrastinate instead of continuing marking, I then looked up the paper and started reading it.”
But after taking a closer look at the study’s findings, Williams — who teaches research methodology and metapsychology — decided to bring his concerns about the large effect sizes and other issues to PubPeer in October 2024.
That month, Williams also contacted Jenny Ann Rydberg and Derek Farrell — editors of the Journal of EMDR Practice and Research (JEMDR), which published the paper — who said they would investigate. Williams heard from the journal in February 2025 that the journal decided to retract the study, he later wrote on PubPeer.
It wasn’t until December, however, that JEMDR published the retraction notice.
“Reviewers determined that the study contained significant statistical anomalies and recommended an independent reanalysis of the data,” Rydberg and Farrell wrote in the retraction notice. “The author was unable to provide the raw data used in the study on request. The editors have lost confidence in the integrity of the data presentation in this paper.”
The study’s sole author, Yasmeen Wajid Mauna Gauhar, a clinical psychologist who leads a therapy consultancy in Pakistan, told Retraction Watch she was able to get the raw data and offered them to the journal, but never heard back. Gauhar also said she learned of her study’s retraction in April only after receiving our request for comment, “rather than from the journal itself.”
For the study, Gauhar asked participants to quantify their depression symptoms before and after attending weekly EMDR therapy sessions for about two months. Gauhar reported that after the treatment period, the participants’ mean depression value dipped from 24.90 to 3.90 — an “incredible change” on the study’s 63-point assessment, according to Williams.
“It was essentially a scenario where some results seemed too good to be true, and some were definitely not consistent with what the author had said,” Williams said.
For example, the report stated that 10 participants’ scores on the Quality of Life Index averaged 13.82 and 19.80 before and after treatment, respectively. However, the self-reported scores were restricted to whole numbers for the 10 patients, meaning their average could have reached only the tenth decimal place — not the hundredth place, as Gauhar’s reported figures did.
Rydberg told us that after Williams flagged potential errors, the journal emailed frequently with Gauhar over the next several months.
“During those conversations, it appeared that Gauhar could not positively identify where the raw data and the database of statistical analysis was located,” Rydberg said. “What the independent review panel concluded was that there were so many statistical anomalies. It appeared that there was quite a lot of strong potential that the data might have been manipulated.”
Gauhar initially told JEMDR she did not have access to the data because she did not conduct the statistical analysis herself, but did not disclose who did, Rydberg said. When the journal told Gauhar her study’s inconsistencies were potentially problematic, she offered to provide the data, but then stopped communicating with the journal’s team altogether, Rydberg said.
However, in a statement to Retraction Watch, Gauhar said that in November 2024, she told JEMDR she had successfully recovered the data — following up on their correspondence the month prior — and asked how to proceed “to facilitate independent verification,” given the lack of a confidentiality agreement. Gauhar claimed the journal’s team did not respond to her, and that they did not communicate again until September 2025.
Gauhar said the statistical analysis “was conducted with the assistance of a lecturer specializing in statistics,” as she performed the study “under the supervision of an academic faculty member.” When the journal first contacted her in October 2024, Gauhar said she did not have access to the original data file.
“Upon revisiting my records, I have since been able to trace the raw data through archived email correspondence with my supervisor and the statistician involved in the original analysis,” Gauhar wrote. “Therefore, it is not accurate to suggest that the data were unavailable in principle.”
The journal’s independent review panel recommended retraction after it could not verify the study’s data and analysis, Rydberg said.
Science Partner Journals, part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, became JEMDR’s publisher in early 2025. The publisher switch delayed the notice’s release, Rydberg said, and the new publisher didn’t prepare the retraction notice until late August, roughly six months after the review board’s initial recommendation. The journal then emailed the notice to Gauhar, giving her 30 days to respond. Rydberg said Gauhar did not, and JEMDR published the retraction notice in early December.
Gauhar said the journal informed her of the publisher’s decision to “withdraw” her article in September 2025. She had expressed disagreement with the verdict, recounting that the journal’s team did not respond when she had tried to provide the data for independent verification. She also emphasized the decision’s potential harm to her reputation.
“I also expressed my willingness to cooperate fully in good faith to support transparency and scientific integrity, while formally placing my objection to the withdrawal on record,’” Gauhar said of her response to the journal’s September 2025 email.
Gauhar said JEMDR’s editors never responded to her, despite confirmation from an editor’s assistant that the matter had been brought to his attention.
Williams said the journal could have better addressed potential consequences of the retraction’s delayed publication. The paper has been cited 41 times since it was published, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science — including in a meta-analysis of EMDR therapy for depression and anxiety published in the same journal.
“I understand as an editor that retractions take a while, and you really want to cross your T’s and dot your I’s and make sure that it’s the right thing to do — but an expression of the concern in the interim would be good,” Williams said. “There’s that possibility of clinicians administering therapies where the evidence-based isn’t as strong as they think it is.”
For Rydberg, who was not an editor at JEMDR when Gauhar’s study was published, the retraction shows the importance of peer reviewers holding relevant expertise and skill in statistical analysis.
“Many reviewers will not acknowledge the lack of competence, so they will simply not comment on certain aspects,” Rydberg said. “The situation with this article just confirms the vigilance that is needed from editors to make sure that there is sufficient competence and skills with reviewers, and to make sure that they actually are able to comment, or will specify whatever it is that they’re not able to comment on.”
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