Author: Dalmeet Singh Chawla

Study linking vaccines to autism pulled following heavy criticism

Frontiers in Public HealthA study linking vaccines to autism and other neurological problems has been removed by a Frontiers journal after receiving heavy criticism since it was accepted last week. 

The abstract — published online in Frontiers in Public Health after being accepted November 21 — reported findings from anonymous online questionnaires completed by 415 mothers of home-schooled children 6-12 years old. Nearly 40 percent of children had not been vaccinated, and those that had were three times more likely to be diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, the study found.

After receiving criticism on Twitter, Frontiers released a public statement, noting that the study was only “provisionally accepted but not published,” and is being re-reviewed. When asked for a comment, a Frontiers spokesperson referred us to the statement. Continue reading Study linking vaccines to autism pulled following heavy criticism

Patient didn’t okay including her picture in plastic surgery paper

indian-journal-of-plastic-surgeryA plastic surgery journal in India has retracted an article about rehabilitation following removal of an eye after a patient contacted the editors to say she hadn’t consented to publish her picture.

Mukund Jagannathan, the journal’s editor-in-chief and a plastic surgeon in India, told Retraction Watch:

The patient wrote to the editor, mentioning that her photo was present in the article originally published, and politely asked us to remove her photos from public display on the Internet.

Asked whether the journal considered issuing a partial retraction to only hide the patient’s identity, Jagannathan said: Continue reading Patient didn’t okay including her picture in plastic surgery paper

Oops — Springer journals retract three articles published by accident

springerJournals published by Springer have retracted three articles in different disciplines, noting in all instances the articles were published by mistake.

A Springer spokesperson told us all three papers were pulled as a result of “human error.” In two instances, the notices say the editors-in-chief never meant to accept the papers, since the recommendation was to reject. 

We’ll start with the retraction that has the most interesting explanation. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Oops — Springer journals retract three articles published by accident

Scientific publisher hacked, affecting 65 papers

kowsar-publishingA publisher in the Netherlands has retracted 13 published studies and withdrawn 52 that were under consideration (but not yet published) after learning that someone illegally accessed its workflows to add fake authors and manipulate text.

According to Seyyed Mohammad Miri, the founder, CEO, and managing director of Kowsar Publishing, the 13 retracted papers all included extra authors added by the same Internet Protocol (IP) address. Cyber police in Iran found the same IP address had also accessed the 52 other papers, which were in various stages of the publishing process (such as peer review) and not yet online, Miri told Retraction Watch. 

Most of the authors on the 13 retracted papers are based in institutions in Iran; some were co-authors on the 58 retractions recently issued as part of a mass clean-up by publishers BioMed Central and Springer, citing fake reviews, adding inappropriate authors, and plagiarism.

Around six or seven months ago, the affected journals — in collaboration with Kowsar, their publisher — filed a court case in Tehran, Iran against this IP address, Miri said. Continue reading Scientific publisher hacked, affecting 65 papers

Tomato study didn’t get co-author okays, includes unreliable data

scientia-horticulturaeA journal has retracted a paper examining the traits of drought-resistant tomatoes after an investigation at the first author’s institution in Italy found a number of problems.

For starters, the first author — Maria Riccardi of the National Research Council of Italy-Institute for Agricultural and Forest Systems in the Mediterranean (CNR-ISAFOM) in Ercolano, Naples, Italy — apparently submitted the paper without consulting the study’s four other listed co-authors. What’s more, according to the retraction notice in Scientia Horticulturae, the paper’s description of the experiment “does not reflect the real conditions under which the data was collected,” rendering the findings invalid.  

Riccardo d’Andria, CNR-ISAFOM’s former director who conducted an investigation into the case, said Continue reading Tomato study didn’t get co-author okays, includes unreliable data

Authors retract paper lacking approval to study asthma in athletes

british-journal-of-sports-medicineThe authors of a 2014 study about asthma in Norwegian athletes have retracted it after realizing they hadn’t obtained proper approval from an ethical committee.

The study’s first and corresponding author of the study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine — Julie Stang from the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences in Oslo — told us the authors had struggled to obtain ethical approval for the research, but believed the issue had been resolved.

However, earlier this year, a member of an ethical committee wrote an article in the Norwegian press about his concerns regarding the study, which tested the effects of three drugs on top athletes’ breathing. In it, he said the Regional Committees for medical and health professional research ethics (REC) had not approved the study, as members were concerned the presumably healthy athletes were being exposed to drugs used to treat asthma, which could enhance their performance. 

Stang has denied that the study had anything to do with boosting athletic performance.

Stein Evensen, the committee member who wrote the article, declined to comment beyond the published text. So we’ve gotten the kronikk article translated from Norwegian using One Hour Translation. It reads: Continue reading Authors retract paper lacking approval to study asthma in athletes

Should journals reject papers solely on ethical grounds?

biological-conservation

Recently, an ecology journal received a submission that made them pause. In order to conduct their research, the authors had to kill thousands of fish. The study had been approved by conservation authorities, but it still wasn’t sitting well with the journal.

So it rejected the paper, on ethical grounds.

Biological Conservation explained its decision in a recent paper, noting the killing of thousands of vertebrates (marine and freshwater fish) in a protected area was “unnecessary and inappropriate,” and adds the journal will continue questioning and rejecting papers that “do not meet reasonable standards of practice.”

This is not a universal practice, however — years ago, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published the results of a research project that resulted in 90 people becoming infected with HIV. Again, that study had obtained the necessary ethical approvals — but should the journal act as the final judge?

According to the editors of Biological Conservation, yes. In “Field work ethics in biological research,” they write: Continue reading Should journals reject papers solely on ethical grounds?

Two Harvard-led groups pull well-cited cancer papers for duplication

the-journal-of-clinical-investigationTwo sets of authors based largely at Harvard Medical School have each retracted a paper for duplication in the same journal.

Both papers — which are more than a decade old — were pulled in The Journal of Clinical Investigation on November 1 by their respective corresponding authors.

One paper’s last author told us it was difficult to identify how the duplications occurred since the study took place so long ago, but added that multiple experiments had corroborated the results.

Here’s the first retraction notice for “Complementary roles of IRS-1 and IRS-2 in the hepatic regulation of metabolism:” Continue reading Two Harvard-led groups pull well-cited cancer papers for duplication

Researcher denies faking reviews for 5 newly retracted papers

engineering-failure-analysisJournals have retracted five papers by a materials researcher based in Poland after concluding the peer-review process had been faked. 

According to the retraction notices — which all appear in Elsevier journals and contain the same text — the papers were accepted due to “positive advice of at least one faked reviewer report,” which were submitted from fictitious email accounts for reviewers suggested by the author.

All five studies were solely authored by Mariusz Książek, who is based at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology in Poland, and has denied any wrongdoing.

A spokesperson from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology confirmed that the university “has taken legal actions.” 

Książek told Retraction Watch why he doesn’t agree with the decision to retract his papers: Continue reading Researcher denies faking reviews for 5 newly retracted papers

Genetics study flagged for reliability issues by Frontiers journal

frontiers-in-geneticsA genetics journal has issued an expression of concern (EOC) for a study after an investigation by its chief editors.

According to the notice in Frontiers in Genetics, the authors of the paper — based at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan — are conducting further experiments to resolve the issues raised by the journal’s investigation.

In February, the same paper received a corrigendum due to errors in the assembly of one of the figures.

Here’s the EOC, issued earlier this week: Continue reading Genetics study flagged for reliability issues by Frontiers journal