Ivan Oransky

Journal retracts hotly contested paper on vaping and heart attacks

The Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) today retracted a paper it published last year claiming that vaping was linked to heart attacks.

The paper, by Dharma Bhatta and Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco, has faced a barrage of criticism since its publication last June — and Glantz’s claims, in a blog post, that the study was “More evidence that e-cigs cause heart attacks.”

Brad Rodu, a professor at the University of Louisville who comments frequently on vaping, asked the journal to retract the study shortly after it was published. The study, he said, had failed to account for which happened first — heart attacks or vaping. The contretemps was the subject of a July 2019 story by USA Today:

Retractions could mean fewer submissions for journals, says new analysis

What affects the number of submissions a journal receives? A new study in Learned Publishing, led by staff at Wiley, aimed to find out — and the results, based in part on our database, suggest that retractions may correlate with submission numbers. We asked corresponding author Thomas Gaston to answer a few questions about the paper.

Tell us about your study — why and how you did it, and what you found.

Weekend reads: How to squander a $10 million grant; paid to publish; funding lotteries

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

the retraction of a Nature paper by Harvard researchers;
13 retractions and 61 expressions of concern for a controversial psychology researcher;
the temporary withdrawal of a paper on cats and female students;
a fourth retraction in the STAP stem cell scandal.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Journals retract 13 papers by Hans Eysenck, flag 61, some 60 years old

Two journals have retracted 13 papers co-authored by the late — and controversial — psychologist Hans Eysenck, following a university investigation that found dozens of his papers to be “unsafe.”

One of the journals, Perceptual and Motor Skills, subjected 36 of Eysenck’s papers to expressions of concern, while another — Psychological Reports — subjected 25 of them to the same flag. Both journals are published by SAGE.

A May 2019 report by King’s College London into the work of Eysenck and Ronald Grossarth-Maticek, apparently of the University Heidelberg, that more than two dozen papers be retracted. Among other issues, the report cited

Weekend reads: Highly cited scientist was manipulating citations; ‘botched and unnecessary’ operations; a flawed coronavirus study

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

the retraction of a preprint on coronavirus;
a finding of misconduct at Michigan State;
the resignation of an entire editorial board over a dispute with a journal’s publisher;
and a former grad student who forged a PI’s authorship — and got smacked down for it.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

A preprint on coronavirus was retracted over the weekend. Here’s why that was a good moment for science.

Did you know that a preprint on the 2019 novel coronavirus was retracted this weekend? It happened so fast, you might have missed it.

Weekend reads: A Harvard prof in handcuffs; an alleged PhD for grant scheme; unethical reviewer behavior outed

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

growing concerns — and a new retraction — in a case involving spider research that we first reported on two weeks ago;
an apology in a retraction notice for a paper about apologizers;
a retraction at NEJM.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

NEJM paper retracted for “inaccuracies in the analytic database and data analyses”

Until yesterday, the New England Journal of Medicine had retracted only 24 papers. Now that tally is 25.

As our Ivan Oransky reports at Medscape:

Duplicated study of apologizers leads to a retraction — and an apology

The Journal of Consumer Research has retracted a 2019 paper because it overlapped significantly with a study previously published in Chinese by the same authors.

But whether both authors agreed to the previous submission is a subject of some confusion on the part of one of them.

The journal, published by Oxford Academic, added “RETRACTED” to the beginning of the paper’s title, “Sorry by Size: How the Number of Apologizers Affects Apology Effectiveness,” but did not include a retraction notice, nor any other explanation. The notice, second author Sam Maglio, of the University of Toronto, told Retraction Watch, will read:

Weekend reads: Texas A&M vs. Harvard; scientific publishers a “threatened species”; six researchers with “greed and a disregard” for rules

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

A researcher starting 2020 off with a forthright retraction;
A journal retracting a 30-year-old paper by a controversial psychologist;
A look at whether reproducibility has improved.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

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