Author: Adam Marcus

Philadelphia-area lung researcher up to six retractions

A lung researcher is up to six retractions for problematic images. 

Dilip Shah’s last academic post was at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, N.J., where he worked as a post-doc in the lab of Vineet Bhandari. While there, Shah landed first authorship on a 2020 article in the European Respiratory Journal titled “miR-184 mediates hyperoxia-induced injury by targeting cell death and angiogenesis signalling pathways in the developing lung.”

According to the notice:

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Paper used to support claims that ivermectin reduces COVID-19 hospitalizations is withdrawn by preprint server

The overseers of the preprint server SocArXiv have withdrawn a paper which claims that treating Covid patients with ivermectin dramatically reduces their odds of hospitalization, calling the work “misleading” and “part of an unethical program by the government of Mexico City to dispense hundreds of thousands of doses of an inappropriate medication to people who were sick with COVID-19.”  

“Ivermectin and the odds of hospitalization due to COVID-19: evidence from a quasi-experimental analysis based on a public intervention in Mexico City,” has been a source of controversy for SocArXiv since it was accepted for the site in May 2021. 

The paper was written by José Merino, head of the Digital Agency for Public Innovation (DAPI), along with co-authors DAPI, the Mexican Social Security Institute and the Mexico City Ministry of Health. They claimed to find that: 

Continue reading Paper used to support claims that ivermectin reduces COVID-19 hospitalizations is withdrawn by preprint server

University president in Japan self-plagiarized and will forfeit some pay

Toshiaki Miyazaki

The head of a Japanese university has been found guilty of research misconduct for self-plagiarism – technically, duplication – and has agreed to pay a one-time cash penalty for his transgressions. 

According to the University of Aizu, a computer science and engineering school in Aizuwakamatsu, Toshiaki Miyazaki, the president and CEO, failed to appropriately cite his own work in four papers: 

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French ocean institute goes public about authors who forged their researchers’ names

The National Institute for Ocean Science (Ifremer) in France has flagged 11 papers on PubPeer for concerns including faked authorship and plagiarism, and has blasted the journals involved for their failure to adequately address the unethical work. 

In some cases, for example the International Journal of Innovative Computing, Information and Control, editors have removed the names of the forged authors without informing readers. 

Continue reading French ocean institute goes public about authors who forged their researchers’ names

Vice chancellor in Pakistan sues researcher whose work he plagiarized – and says he was the victim

Muhammad Suleman Tahir

In response to allegations of plagiarism, the vice chancellor of a university in Pakistan has brought a 500 million rupee (~$2,800,000USD) defamation suit against his accuser. 

As we reported last July, Farukh Iqbal, of the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at RMIT University, in Melbourne, Australia, had discovered that a paper in the journal Fuel had lifted text from his master’s thesis. 

Among the authors was Muhammad Suleman Tahir, the vice chancellor at Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, in Rahim Yar Khan. 

Continue reading Vice chancellor in Pakistan sues researcher whose work he plagiarized – and says he was the victim

Paper overestimated risk of COVID-19 to endangered apes

Carine06 from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Springer Nature journal has retracted a 2021 article with dire news for mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park about the prospects of extinction on the spikes of SARS-CoV-2 after finding a fatal error in their model of the outbreak. 

The article, “Exploring the potential effect of COVID-19 on an endangered great ape,” appeared in October in Scientific Reports and was written by a group at the University of Southern Denmark and the the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, in Atlanta. The Fund has been concerned – for good reason – about the potential of respiratory illnesses to decimate populations of great apes, whose social nature can foster transmission of infections. 

According to the abstract of the paper: 

Continue reading Paper overestimated risk of COVID-19 to endangered apes

‘Amateur bullshit’ is the price to pay for democratizing scholarly publishing, says editor

John Adler

A case of author’s remorse immediately after publication of her paper has the editor of the journal calling “bullshit” on the decision to retract the work. 

The paper, “Stopping the Revolving Door: Reducing 30-Day Psychiatric Readmissions With Post-discharge Telephone Calls,” was written by a trio of authors from AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center, in southern New Jersey and appeared in Cureus on January 12. 

Shortly after publication, the named first author, Antonia Phillip, contacted the journal to repudiate the paper. According to the retraction notice, dated January 14: 

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University recommends seven more retractions for psychology researcher

Lorenza Colzato

Two years after a psychology researcher in The Netherlands was found guilty of  misconduct, including manipulating data and cutting co-workers out of publications, a new report says she deserves more retractions. 

In November 2019, as we reported, Lorenza Colzato was found guilty by an investigation at Leiden University of having failed to obtain ethics ethics approval for some of her studies, manipulating her data and fabricating results in grant applications. 

At the time, the institution – which Colzato had left for TU Dresden – called for the retraction of two of the researcher’s papers. Both were pulled, and we spoke to the three whistleblowers about lessons of the case.

However, the Leiden University weekly newspaper Mare has learned that a subsequent inquiry – a report on which appeared without announcement in November 2021– concluded that 15 of Colzato’s articles appeared to contain evidence of misconduct:

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Court injunction forces gastro journal to slap expressions of concern on 40 articles about probiotics

A gastroenterology journal has issued expressions of concern for forty articles about a probiotic formulation that has been at the center of a long-running legal saga in the United States and Europe.  

The articles appeared in the Journal of Crohn’s and Colitis, the official journal of the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (ECCO) and date back to 2007. All mention a proprietary formulation of probiotics – and therein lies the tale.

Continue reading Court injunction forces gastro journal to slap expressions of concern on 40 articles about probiotics

Expressions of concern mount for heart researchers over data provenance

A group of heart researchers in China now have four expressions of concern, along with a retraction, for questions about the reliability of their data. 

The latest expressions of concern for the team, led by Bu Lang Gao, of Shijiazhuang First Hospital of Hebei Medical University, involves a 2019 paper in Springer Nature’s Scientific Reports titled “Asymmetrical middle cerebral artery bifurcations are more vulnerable to aneurysm formation.”

Here’s the notice for the article, which has been cited 4 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science: 

Continue reading Expressions of concern mount for heart researchers over data provenance