Ellie Kincaid

Psychologists want to retract old papers about conversion therapy. Elsevier says no.

Over the past year, a professional society for cognitive therapists has been pondering what to do with dozens of decades-old articles about conversion therapy – the practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity – in the archives of the journals it publishes.

The society, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT), was considering a variety of options, including retraction.

But in a statement the group published earlier this month, ABCT said Elsevier, the journals’ publisher, would not allow retraction of the articles.

‘Liberals lecture, conservatives communicate’ paper gets lengthy expression of concern

An article from 2019 that caught some media buzz – including from the New York Times – for its analysis of political speeches now bears an expression of concern that’s almost as long as the original paper.

In “Liberals lecture, conservatives communicate: Analyzing complexity and ideology in 381,609 political speeches,” published in PLOS ONE, the authors concluded that “speakers from culturally liberal parties use more complex language than speakers from culturally conservative parties,” as they stated in their abstract.

But after reading the article, linguist Joe McVeigh, a university teacher at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, wrote an online comment on the article detailing “several fundamental and critical flaws in its methodology.” A key issue: applying the Flesh-Kincaid test, which was developed for assessing the readability of a written text, to political speeches. As McVeigh told us:

Biotech exec stole an image and reused others while in academia, US federal watchdog says

A pioneer in the field of exosome biology engaged in research misconduct by reusing images he had falsely relabeled in two published papers and several grant applications, according to a U.S. government research watchdog.

The case goes back several years, as the scientist’s former institution seems to have been investigating his work for nearly a decade.

Douglas Taylor, who in the 1970s discovered that tumor cells release exosomes, “used falsely labeled images to falsely report data in figures, and in one finding, intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly plagiarized, reused, and falsely labeled an image to falsely report data in a figure,” according to the published finding from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Science paper on sense of taste gets expression of concern as university investigates

Science has published an expression of concern for a recent article on a receptor for bitter taste while the authors’ institution investigates “potential discrepancies” with a figure.

The article, “Structural basis for strychnine activation of human bitter taste receptor TAS2R46,” was published in September of this year.

According to the abstract:

Scientist goes to court to clear his name after fake peer review retractions

A scientist who lost 11 papers for fake peer review and other reasons went to court to pin the misconduct on a coauthor – and received a favorable judgment.

The retractions for Aram Mokarizadeh, a biomedical researcher previously affiliated with the Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences in Iran, were part of a batch of 58 papers in seven journals that Springer and BioMed Central pulled in 2016 after an investigation found “evidence of plagiarism, peer review and authorship manipulation, suggestive of attempts to subvert the peer review and publication system to inappropriately obtain or allocate authorship.”

After our story on the case appeared, Mokarizadeh told us that a coauthor was “responsible for all problems associated with retraction,” and that he had brought a case to court in Iran to prove it.

Another ‘Majorana’ particle paper retracted, this time from Science

Nearly a year after marking a paper on the elusive “Majorana” particle with an expression of concern, and almost three years after publishing a critique of its reproducibility, Science has retracted the article due to “serious irregularities and discrepancies” in the data.

A few papers about Majorana particles, which would be useful in quantum computing if scientists could indeed produce and detect them, have been retracted, flagged with expressions of concern, or otherwise proven difficult to reproduce.

The latest article to be retracted, “Chiral Majorana fermion modes in a quantum anomalous Hall insula- tor–superconductor structure,” has been cited more than 400 times since it was published in 2017, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. About 10 percent of those citations have come since Science’s editors published their expression of concern last December.

The retraction notice states:

BMJ says it’s “an ongoing effort” to find articles by plagiarizing concussion researcher Paul McCrory

Weeks after the British Medical Journal corrected a press release about nine retractions and dozens of expressions of concern to mark articles by a prominent concussion expert, a spokesperson for the journal told us it’s still “an ongoing effort” to identify all the articles on which the expert is the sole author.

The concussion researcher, Paul McCrory, was editor in chief of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, published by the BMJ, from 2001-2008, and published many editorials on which he was the only listed author. McCrory also chaired the influential Concussion in Sport Group, was involved in drafting consensus statements on concussion in sports, and consulted with leagues.

Ten of those articles, however, have been retracted this year for plagiarism, recycling his own work, and misrepresenting a reference.

In comments to us, his only public statements to date about the matter, McCrory acknowledged some of the plagiarism as unintentional “errors,” and offered “my sincere and humble apologies.” He no longer chairs the Concussion in Sport Group, and the Australian Football League has critically reviewed his work for the league, the Guardian Australia reported.

Psychiatrist in Canada faked brain imaging data in grant application, U.S. federal watchdog says

A psychiatrist studying the development of psychosis faked data from studies of brain imaging in a grant application to the National Institutes of Health, a U.S, government watchdog has found.

The federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI) announced sanctions against Romina Mizrahi, associate chair of research in McGill University’s department of psychiatry in Montreal, Canada, for “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying data” in a grant application to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Mizrahi submitted the grant application in question, R01 MH118495-01, “Imaging nociceptin receptors in clinical high risk and first episode psychosis,” in February 2018; it does not appear to have been funded.

According to ORI, Mizrahi:

Journal editor in chief who published controversial Covid papers resigns

The editor in chief of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) has resigned with more than a year left of his term, according to an email announcing his move to colleagues.

In the email, first reproduced in Steve Kirsch’s Substack newsletter, the editor, Jose L. Domingo, cited “deep discrepancies” with the journal’s direction under publisher Elsevier as the reason for his early resignation. He shared the email with us when we reached out for comment.

Domingo, a professor of toxicology and environmental Health at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain, listed three main points of contention: an agreement for the journal to publish documents for the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials, which Domingo believed to be a “drag” on the journal’s impact factor; FCT’s recent designation as the official journal of the Chinese Society of Toxicology; and a February editorial he wrote requesting submissions “on the potential toxic effects of COVID-19 vaccines.”

He wrote:

“A huge relief”: Journal takes down plagiarized paper after Retraction Watch reporting

Following a Retraction Watch story about a 2004 paper that had been copied twice since its publication, one of the journals involved has taken down its version of the article.

Last month, we reported that an undergraduate student researching her thesis had found two papers that copied material from “Models of the medical consultation: opportunities and limitations of a game theory perspective,” published in BMJ Quality and Safety by psychologist Andrew Colman and two colleagues.

One of the plagiarizing articles, “Relevance of Game Theory Models in Medical Consultation: Special Reference to Decision Making,” appeared last year in the International Journal of Research in Engineering, Science and Management (IJRESM). Colman said that the article had copied the structure and main ideas of his, although the text was paraphrased, and it included a figure he had created.

We had emailed the journal before our story was published on Oct. 17 to ask if it would investigate the allegations. We received this reply on November 5th:

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