Adam Marcus

Almond, no joy: Plant geneticist in Iran up to at least six retractions

A plant geneticist in Iran is up to at least six retractions for misuse of figures and other material from previously published papers.

The newest retraction involves a 2017 paper in Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature publication, titled “Comparison of traditional and new generation DNA markers declares high genetic diversity and differentiated population structure of wild almond species.” PubPeer commenters have been discussing it for some seven months.

According to the notice:

Duo that used legal threats to force scientists to pay for a tool face off in court

Steven Trubow and Donald Morisky made a small fortune through a controversial company that licensed, often at what researchers thought were exorbitant rates, a tool to scientists, wielding the cudgel of costly legal action if they balked at payment.

Now, in what critics of the pair will doubtless find a delicious irony, the pair is embroiled in a lawsuit over … licensing of the licensing business.

Morisky, of UCLA, is the developer of the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS), a proprietary research instrument he rents out to scholars and institutions — often at fees that have, in some cases, exceeded $100,000. Many researchers who don’t obtain permission have been forced to pay up or retract their work.

Author says ‘misguided efforts for the ideal western blot led to the withdrawal of these studies’

A figure marked up by Elisabeth Bik on PubPeer

The Journal of Biological Chemistry has retracted two papers by a group from the University of Toronto over what the leader of the research says were “misguided efforts” by a co-author to make the perfect Western blot.

The retractions are among a batch of seven recent removals by the journal for image issues, some of which were flagged on PubPeer.

Two of the papers, which date back to 2004, come from one group, two from another and two from a third. The seventh is a stand-alone for a group with a history of problematic articles.

“No original data”: Stem cell researchers in Japan up to nine retractions

A group of researchers in Japan who study oral stem cells has lost at least nine papers for fabricated data.

We reported on this group, from Aichi Gakuin University in Nagoya, last year after they lost two papers in PLOS ONE for image manipulation. The new retraction notice appears in the Journal of Oral Biosciences, an Elsevier journal, and refers to several other papers that the editors say are to be retracted.

Here’s the notice for “New findings for dentin sialophosphoprotein studies: Applications of purified odontoblast-like cells derived from stem cells,” which was published in 2016:

Years later, researcher at center of highly publicized case has another paper retracted

Milena Penkowa speaking at a Scientology-funded exhibit in 2013

A neuroscientist who was stripped of her PhD by Danish officials as part of a case going back a decade has notched her ninth retraction — but it took a while.

In 2010, following questions about her work, Milena Penkowa received a three month suspended sentence for embezzlement, document forgery, and “fabrication of evidence.” A back-and-forth legal case against the researcher followed, with Penkowa initially found guilty of fabricating results in her thesis but winning a partial reprieve on appeal in 2016. As we reported in 2017, the University of Cophenhagen retracted Milena Penkowa’s doctoral degree after concluding that she had falsified documents to support claims that she’d conducted animal experiments that didn’t occur.

At the time, Penkowa had lost six papers to retraction. The latest one involves an article published at the end of 2016, “Bismuth adjuvant ameliorates adverse effects of high-dose chemotherapy in patients with multiple myeloma and malignant lymphoma undergoing autologous stem cell transplantation: a randomised, double-blind, prospective pilot study,” which appeared in Supportive Care in Cancer, a Springer Nature title.

“A wholly frustrating and embarrassing process”: Authors retract paper on HPV vaccine and preterm birth

The authors of a 2018 paper purporting to find that the HPV vaccine guards against preterm birth have retracted the article after discovering they made a statistical error which could have masked the opposite effect.

The researchers, from New Zealand, also failed to appropriately disclose their financial ties to a company, CSL Limited, which owns the rights to the HPV vaccine in Australia and New Zealand.

The paper, “Association of prior HPV vaccination with reduced preterm birth: A population based study,” was published in Vaccine, an Elsevier journal. According to the abstract:

Journal retracts paper claiming smarter people are more likely to use a condom to avoid HIV

A psychology journal has retracted a 2020 paper purporting to find that smarter people are more likely to use a condom during sex to avoid HIV.

The new study, by researchers from Singapore and the United States led by Sean Lee of the Singapore Management University School of Social Sciences, appeared in Personality and Individual Differences.

The paper claimed to find that:

Publisher retracts nearly two dozen articles, blocks nearly three dozen more, from alias-employing author who plagiarized

IOP Publishing has retracted nearly two dozen conference proceedings which had been cribbed from other articles, translated into English and festooned with citations to the authors’ own work.

According to the publisher, 12 of the 29 authors on the papers come from the same institution, Universidad de la Costa, in Barranquilla, Colombia. IOP says the institution is investigating.

The first author on most of the papers is Jesus Silva, who appears to be affiliated with the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, in Lima, Peru — and has now joined our leaderboard with 23 retractions. For some, the first author is Amelec Viloria, of Universidad de la Costa.

Except, according to IOP Publishing, Silva and Viloria are the same person, using an alias on some of the articles.

The list of retracted COVID-19 papers is up to 33

To the list of COVID-19 papers that have been retracted so far, add this:

The Korean Journal of Anesthesiology has retracted an article it published last month on ventilating COVID patients because it was nearly identical to one that had appeared in a different journal three months earlier.

The offending article, “Noninvasive versus invasive ventilation: one modality cannot fit all during COVID-19 outbreak,” was written by Abhishek Singh, an anesthesiologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

Springer Nature journal takes eight months to retract paper after US government misconduct finding

A Springer Nature journal waited eight months to retract a paper flagged by the Office of Research Integrity for containing fabricated data — a delay the publisher blames on “staff changes and human error.”

The 2014 article in Neuropsychopharmacology by Alexander Neumeister included “falsified and/or fabricated research methods and results,” according to the findings of the ORI investigation, which were reported in late December of last year. But the retraction notice is dated September 8, 2020.

The notice itself sounds a lot like a child who says “I’m invisible because my eyes are closed.” It reads:

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