Ellie Kincaid

Declaration of Helsinki revision adds nod to research misconduct

The Declaration of Helsinki on ethical principles for research involving human participants now includes a statement on scientific integrity and research misconduct.

Adopted in 1964 by the World Medical Association, the Declaration of Helsinki was conceived in response to the atrocities committed during World War 2 in the name of medical research on human subjects. The initial document – which has been updated many times over the last 60 years – included five key principles, including the primacy of informed consent, the need for a rigorous calculation of risks and benefits for a given study, and a consideration of the scientific value of a given study – that is, the experiment should be valuable to science and to the subjects involved.

In the recent process of revising the declaration, the World Medical Association added the following two sentences to the “general principles” section of the document:

eLife latest in string of major journals put on hold from Web of Science

Citing eLife’s unusual practice of publishing articles without accepting or rejecting them, Clarivate says it is re-evaluating the inclusion of the open-access biology journal in Web of Science, its influential database of abstracts and citations.

In contrast to the other journals recently placed on hold from indexing, including Elsevier’s Science of the Total Environment, Clarivate has cited a specific policy as the reason for re-evaluating eLife: “Coverage of journals/platforms in which publication is decoupled from validation by peer review.”

A Clarivate spokesperson described the policy as applying to “journals that do not make an editorial decision to accept or reject based on peer reviewers’ comments.”

Cambridge researcher pulls Cell paper five years after Nature, Science retractions

A cancer researcher at the University of Cambridge in the UK has retracted a paper from Cell after commenters on PubPeer questioned aspects of 10 images in the article.

Though an institutional investigation found the figures were “not reliable,” another of the authors objected to the retraction as “an overreaction.”

Steve Jackson, the University of Cambridge biology professor and lab leader, previously retracted two papers – including one in Nature and one in Science posted on the same day – after a Cambridge investigation found a co-author, Abderrahmane Kaidi, had falsified data.

Psychology journal apologizes for paper with ‘biased language’ about Tibet

Editors of a psychology journal have published a lengthy apology for failing to identify “biased” language and information in a paper about racial prejudice of Tibetan children against Han Chinese.

The article, “The development of Tibetan children’s racial bias in empathy: The mediating role of ethnic identity and wrongfulness of ethnic intergroup bias,” appeared in Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology in April. It has yet to be cited, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The authors listed affiliations with institutions in China, Australia, and Canada. The article describes experiments measuring the empathy – or lack thereof – Tibetan children expressed for characters with Tibetan or Han Chinese names who experienced either social or physical pain.

Journal pulls pesticide article a year after authors engaged lawyer to fight retraction decision

A public health journal has retracted an article on unintentional pesticide poisonings a year after the authors enlisted a lawyer’s help to fight the decision.

Last year, we reported BMC Public Health had decided to retract the article, “The global distribution of acute unintentional pesticide poisoning: estimations based on a systematic review,” which appeared in December 2020. The article has been cited nearly 300 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, including more than 100 since the journal told the authors it would be retracted.

The authors listed affiliations with the Pesticide Action Network, a collection of organizations opposed to pesticides. In their review, they declared unintentional pesticide poisoning “a problem that warrants immediate action.”

The retraction notice cites a letter to the editor from employees of pesticide manufacturer Bayer, and the trade organization CropLife International, which criticized the analysis. The authors stood by their findings in a response, stating the critics “do not seem to have understood our estimation method.”

A journal switches to a new publisher, then corrects a paper. What should happen to the old version?

In January 2022, The Oncologist switched publishers from Wiley to Oxford University Press.

Last month, the journal issued an extensive correction for one of its most popular articles, a 2020 paper that describes results of a clinical trial the authors claimed found a homeopathic intervention improved quality of life and survival for people with advanced lung cancer.

The article page that remains on Wiley’s website, however, does not reflect the recent correction.

After saying it would retract an article, Cureus changed its mind

Karen Rech, a hematopathologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., was reading a case report about a rare disease when she recognized the patient.

Although the authors of the paper were affiliated with the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Fargo, the patient in the report had gone to Mayo for care, and Rech had made the pathology diagnosis. But the article, “A Diagnostic Dilemma and Classification Conundrum: Atypical Histiocytic Neoplasm Presenting as a Calvarial Mass,” published in Cureus in February, didn’t mention or credit Rech or her colleagues.

“The ability to make such a unique diagnosis is a direct result of my translational research in histiocytic neoplasms,” Rech wrote in an email to the journal in April. After she made the pathology diagnosis, a hematologist colleague saw the patient, and a group of specialists discussed the case and came to a consensus diagnosis.

Authors sue Sage over “discriminatory” retractions of papers cited in abortion pill case

The authors of three papers about abortion Sage retracted earlier this year have sued the publisher, alleging the company pulled the articles “for pretextual and discriminatory reasons.”

In February, Sage retracted three articles from Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology “because of undeclared conflicts of interest and after expert reviewers found that the studies demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor that invalidates or renders unreliable the authors’ conclusions,” according to the publisher’s statement at the time. Sage also removed the paper’s lead author from the editorial board of the journal.

A federal judge cited two of the articles last year in his decision to suspend approval of mifepristone, a drug used in medical abortions.

New engineering dean has two retractions for authorship manipulation

A newly appointed dean at the University of Guelph in Canada has had two papers retracted for “evidence of authorship manipulation.”

Another article by the researcher, Moncef Nehdi, formerly of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, seems to match a paper that had its authorship advertised for sale, according to a post on PubPeer.

Nehdi told Retraction Watch he stands by his group’s work in the two retracted papers, but agreed with the retractions because he thought the investigations “raised some valid concerns.”

Nehdi began a five-year term as dean of the University of Guelph’s College of Engineering and Physical Sciences on September 1, according to an announcement this spring. The announcement stated:

Homeopathy for cancer paper extensively corrected after watchdog agency requested retraction

A paper that claimed to show a homeopathic intervention improved quality of life and survival for people with advanced lung cancer has received an extensive correction two years after a research integrity watchdog asked the journal to retract the article over concerns about manipulated data, Retraction Watch has learned.

The two scientists who sounded the alarm on the paper are not satisfied with the correction, they told us.

The article, “Homeopathic Treatment as an Add‐On Therapy May Improve Quality of Life and Prolong Survival in Patients with Non‐Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Prospective, Randomized, Placebo‐Controlled, Double‐Blind, Three‐Arm, Multicenter Study,” appeared in The Oncologist in November 2020. Michael Frass, the lead author of the paper, is a homeopathic practitioner who was working at the Medical University of Vienna, at the time the work was published.

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