Author: Shannon Palus

NFL and NYT collide: Did studies on concussion rates leave out necessary data?

National Football LeagueThe National Football League failed to include data from diagnosed concussions in peer-reviewed studies, making the sport look safer than it is, allege the results of an investigation published yesterday in the New York Times. Now, the paper and the NFL are arguing over whether the studies were supposed to include every instance of head injury.

Early studies on concussion rates published in the journal Neurosurgery left out at least 100 instances of of concussions, the Times reported. The Times and the NFL disagree on the implications of studies based on an incomplete data set: Sources told the Times that it’s bad science, while the NFL explains that the studies were “necessarily preliminary.”

Yesterday afternoon, the sports league published a statement saying that the Times story “is contradicted by clear facts” and “sensationalized.” The statement argued that:  Continue reading NFL and NYT collide: Did studies on concussion rates leave out necessary data?

Family squabble over safety of eye therapy forces journal to pull paper

Screen Shot 2016-03-11 at 5.41.35 PM

A father and son are fighting over whether a laser therapy they describe as co-authors of a 2015 paper could be harmful to patients, prompting the journal to retract the article.

The small study suggested that the therapy could safely treat patients with glaucoma. But Tomislav Ivandic — the father — alleges that errors in how the study was reported could lead to harmful doses of laser light for patients receiving the therapy. His son and co-author, Boris Ivandic, maintains that the article is accurate.

To err on the side of patient safety, Photomedicine and Laser Surgery retracted “Effects of Photobiomodulation Therapy on Patients with Primary Open Angle Glaucoma: A Pilot Study.”

The retraction note explains the dispute:

Continue reading Family squabble over safety of eye therapy forces journal to pull paper

Lawsuit couldn’t stop four retractions for diabetes researcher

Mario Saad
Mario Saad

Four expressions of concern in the journal Diabetes have turned into retractions for Mario Saad, a move which he had tried to stop with a lawsuit.

Last August, a judge dismissed Saad’s suit against the American Diabetes Association, which publishes Diabetes, concluding that the expressions of concerns on the papers were not defamation, but part of an “ongoing scientific discourse.” Now, after an investigation at the University of Campinas in Brazil, where Saad is based, and an assessment from an ADA ethics panel (which overturned some of Unicamp’s recommendations), the journal has added to that discourse by turning the EOCs into retractions — and flagging two more of Saad’s papers with EOCs.

Together, the retracted papers have been cited more than 600 times.

As the retraction notes explain, Continue reading Lawsuit couldn’t stop four retractions for diabetes researcher

Chemist fighting to keep PhD asks University of Texas to pay $95k in legal fees

University of Texas

After the University of Texas postponed a hearing to determine whether it should revoke a chemist’s PhD, her lawyer has filed a motion to stop the proceedings, and requested the school pay her $95,099 in lawyer fees and expenses.

This is the second time UT has threatened to revoke Suvi Orr‘s PhD, following a 2012 retraction for a paper that made up part of her dissertation, which the school alleged contained falsified data. UT revoked her degree in 2014, only to reinstate it after she sued. The school is now trying to revoke it again, but the scheduled hearing on March 4 was postponed. Last week, her lawyer filed a motion for final summary judgment requesting that UT stop the proceedings and repay $95,099 in lawyer fees and expenses. The new motion makes a few requests:

Continue reading Chemist fighting to keep PhD asks University of Texas to pay $95k in legal fees

“A big mistake:” Paper about the dangers of Wi-Fi pulled for plagiarism

A report that presents guidelines for treating people allegedly harmed by signals from Wi-Fi and mobile phones was pulled two weeks after publication for plagiarism.

However, the retraction note, published in the March issue of Reviews on Environmental Health, doesn’t use the word “plagiarism,” and instead blames the move on lost citations and errors. The editor of the journal, David Carpenter, told us the report — which takes the controversial stance that WiFi can cause harm to some people — was retracted because “major sections of it had been taken directly” from another source, without reference.

