Dalmeet Singh Chawla

Meet the researcher aiming to halt use of ‘fundamentally flawed’ database linking IQ and nationality

Rebecca Sear is on a mission to convince publishers to retract articles that use a database that purports to rank countries based on intelligence.

To maintain the integrity of scientific literature, the professor of psychology at Brunel University of London and her colleagues are writing to journals that are publishing papers that rely on the so-called National IQ database, which aims to rank countries based on intelligence. It has drawn criticism for the way the data were collected. Sear’s efforts have so far led to two retractions.

“There is absolutely no scientific merit whatsoever in the National IQ database,” Sear told Retraction Watch. “That means that any conclusions drawn from the database will be faulty and worthless.”

Dean accused of plagiarism in Bulgaria not guilty, ministry report says

A governmental ministry in Bulgaria has concluded a dean at Sofia University is not guilty of plagiarism. But it appears the inquiries might not be complete.

As we reported in December, Milen Zamfirov, dean of the faculty of educational sciences at the university, had been accused of plagiarism in a 2021 paper that “seems to have significant overlap” with two other works. In February, two researchers filed a complaint to the country’s Ministry of Education and Science, alleging Zamfirov plagiarized other works in multiple papers.

The ministry assigned three reviewers to assess the articles in question, all of whom are identified only by initials in its report, released July 9.

Suspended UK surgeon earns nine expressions of concern, one withdrawal

A U.K.-based surgeon who was suspended last year for conducting colorectal surgeries that caused harm to hundreds of women has had nine of his research papers flagged and one withdrawn.

In July 2024, Tony Dixon, formerly of Southmead Hospital and Spire Hospital in Bristol, England, was suspended for six months by a tribunal at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) after an investigation found the surgeries caused harm in 259 of his patients who underwent a procedure to treat rectal prolapse.

The MPTS panel extended the suspension in January for another six months, during which time Dixon is unable to operate on patients, a spokesperson for the U.K.’s General Medical Council (GMC) told Retraction Watch.

Misappropriation of undergraduate work leads to study retraction

Researchers in Australia have retracted a 2020 nanotechnology study after their institution’s research integrity office found the paper had misappropriated the work of undergraduate students at their school.

According to the retraction notice, the study stated the data belonged to an industry consulting project when in fact they originated from undergraduate work. The notice reads:

Post-publication, the University of Sydney’s Research Integrity Office found that the article misrepresented research data as being derived from an industry consultancy project when it was from an undergraduate unit of study. In doing so, the work of the undergraduate students and a tutor for the unit of study was misappropriated.

Journal retracts letter about pager explosion injuries in Lebanon

The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery has retracted a letter it published about a purportedly novel injury observed during the two deadly waves of pager explosions in Lebanon and Syria in 2024, reportedly linked to Israeli intelligence services.

The original letter, “‘Pager’s trauma’ as a new and destructive type of blast injuries,” published Dec. 26, 2024, had not been indexed by Clarivate’s Web of Science. It focused on the September 2024 attacks in Lebanon and Syria, which led to dozens of deaths and thousands of injuries among Hezbollah fighters and some civilians. The attacks were carried out by boobytrapping walkie-talkies and pagers with explosives and are widely believed to have been carried at the direction of Israeli authorities.

The new letter argued such injuries are novel, dubbing them “Pager’s trauma.”

The letter read:

Why do nearly 45,000 scholarly papers cite themselves?

While thousands of papers cite themselves, the percentage that do so is relatively low.
*Haunschild & Bornmann/arXiv.org*

While using bibliometric techniques to measure how disruptive research papers are to their field of study, Robin Haunschild and Lutz Bornmann stumbled across a strange phenomenon.

Just under 45,000 academic papers contained citations to themselves, they found. Haunschild and Bornmann — both information scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany — found these “paper self-citations” in journals indexed by Clarivate’s Web of Science since 1980.

Some 7,943 different journals had at least one self-citing paper, the researchers report in their study, posted on arXiv.org earlier this month. Eight journals alone covered 10% of the sample papers, and 129 publications covered the top third. More than 31,000 of the papers appeared under the ‘article’ category in Web of Science, followed by just over 6,000 listed as ‘corrections’ and just under 2,500 as ‘reviews.’

Thousands demand withdrawal of review article recommending exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome

The decision to abandon a process to re-evaluate a review recommending exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) has reignited calls for the article to be withdrawn.

The 2019 version of the Cochrane Library review, “Exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome,” has accumulated 67 citations, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The review recommends exercise therapy to treat ME/CFS, a treatment approach that drew widespread criticism from the patient community and researchers, who say physical activity isn’t an adequate remedy for the condition. According to the petition, Cochrane’s former editor-in-chief admitted the review in question wasn’t “fit for purpose,” although the editor-in-chief’s statement did not use that phrase.

Journal won’t retract paper that involved human organ transplants in China

The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation (JHLT) has decided against retracting a November 2024 paper that violated the ethics policy of the publication.

After publishing the paper, which describes a new mechanical circulatory support device used to treat heart failure that was developed in China, staff at the journal realised two of the patients in the study had received organ transplants in that country.

Dozens of research articles have been retracted or flagged for appearing to have used organs procured from executed prisoners in China, and many journals around the world have introduced policies to avoid such research. JHLT’s ethics statement, published in 2022, bans data on human organ transplants from journals or scientific sessions when they originate from countries, particularly China, where organ procurement from prisoners has been observed.

Dean in Bulgaria accused of plagiarism

Earlier this year, Milen Zamfirov, dean of the faculty of educational sciences at Sofia University in Bulgaria, was named an exceptional scientist in the social sciences and humanities. As part of the accolades at the prestigious Pythagoras Science Awards from the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science, Zamfirov received a commemorative plaque, diploma, and a cash prize of 8,000 BGN (US $4,300).

Now, he is accused of plagiarising past research in a paper he co-authored with Margarita Bakracheva, who received a certificate of excellence from the Union of the Bulgarian Scientists earlier this year.

Their study, titled, “In Search of Integrativity of Sciences: the Principle of Supplementarity in the Story of Pauli and Jung,” was published in Bulgarian in 2021.

But the paper seems to have significant overlap with other sources, according to Irene Glendinning, a researcher and consultant based in Leicester, UK.

Complaint from engineering software company prompts two retractions

An engineering journal has retracted two papers after a company complained the authors of the articles used its software without a valid license.

Both retracted papers were published by Ain Shams Engineering Journal in the last couple of years by different authors based in Egypt. Both papers used FLOW-3D, software that is used to simulate the dynamics of liquids and gasses, which is developed by the firm Flow Science, Inc., in Santa Fe, N.M.

Tom Jensen, vice president of Flow Science, told Retraction Watch the firm offered the authors of both studies to legalize their version of the software by purchasing a license.

But the company didn’t receive a response, Jensen said, despite informing the researchers a retraction would be sought from the journal without a valid license. “We offer greatly reduced prices for licenses for academic institutions and we have numerous academic users around the world,” he added.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: