Ellie Kincaid

Sodom comet paper to be retracted two years after editor’s note acknowledging concerns

The authors’ reconstruction of what the blast’s impact area may have been. *Source*

Scientific Reports has retracted a controversial paper claiming to present evidence an ancient city in the Middle East was destroyed by an exploding celestial body – an event the authors suggested could have inspired the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The decision comes two years after Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature title, published an editor’s note informing readers the journal was looking into concerns about the data and conclusions in the work.

The then-pending retraction was the subject of an April 10 blog post by one of the paper’s authors, George Howard, who called the journal’s decision to remove the article “a profoundly disappointing and frankly disgusting turn of events.”

Medical societies call for BMJ to retract ‘misleading and irresponsible’ guideline

*The BMJ’s* clinical practice guideline for chronic spine pain

Thirty-four medical professional societies have called for The BMJ to retract a recently published guideline recommending against the use of interventional procedures, such as steroid or anaesthetic injections, to treat chronic back pain.

The journal published the guideline in February as part of its Rapid Recommendations program alongside a meta-analysis and systematic review of published research on the procedures, which the guideline panel used to inform its recommendations. The publications received international news coverage and enough chatter on social media platforms such as X and Bluesky to place them in the top 5 percent of all articles scored by Altmetric, a data company that tracks digital mentions of research.

The societies, led by the International Pain and Spine Intervention Society, represent clinicians who prescribe or perform the interventional spine procedures the guideline recommends against. The groups “have serious concerns about the methodology and conclusions drawn in these publications and their potential impact on patient care,” they wrote in a statement dated March 18, and summarized in a rapid response on the BMJ’s website. The statement has since been published in The Spine Journal and Interventional Pain Medicine.

Math journal editors resign to launch open-access title ‘free from pressure or influence’

The managing editors and entire editorial board of Mathematical Logic Quarterly, a Wiley title, have resigned, citing “unilateral decisions” by the publisher “that affected the editorial process.”

“We do not believe that Wiley is currently providing an environment that allows the editors to do their editorial work according to the standards of the academic community and free from the negative influence of commercial and profit-oriented interests,” the editors wrote in their resignation letter.

The editors have launched a new journal with a “diamond” open-access model, not charging fees to read or publish papers.

COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis paper raises questions about what earns post-publication peer review

On March 7, a Sage journal published an expression of concern for an article on cases of myocarditis in people who had received a COVID-19 vaccine.

“The Editor and the publisher were alerted to potential issues with the research methodology and conclusions and author conflicts of interest” and had undertaken an investigation of the article, the notice stated. According to one of the authors, the investigation involved two new peer reviews of the paper.

We’ve reported on many cases of authors disagreeing with retractions other publishers issued after conducting post-publication review processes. The papers often involve hot-button issues – pesticide poisoning, the effect of vaping on smoking rates, an estimation of deaths from the use of hydroxychloroquine early in the COVID-19 pandemic, and President Trump’s role in spreading vaccine misinformation on Twitter before the company suspended his account.

Dental researchers fabricated data in two articles, university investigation found

Two former professors and a former graduate student at Osaka Dental University in Japan reused images between three published articles, according to the findings of an institutional investigation.

The school released the findings of its investigation in January, with a full report in Japanese. The university has not responded to our request for comment.

According to a machine translation of the report, the university found former graduate student Helin Xing, former assistant professor Isao Yamawaki, and former associate professor Yoichiro Taguchi were involved in misconduct. A recent paper of Taguchi’s lists his affiliation as Matsumoto Dental University in Nagano, Japan. He and Xing have not responded to our requests for comment. We were not able to find a current affiliation or email address for Yamawaki.

Osaka misconduct investigation leads to four retractions, with more likely

Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University

A microbiologist formerly of Osaka University has lost four papers, with at least one more retraction pending, after an institutional investigation found fabrication and falsification of data in his published research.

The investigation found evidence of manipulated results in seven of the papers examined. The university published the notice of its completed inquiry, along with a full report in Japanese, on February 6.

The report did not name the scientists or cite the articles investigated, but it did include a figure or table with altered data from each paper. Three papers retracted in February mentioned an investigation by Osaka University in the notices; Yukihiro Hiramatsu was the first author on all three. Comparing the figures in the report with ones in Hiramatsu’s publications, we identified the seven articles. (See the list here.)

His manuscript was rejected. Then he saw it published by other authors

A chemist at a university in Pakistan found a surprise when he opened an alert from ResearchGate on a newly published paper on a topic related to his own work.

When Muhammad Kashif, a chemist at Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, looked at the paper, he noticed “substantial overlap” with an unpublished review article he had submitted to other journals. On closer inspection, he found it was indeed his paper — published by other authors.

“I was shocked and deeply concerned,” Kashif told Retraction Watch. “My unpublished work was replicated without attribution, undermining months of effort.”

Exclusive: Extensive correction to Genentech PNAS article will get an update after RW inquiry

An article by Genentech scientists received an extensive correction in January for multiple instances of image duplications after comments on PubPeer spurred the authors to review the work.

But the correction “inadvertently omitted” an additional duplication, and will be updated after Retraction Watch brought the matter to the journal’s attention, a representative for the publication said. The sleuth who identified the additional duplication said the original article should have been retracted instead of corrected.

The article, “Death-receptor activation halts clathrin-dependent endocytosis,” appeared in July 2006 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with a correction issued that September. It has been cited 99 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

Editors resign from sedimentology society journal amid ‘extraordinary and troubling times’

The chief editors of the journal Sedimentology have resigned, along with nearly a third of its associate editors, as the society running the title amended its publishing contract.

The International Association of Sedimentologists (IAS), a scientific society based in Belgium, owns the journal and contracts with Wiley to publish it.

The IAS had run an operating deficit since its 2021-22 fiscal year, and began discussing “legal, financial, and strategic considerations” in October 2023, according to a letter from IAS acting president Daniel Ariztegui to its members. These moves included changes to the handling of manuscripts and copy-editing at Sedimentology and an amendment to the society’s contract with Wiley.

Editors resign from Springer immunology journal to launch nonprofit title

Several top editors of the Journal of Clinical Immunology, a Springer Nature title, have jumped ship to start a new, nonprofit journal with Rockefeller University Press.

Jean-Laurent Casanova, the resigning coeditor-in-chief, told Retraction Watch the move followed pressure from Springer to publish more papers as the journal prepared to become fully open access.

Editors from more than 20 other journals have taken similar actions in the past couple of years, as Retraction Watch has logged. Reasons for the walkouts vary, but editors often cite publishers’ perceived focus on paper quantity over quality.

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