This past year, Zhihao Lei has signed his name to at least 35 letters to the editor of medical journals, weighing in on topics from ICU care to breast cancer. In eight of them, he identified himself as a Ph.D. at Cornell University, although he held only a bachelor’s degree at the time.
Two of those letters, one in JAMA Oncology and another in JAMA Pediatrics, were retracted last month after Lei himself acknowledged in the notices he had “falsely reported” his degree as a Ph.D. and implying he was an employee at the university when he was not. When he published the letters, he held a bachelor’s degree and was enrolled at Cornell as a master’s student in the School of Professional Studies. The retractions relate to Lei’s false credentials and not the content of the letters. In at least six others Lei published in the past year, he also signs off as a Ph.D., although none of these has been corrected or retracted.
Lei, who has served as a peer reviewer at Cancer Gene Therapy and the British Medical Journal, said he didn’t understand why Retraction Watch was interested in this case. “I am not entirely clear about the purpose of your inquiry,” he wrote in an email, adding that the retractions involved only author metadata and credentials, not fabrications, falsification or plagiarism.
Many of the letter titles follow a formula typical of LLMs (ie. ‘“Measurement or Judgment?” Reconsidering Data Quality and Inference in EudraVigilance’ and ‘“Efficacy or illusion?” Interpreting null results in the rifaximin trial’). Lei did not respond to our questions about whether he used AI to generate the letters.
“There are countless other retractions involving far more serious issues,” he told us. “I therefore find it difficult to understand why this relatively minor issue has attracted you [sic] such sustained attention, and I am concerned about the basis and intent of the inquiry.”
He said he had proactively notified the journals, including the others where his credentials are still listed as a Ph.D., once he became aware of the error, and that JAMA had applied “a stricter policy” than other publications by opting for a retraction over a correction.
Lei also declined to share his correspondence with the editors and publishers informing them of the issue, calling it confidential. “I do not believe that declining to disclose private correspondence should be treated as evidence of wrongdoing or used as a basis for speculation,” he wrote.
“I am a student, and this situation is already personally difficult and embarrassing,” he added. “I respectfully ask that you not pursue this matter further.”
Lei did not explain how he became aware of the issue, but maintained that the credentials were “reported incorrectly by mistake.” The retraction notices in both JAMA journals are nearly identical, and attribute the push for retraction to Lei, told from his point of view rather than the editors. “To maintain the accuracy of the scholarly record, I have requested retraction of this Letter to the Editor,” they both read.
The other letters that include his false Ph.D. credentials remain uncorrected. They include a letter in the Journal of Surgical Research addressing a study about rib fractures, a comment on ICU-decision making in Chest, a letter to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on Medicare Advantage plans, a comment in Integrative Cancer Therapies on a drug trial for breast cancer, a letter to Annals of Emergency Medicine on low back pain, and another letter addressing a study on critical illnesses in Critical Care Medicine.
In total, Lei published at least 35 letters to the editor in the past year, taking issue with the methodology in a broad spectrum of health-related research. We’ve previously reported on an author who published more than 500 letters in one year.
Elsevier, which publishes the Journal of Surgical Research and Chest, said they could not comment while an investigation is ongoing. A spokesperson for Sage, which publishes Integrative Cancer Therapies, said the publisher was “reviewing the case to assess whether further action is required.” The Journal of the National Cancer Institute has an ongoing ethics and integrity investigation related to Lei’s letter.
The other journals, JAMA and Cornell University have not responded to requests for comment.
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Kudos for digging into “this relatively minor issue.” Can’t quite get the psychology of a student in “professional studies” claiming to be a medical expert. Who’s he trying to impress? Unfortunately journals, especially medical journals, will have to start looking at every letter to the editor from unvetted authors as presumptively fake.