Ivan Oransky

Weekend reads: Biotech CEO on leave after allegations on PubPeer; a researcher disavows his own paper; plagiarism here, there, and everywhere

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

‘A costly mistake’ prompts retraction of paper on hair loss
Widely covered paper on ranitidine-cancer link retracted
Paper by former NIH researcher alleging ‘Ponzi schemes’ by government, pharma retracted
Elsevier glitch prompts temporary removal of critique of review on race and heart disease
‘Galling’: Journal scammed by guest editor impersonator

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 128.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

‘Galling’: Journal scammed by guest editor impersonator

An Elvis impersonator, via Metro Library and Archive

It just keeps happening.

For at least the fourth time in two years, a journal has been scammed by someone impersonating a guest editor. The latest: Behaviour & Information Technology, a Taylor & Francis title, has retracted an entire special issue — at least 10 articles published between 2019 and 2020 — because the guest editor “was impersonated by a fraudulent entity.”

As the retraction notices for the 10 papers report:

Weekend reads: ‘Lab leak’ and journals; a murder rocks Chinese academia; NIH removes lab heads from grants after harassment claims

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Kentucky professor resigns ahead of vote that could have stripped him of tenure
Abstracts flagged because conferences — including one in Wuhan in late 2019 — may not have happened
Meet a sleuth whose work has led to the identification of hundreds of fraudulent papers
Social psychology in the age of retraction
Publisher retracts 20 of a researcher’s papers — then asks him to peer review
PNAS bans author for refusing to share algae strain
US federal watchdog loses director to another government role

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 128.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Meet a sleuth whose work has led to the identification of hundreds of fraudulent papers

Last month, Retraction Watch reported on the case of Hironobo Ueshima, an anesthesiology researcher found guilty of misconduct in more than 140 papers. A journal editor, John Loadsman, was the first to suspect there were issues in Ueshima’s work. But this was hardly the first time Loadsman had been the canary in the coal mine of the anesthesiology literature, placing him squarely on our ever-growing list of scientific sleuths that includes Elisabeth Bik, who has been in the news recently because of threats. In this Q&A, we ask Loadsman what happened in the Ueshima case, and for his sense of how big a problem fraud in the literature is.

Retraction Watch (RW): You were the editor who first spotted problems with Ueshima’s work. Walk us through how you cracked the case. What made you suspect that his data were not kosher?

Publisher retracts 20 of a researcher’s papers — then asks him to peer review

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. So the saying goes.

What about fool me 20 times?

In December of last year, Dove Press — a unit of Taylor & Francis — retracted 14 papers by Marty Hinz, a Minnesota physician who has been sanctioned by the U.S. FDA as well as the Minnesota state medical board. In March, Dove retracted six more. A typical notice:

PNAS bans author for refusing to share algae strain

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) has sanctioned a researcher who violated the journal’s policy by refusing to share a strain of algae that he used in a 2018 paper.

Zhangfeng Hu was one of two corresponding authors, and the last author, of the paper, “New class of transcription factors controls flagellar assembly by recruiting RNA polymerase II in Chlamydomonas.” The paper has been cited three times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

May Berenbaum, PNAS’ editor in chief, tells Retraction Watch:

US federal watchdog loses director to another government role

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity, which oversees investigations into allegations of misconduct in grants from the NIH, is once again without a permanent director.

Elisabeth (Lis) Handley, who became director in 2019, has taken on a new role in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), of which ORI is a part. Wanda Jones, who has served as interim and deputy director of the agency, will serve as acting director, according to an HHS spokesperson.

Handley has become principal deputy assistant secretary for health. In a memo to staff, assistant secretary for health Rachel Levine wrote:

Weekend reads: JAMA editor resigns after review of podcast on racism and medicine; ‘Please Commit More Blatant Academic Fraud’; machine learning’s health credibility crisis

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Two transcendental meditation papers retracted for failures to report primary outcomes.
The peer reviewers and editor wanted to publish my paper. The legal team rejected it.
Exclusive: Six years after a misconduct investigation, more than half of suspect papers remain unflagged.
First, this paper was corrected. Now it has an expression of concern. And maybe, just maybe, it will be retracted.
Medical journal retracts article on “tribalism” after readers call it offensive

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 128.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: Gibberish papers persist; the academic who faked Cherokee heritage; ‘organised fraud hits scientific journals’

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

‘Regrettably it took too long to investigate and retract this paper.’
Congratulations! Your already-published article has just been rejected
Antiviral: ‘TikTok Doc’ loses paper on faculty development over concerns about harassment suit
How hijacked journals keep fooling one of the world’s leading databases
Two Japanese universities revoke PhDs, one for plagiarism and one because of cell line contamination
Reporter prompts corrections in Nature, New York Times after researcher fails to disclose ties to Cargill
Elsevier retracts entire book that plagiarized heavily from Wikipedia
Anesthesiology researcher guilty of misconduct in more than 140 papers: Investigation
Imperial College London researcher fired for research misconduct

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 126.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Elsevier retracts entire book that plagiarized heavily from Wikipedia

The periodic table is, as a recent book notes, a guide to nature’s building blocks. But the building blocks of said book appear to have been passages from Wikipedia.

The book, The Periodic Table: Nature’s Building Blocks: An Introduction to the Naturally Occurring Elements, Their Origins and Their Uses, was published by Elsevier last year. But in December, Tom Rauchfuss, of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, “tipped off by an Finnish editor on Wikipedia,” alerted the authors and Elsevier about the apparent plagiarism from the online encyclopedia.

On January 6, an Elsevier representative told Rauchfuss:

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