The journal didn’t catch the plagiarism because it didn’t send the report out for peer review, Carpenter said:

[W]e didn’t subject the article to the full peer review that is applied for all other submissions, and that always include an on-line search for plagiarism.

The reason, Carpenter told us: the paper “was the outcome of a large committee.”

Here’s the retraction note for “EUROPAEM EMF Guideline 2015 for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of EMF-related health problems and illnesses:”

Continue reading “A big mistake:” Paper about the dangers of Wi-Fi pulled for plagiarism

Antifungal drug paper didn’t have institution’s approval

Authors have pulled a paper on an antifungal drug that is potentially toxic because it lacked final approval from their institution.

The study describes a patient who had experienced liver toxicity after taking voriconazole. During the study, the authors re-administered the drug to the patient using “a slow dose titration.” But their institution didn’t approve the study before it was published online.

Here’s the retraction note for “Successful Rechallenge with Voriconazole following Medication-Induced Hepatotoxicity,” published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.  Continue reading Antifungal drug paper didn’t have institution’s approval

Duplicate publication uprooted from plant journal

AJPS2015012714522401The American Journal of Plant Sciences has retracted a duplicate publication — and is considerately describing what happened in a checklist that accompanies the retraction note.

The checklist is similar to one that friend of Retraction Watch Hervé Maisonneuve has proposed to the Committee on Publication Ethics.

The retracted paper shares one author with the paper that it duplicated from: Irfan Talib, whose affiliation is listed on the retracted paper as the University of Agriculture in Pakistan.

Here are the relevant fields on the checklist for “Study of Genetic Diversity in Germplasm of Upland Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) in Pakistan” (a PDF on this page includes the checklist and the original paper):

Continue reading Duplicate publication uprooted from plant journal

Retracted anesthesia study “was not conducted in reality”

coverWe’ve come across a new way to say the data in a paper are not reliable:

It has been found that the study represented in the article was not conducted in reality.

That’s from the retraction note for a paper that Anesthesia Essays and Researches has retracted for data falsification. The rest of the retraction note for “Intrathecal dextmedetomidine to reduce shoulder tip pain in laparoscopic cholecystectomies under spinal anesthesia” explains:

Continue reading Retracted anesthesia study “was not conducted in reality”

Sperm paper impaired by “corporate company” analysis

2.coverWithout a certain protein, mouse sperm have motility disorders. That’s the conclusion of a paper that has itself been stopped — by errors in the data analysis, carried out by a third-party company.

The retraction note pins the analysis, which led to faulty data, on a “corporate company.” Aside from the companies that sell the kits used for substrates, assays, and detection, there’s only one company mentioned in the paper:

Generation of the mouse model was performed by the Cyagen Company (Guangzhou, China)

However, a representative of Cyagen says it does not offer the type of analysis described by the retraction note.

Here’s the full retraction note for the 2015 paper in Biology of Reproduction (which is paywalled — tsk, tsk):
Continue reading Sperm paper impaired by “corporate company” analysis

Mistaken plagiarism? Journal retracts education paper that inadvertently included others’ work

An education journal is pulling a 2014 paper about how US funding partnerships in Africa could alleviate local poverty, after the author admitted to mistakenly lifting sentences from work presented at a 2012 conference.

Author Christopher S. Collins at Azusa Pacific University took full responsibility for the plagiarism, and told us he suggested the journal retract the paper — but also proposed alternatives, such as adding the plagiarized author as a co-author, or publishing “an error sheet” that cites the material in the sentences in question.

If it’s hard to imagine how someone could plagiarize another researcher’s work by mistake, Collins explained what happened in a 900-word statement, in which he also told us how he is moving forward professionally and personally.

Here’s how some plagiarized sentences ended up in “Can funding for university partnerships between Africa and the US contribute to social development and poverty reduction?” in Higher Education, according to Collins:

Continue reading Mistaken plagiarism? Journal retracts education paper that inadvertently included others’ work