Ellie Kincaid

‘Super Size Me’: What happened when marketing researchers ordered a double retraction?

A year after the authors of two papers contacted the marketing journal where they had been published requesting retraction, the journal has pulled one, but decided to issue a correction for the other.

In April, we reported that the Journal of Consumer Research was investigating “Super Size Me: Product Size as a Signal of Status,” originally published in 2012, and “Dynamics of Communicator and Audience Power: The Persuasiveness of Competence versus Warmth,” published in 2016.

The authors had asked to retract the papers in October 2022 after other researchers found inconsistencies in the statistical calculations of the “Super Size Me” paper and could not replicate the results. The article had been cited nearly 200 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. It attracted attention from The New York Times and NPR, among other outlets, which linked the findings to the rise in obesity in the United States. An analyst also found issues in the 2016 paper, which has been cited 71 times.

When we published our previous story, Carolyn Yoon, the chair of the journal’s policy board and a professor of management and marketing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, told us the board was still waiting on a report from the special committee investigating the matter. “We hope to have a decision by the end of this month,” she said in April 2023.

Exclusive: Whistleblower fired after raising concerns about journal articles on LinkedIn

A business school in Pakistan has fired a marketing professor after finding he had “damaged the repute” of the university and its scholarly journal, Retraction Watch has learned.

In a LinkedIn post, Muhammad Mohsin Butt, the now-fired professor, shared a picture of the table of contents of a 2015 issue of Business Review, published by the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), in Karachi. The contents listed seven case studies authored by two other professors at the school:

PLOS backs down from expression of concern after author’s lawsuit

A researcher who sued the publisher PLOS to prevent it from posting an expression of concern for one of her papers has dropped her suit, and the publisher tells us it will add a correction to the article instead – but may “revisit this case” to deal with “unresolved issues.”

We’ve previously reported on the lawsuit Soudamani Singh, an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Translational Sciences at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, W. Va., filed against PLOS in April, as well as signs of a pending settlement.

According to an order filed November 2, Singh informed the court that she “voluntarily dismisses” the claims in her complaint, without the possibility of re-filing them, and the judge dismissed the case.

In her complaint, Singh alleged that PLOS planned to place an expression of concern on one of her papers, “Cyclooxygenase pathway mediates the inhibition of Na-glutamine co-transporter B0AT1 in rabbit villus cells during chronic intestinal inflammation,” published in PLOS ONE in September 2018, after she and her co-authors had requested a correction of a duplicated image. The paper has been cited nine times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, but not since April 2021.

US VA scientist banned from agency research for faking data

A research biologist at the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Chicago faked images and inflated sample sizes in published papers and a grant application, the federal agency has determined.

Hee-Jeong Im Sampen, also a research professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Illinois, Chicago, “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly and/or recklessly falsifying/fabricating data” in three published papers, an unpublished manuscript, a poster presentation, and a grant application for VA funding, according to a Federal Register notice.

Sampen, who publishes under the name Hee-Jeong Im, is corresponding author on all of the published papers the VA identified. The articles, which also list an affiliation with Rush University Medical Center, are:

Sage retracts more than 200 papers from journal for compromised peer review

The publisher Sage has retracted 209 articles from an engineering journal after an investigation found “compromised peer review or 3rd party involvement,” according to a company spokesperson.

The retractions, all from the International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education, stem from an investigation that led Sage to retract 122 papers – as well as fire the editor-in-chief and purge the editorial board – in December 2021.

At that time, the company marked 318 additional papers “with more complex issues” with expressions of concern as it continued investigating. All of the papers retracted today previously had expressions of concern.

The 209 articles were retracted with five different notices. Some articles “contain indicators of third-party involvement” and the corresponding authors “were unable to provide a satisfactory explanation,” one read.

Paper on homeopathy for ADHD retracted for ‘deficiencies’

A paper touted as “the first systematic review and meta-analysis” of research on the effects of homeopathy for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been retracted more than a year after critics first contacted the journal with concerns.

The article, “Is homeopathy effective for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder? A meta-analysis,” appeared in Pediatric Research, a Springer Nature title, last June. It has not been cited in the scientific literature, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, but Altmetric, which quantifies the online attention papers receive, ranks the paper in the top 5% of all articles ever tracked.

The original paper concluded:

Individualized homeopathy showed a clinically relevant and statistically robust effect in the treatment of ADHD.

However, the retraction notice, dated September 20, detailed four “concerns regarding the analysis of the articles included in the meta-analysis,” and concluded:

Controversial French researcher loses two papers for ethics approval issues

Didier Raoult, the French infectious disease scientist who came to prominence for promoting hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment, has lost two papers for ethics concerns after other scientists flagged issues with hundreds of publications from the institute he formerly led.

Both papers, “Increased Gut Redox and Depletion of Anaerobic and Methanogenic Prokaryotes in Severe Acute Malnutrition,” and “Gut Microbiota Alteration is Characterized by a Proteobacteria and Fusobacteria Bloom in Kwashiorkor and a Bacteroidetes Paucity in Marasmus,” appeared in Scientific Reports in 2016 and 2019, respectively. They have been cited approximately 160 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The retraction notices, published Monday, were nearly identical. They stated:

History repeats itself: Diabetes researcher gets four expressions of concern in journal he once sued

A diabetes researcher who lost a defamation suit against a journal that marked four of his papers with expressions of concern now has four more papers flagged – by the same journal.

Diabetes, a journal of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), placed expressions of concern on four papers led or co-authored by Mario Saad, of the University of Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil on October 23.

Saad sued the ADA in 2015 after Diabetes marked four other papers with similar notices. A judge dismissed the suit, and the journal later retracted the papers (for which we recognized them with a DiRT — Doing the Right Thing — award). Saad is now up to 19 retractions, by our count.

Cancer researcher with nine retractions says he’ll take publisher to court

A cancer researcher who lost nine papers in one day as a publisher purged articles offered in “authorship-for-sale” schemes told Retraction Watch he and his co-authors “will soon defend ourselves legally.”

Last month, the publisher Frontiers announced it had retracted 38 papers after its research integrity team found links to the practice of buying and selling authorship positions. Brokers list advertisements for authorships of scientific papers on dedicated websites as well as social media.

Nine of the 38 articles Frontiers retracted listed Mostafa Jarahian, formerly of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, as a co-author.

When we initially reported on the large batch of retractions, one of Jarahian’s co-authors shared an article from Frontiers indicating the publisher had decided to retract the paper after “concerns were brought to our attention from the German Cancer Research Center regarding the authorship of the article.”

PLOS and scientist appear close to settling lawsuit over expression of concern

The publisher PLOS appears close to an agreement with a scientist who sued to stop the addition of an expression of concern to one of her articles, according to a recent filing in the case.

Soudamani Singh, an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Translational Sciences at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, W. Va., filed suit against PLOS in April, as we previously reported.

According to Singh’s complaint, the publisher planned to place an expression of concern on one of her papers after she and her co-authors had requested a correction.

Singh’s suit sought a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction preventing PLOS from publishing the expression of concern, as well as damages and legal fees.

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