Mohammad Reza Safarinejad, a urologist in Iran, has had three papers retracted recently for reasons that are not entirely clear.
Here’s the most recent notice, from the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, of a paper that has been cited 23 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge:
Safarinejad, M. R. and Hosseini, S. Y. (2006), Safety and efficacy of tramadol in the treatment of idiopathic detrusor overactivity: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 61: 456–463
The above article, published online on 14th February 2006 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor in Chief, Prof. JM Ritter and John Wiley and Sons Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to statistical errors which have come to light and which undermine confidence in the results presented.
Neither Safarinejad nor Ritter responded to our requests for comment.
(Incidentally, but unrelated, there are questions about tramadol’s approval by the FDA, as Ivan’s colleague John Fauber reported recently.)
A paper in Andrology was retracted in May:
The above article from Andrology, ‘Impact of polymorphisms in the oestrogen receptors alpha and beta (ESR1, ESR2) genes on risk of vasculogenic erectile dysfunction’ by M. R. Safarinejad, A. Taghva, N. Shafiei and S. Safarinejad published online on 20 May 2013 in Wiley Online Library has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editors-in-Chief, Douglas Carrell and Ewa Rajpert-De Meyts and John Wiley and Sons Ltd. The retraction has been decided due to failure by the lead author to verify the data contained in the study, and to provide evidence of the role of co-authors and their institutional affiliations.
Editor-in-chief Carrell tells us:
I am not aware of other retractions by this author. I am unable to comment on the specifics of the retraction of his manuscript from Andrology.
Then there was this useless retraction notice in March 2011 from the International Journal of Impotence Research, of a paper cited seven times:
Safety and efficacy of sildenafil citrate in the treatment of Parkinson-emergent erectile dysfunction: a double-blind, Placebo-controlled, randomized study
This article has been retracted by the publisher.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
More in 2015: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bju.13063/full
The details to this latest retraction:
Retraction: Safarinejad MR, Asgari MA, Hosseini SY, Dadkhah F. (2010) A double-blind placebo-controlled study of the efficacy and safety of pentoxifylline in early chronic Peyronie’s disease. BJU International 106: 2: 240–8.
doi: 10.1111/j.1464-410X.2009.09041.x
The above article, published online on 26th Oct 2009 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor in Chief, Professor Prokar Dasgupta and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The retraction has been agreed after an independent review found a pattern of inappropriate statistical analysis.