Author: Alison McCook

OSU researcher under investigation corrects paper cited 500 times

An EMBO journal has issued a correction for a well-cited 2012 review co-authored by a cancer researcher under investigation.

Carlo Croce, the last author on the review, has been beleaguered by misconduct accusations that have followed him for years (recently described in a lengthy article in the New York Times), and his university has recently re-opened an investigation into his work.

By our count, Croce — based at The Ohio State University — has logged six retractions, along with multiple expressions of concerns and corrections. The latest correction, in EMBO Molecular Medicine, notes the review lifted passages from multiple publications — and was in turn reused in later papers, as well.

Here’s the notice:

Continue reading OSU researcher under investigation corrects paper cited 500 times

Journal won’t look at allegations about papers more than six years old, nor comment on those from “public websites”

After a paper is published, how long should a journal consider allegations of misconduct? For one journal, that answer is: Six years.

We see plenty of journals that retract papers at least 10 years old over concerns regarding misconduct, but in a recent editorial, Molecular and Cellular Biology announced it would pursue allegations made within six years after a paper is published. This rule mirrors federal regulations (which apply to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity), which also decline to investigate allegations if at least six years have passed since the incident supposedly occurred — but with some exceptions, such as if the misconduct could have an impact on public health.

Incidentally, the same issue of the journal includes a retraction notice for a paper published seven years ago, citing image duplications. A spokesperson for the American Society for Microbiology (which publishes the journal) told us the journal investigated the paper in 2016, within the cutoff period.

Here’s the key text from the editorial:

Continue reading Journal won’t look at allegations about papers more than six years old, nor comment on those from “public websites”

“Data had been manipulated:” Science Translational Medicine retracts paper

Science Translational Medicine has retracted a paper by researchers based in Switzerland, after an investigation concluded two figures had been manipulated.

The investigation occurred at the University of Basel. It’s not clear what prompted it, but the paper has been discussed at length on PubPeer. After the investigation concluded two figure panels included manipulated data, the last author asked to retract the paper.

Here’s the notice:

Continue reading “Data had been manipulated:” Science Translational Medicine retracts paper

“Authors’ negligence” causes “a plethora of data errors”

Sometimes, even a short notice catches our attention.

Such was the case with a recent retraction issued by Oncotarget for a 2016 paper related to the genetics that drive cancer.

Here’s the notice:

Continue reading “Authors’ negligence” causes “a plethora of data errors”

A retraction gets retracted — but the first author’s contract is still terminated

After issuing a retraction notice May 30 for a biomedical engineering paper, the journal has since pulled the notice, citing “a potential problem.”

After doing some digging, we’ve learned more about the “potential problem.”

Apparently, the retraction was requested by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. NTU has been investigating the first author for months, after it received an allegation about an unrelated manuscript. As a result, NTU terminated first author Hamidreza Namazi‘s contract as a research fellow earlier this year.

As part of the investigation, NTU began to look at Namazi’s other papers, and discovered several with potential problems — including this one, which NTU believes did not receive proper ethical approvals. So it contacted the journal to raise its concerns.

Namazi, however, told us that he and his colleague obtained approval from another organization, but didn’t make that clear in the paper — so the journal has retracted its retraction notice while it investigates Namazi’s claim.

In place of the original retraction notice, a notice now reads:

Continue reading A retraction gets retracted — but the first author’s contract is still terminated

Anesthesiology society bans co-author of researcher with record-number of retractions

The Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists has permanently banned a co-author of notorious fraudster Yoshitaka Fujii, after investigating many of his publications for alleged fraud.

According to the announcement last month (in Japanese), a committee investigated approximately 40 publications by Yuhji Saitoh of Yachiyo Medical Center and Tokyo Women’s Medical University in Japan. Saitoh resigned from the society once the investigation started; after the committee found evidence of data manipulation and fraud, the society decided it would permanently ban him as a member.

Saitoh was a frequent co-author of Yoshitaka Fujii, an anesthesia researcher with a record-breaking number of retractions (more than 180). Last year, anesthesia fraud sleuth John Carlisle and a co-author analyzed Saitoh’s papers — including many he didn’t co-author with Fujii — and concluded there was very low likelihood the sampling had been conducted randomly, among other potential concerns.

On May 9, the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists issued the following statement, which we translated:

Continue reading Anesthesiology society bans co-author of researcher with record-number of retractions

Battle between public health journal and editorial board wages on

Past and present members of the editorial board of a public health journal have filed a formal complaint against the publisher after it appointed an editor with industry ties without consulting the board, and unilaterally retracted a paper by the former editor.

Meanwhile, the board and publisher of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health continue to exchange letters about the issue; the latest from the publisher, Taylor & Francis, answers some of the board’s ongoing questions — and declines to answer others.

For instance, managing director Ian Bannerman previously told the board that the publisher “reached out to” editorial board member Jukka Takala of the Workplace Safety and Health Institute in Singapore (by phone and email) before contacting new editor Andrew Maier. Takala told us last month, however, he was “never consulted on Dr. Maier.” In a letter dated May 25, Bannerman told the board:

Continue reading Battle between public health journal and editorial board wages on

Publisher retracts “conceptual penis” hoax article

File this under “not a surprise.” After the authors of a paper entitled “The conceptual penis as a social construct” confessed it was a hoax immediately after publication, the publisher has retracted it.

The notice is sparse:

This article has been retracted by the publisher. For more information please see the statement on this article.

In that statement, which we covered last week, the publisher said published the paper after choosing reviewers whose “expertise did not fully align with this subject matter.”

We asked co-author James Lindsay what he thought about that explanation:

Continue reading Publisher retracts “conceptual penis” hoax article

NEJM issues unusual warning for readers about 1980 letter on opioid addiction

This week, the New England Journal of Medicine issued a type of editor’s note we’ve never seen before, on a highly influential letter published nearly 40 years ago.

Above the one-paragraph letter, which reports data suggesting pain medications are not likely to cause addiction, the journal has added a note warning readers that the letter has been “heavily and uncritically cited” by sources using it to suggest opioids are not addictive.

In essence, the journal isn’t commenting on the merits of the letter — the problem is how it’s been used by others.

The same issue of the journal includes a letter by researchers based in Canada who analyzed how the 1980 letter had been cited, noting:

Continue reading NEJM issues unusual warning for readers about 1980 letter on opioid addiction

How upset should we get when articles are paywalled by mistake?

Mistakes happen. Including, sometimes, putting articles that should be freely available behind a paywall. This occasionally happens — though likely not with alarming frequency, according to publishing expert Charles Oppenheim, who recently wrote about the issue in Scholarly Kitchen. Still, the costs can literally be high, both for the authors who paid to make their articles free and the readers who must pay unnecessarily. Plus, there are indications that not everyone in the publishing community takes the problem seriously. We spoke with patient advocate and open-access advocate Graham Steel, the editor of a new site that tracks such mistakes, Paywall Watch (also recently profiled by The Scientist).

Retraction Watch: What inspired you to develop this website (not to be confused with another Paywall Watch blog, which tracks subscriptions to media sites)? Did any personal experience with a paywall or some other publishing problem prompt you or any of your co-founders to create the site? What’s the ultimate goal?

Continue reading How upset should we get when articles are paywalled by mistake?