Adam Marcus

Authors object as “doubtful” data doom dermatology paper

A dermatology journal has retracted a 2017 article by a pair of researchers in Saudi Arabia after receiving a “serious complaint” about the integrity of the data. But the first author of the paper pushed back, saying the move was unjustified.

The article, “Successful use of combined corticosteroids and rituximab in a patient with refractory cutaneous polyarteritis nodosa,” was written by Ibrahim Al-Homood and Mohammad Aljahlan, rheumatologists at King Fahad Medical City in Riyadh and appeared in the Journal of Dermatology & Dermatologic Surgery. It described (with rather grisly pictures) the case of a 25-year-old man with severe leg ulcers that resolved after the described combination therapy.

But at the notice explains, the paper can’t be trusted:

Kyoto University suspends first author of retracted Kumamoto quake paper

Damage from the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake

The first author of a now-retracted paper in Science about the effects of the deadly 2016 Kumamoto earthquake in Japan has been suspended from his university position for one year.

Aiming Lin, of the Department of Geophysics at Kyoto University, was sanctioned by the institution for misconduct stemming from his misuse of data and plagiarism in the 2016 paper:

Cock and bull story leads to retraction of bovine herpesvirus paper

The ancients had a thing for hybrids (think animals, not cars): half goat-half humans, horses with human torsos, winged horses and lions, you get the picture. But a chicken-cow mix wasn’t on that list … until now.

A group of researchers in Brazil has lost a paper in a veterinary journal for trying to reuse data from a poultry study in their paper on herpesvirus infections in cattle.

The article, “Bovine Herpesvirus 5 promotes mitochondrial dysfunction in cultured bovine monocyte-derived macrophages and not affect virus replication,” appeared in February in the journal Veterinary Microbiology.

According to the retraction notice:

‘Not biologically plausible’: questions about survey data earn fluorosis paper a flag

A recent article that offered a stark warning about the risks to children of fluoride in the nation’s water has been tagged with an expression of concern after the publication of a new paper which undermines the reliability of the original data.

The article, “Dental fluorosis trends in US oral health surveys: 1986 to 2012,” appeared in March in JDR Clinical & Translational Research, a dental journal. The first author on the paper is Christopher Neurath, of the American Environmental Health Studies Project, which advocates against fluoridation of water.

The article, which used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for the years 2011 and 2012, reported “large increases in severity and prevalence” of fluorosis over that period — continuing a trend dating back to the mid-1980s.

According to the researchers:

Leech paper nets expression of concern

An article claiming to uproot the evolutionary tree of leeches has received an expression of concern after a reader notified the journal about potential problems with the data.

The article, “Phylogenomic analysis of a putative missing link sparks reinterpretation of leech evolution,” appeared online in Genome Biology and Evolution, an Oxford University Press title, on June 19 of this year. According to the authors — an international team that includes researchers at the National Museum of Natural History, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Florida State University and University of Gothenburg in Sweden — their results:

Exclusive: Russian site says it has brokered authorships for more than 10,000 researchers

Want to be a first author on a scholarly paper? A Russian company has you covered — starting at about $500. The company claims to have added the names of more than 10,000 researchers to more than 2,000 published articles in scholarly journals over the past three years. Think eBay — or perhaps StubHub — for unscrupulous scientists.

Although we can’t verify the numbers, at least one major journal indexer, from whom we recently learned of the scheme, is concerned enough about the site that it has demanded that it stop doing business.

According to the Russian outfit’s site (through Google Translate):

No delight for Turkish surgeon in authorship dispute over case study

A surgeon in Turkey has won a court case in which he argued that he deserved to be named in a list of authors from his institution who’d published a paper. But even that doesn’t appear to have satisfied the aggrieved medic, as you’ll see.

The article, “Late onset traumatic diaphragmatic herniation leading to intestinal obstruction and pancreatitis: two separate cases,” was written by a group from the Department of General Surgery at Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital. The list of authors comprised Tolga Dinc, Selami Ilgaz Kayilioglu and Faruk Coskun … but not Baris Yildiz, a colleague in the department.

The paper appeared in Case Reports in Emergency Medicine, a Hindawi title, which has issued a rather byzantine expression of concern about the article:

Blood pulls deceased star oncologist’s paper after Stanford inquiry

Blood has retracted a 2011 article by a now-deceased Stanford researcher, Holbrook Kohrt, who earlier this month lost two other papers over concerns about the whereabouts of the data.

The journal’s move comes about a week after Retraction Watch posted a story on the previous retractions, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI), of Kohrt’s work. As we noted then, Kohrt was a superstar young faculty member who died in 2016 of complications of hemophilia. He was the subject of this 2013 profile in the New York Times, which also wrote an obituary of him.

The Blood paper was titled “CD137 stimulation enhances the antilymphoma activity of anti-CD20 antibodies.” The paper has been cited 148 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

Cancer specialists in Mexico earn third retraction following questions about their data

Cases of cancers seen at the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, according to researcher Agustin Avilés

A group of cancer researchers in Mexico has lost their third paper over concerns about the integrity of their data.

Neither the new retraction, in the journal Hematology, nor the previous two, cite misconduct as the reason for the removals. However, the statements do refer to lack of reliability of results, “ambiguities and inconsistencies” in the findings and other serious issues.

The first author on each paper is Agustin Avilés, whom the Hematology article listed as being with the National Medical Center in Mexico City.

According to the retraction notice:

Chemistry researcher who studies oil wells is up to seven retractions

A chemistry researcher in India is up to seven retractions and one correction for problematic images and other issues.

The researcher, Mahendra Yadav, was the first author on an article titled “Corrosion inhibition of tubing steel during acidization of oil and gas wells,” which appeared in 2013 in the Journal of Petroleum Engineering (JPE). Yadav, who also has a correction for similar concerns, and who has a fairly extensive entry in PubPeer, is listed as being affiliated with the Department of Applied Chemistry at the Indian School of Mines, in Dhanbad.

According to the notice:

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