The journal Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology has attached expressions of concern to 13 papers published in 2019 that a group of sleuths have flagged for potentially being from a paper mill.
In February, Elisabeth Bik wrote on her blog:
Based on the resemblance of the Western blot bands to tadpoles (the larval stage of an amphibian, such as a frog or a toad), we will call this the Tadpole Paper Mill.
As Retraction Watch readers know, reporting on the same data more than once — without notifying editors and readers — is bad for the scientific record and can lead to a retraction. Apparently, in the rush to publish findings about the coronavirus pandemic, some researchers are doing just that.
According to an editorial in JAMA today by editor in chief Howard Bauchner and two deputy editors, Robert Golub and Jody Zylke:
Last year, JAMA Ophthalmology published a study that claimed to find a link between using cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins and a reduced risk of glaucoma. In a New York Times story on the paper, lead author
Jae H. Kang, an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, suggested that statins reduce pressure in the eye, help maintain good blood flow and may help protect the optic nerve.
But Kang came to realize, while reviewing the results for another study, that her research had a major error, as she writes in a letter accompanying the retraction and replacement of the study. Kang tells Retraction Watch:
The Lancet Global Health has swiftly retracted a letter to the editor purportedly describing the experience of nurses treating coronavirus in Wuhan, China, just two days after it was published, because the authors are now saying it “was not a first-hand account.”