by country – Retraction Watch

Journal retracts letter about pager explosion injuries in Lebanon

The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery has retracted a letter it published about a purportedly novel injury observed during the two deadly waves of pager explosions in Lebanon and Syria in 2024, reportedly linked to Israeli intelligence services.

The original letter, “‘Pager’s trauma’ as a new and destructive type of blast injuries,” published Dec. 26, 2024, had not been indexed by Clarivate’s Web of Science. It focused on the September 2024 attacks in Lebanon and Syria, which led to dozens of deaths and thousands of injuries among Hezbollah fighters and some civilians. The attacks were carried out by boobytrapping walkie-talkies and pagers with explosives and are widely believed to have been carried at the direction of Israeli authorities.

The new letter argued such injuries are novel, dubbing them “Pager’s trauma.”

The letter read:

Dental researchers fabricated data in two articles, university investigation found

Two former professors and a former graduate student at Osaka Dental University in Japan reused images between three published articles, according to the findings of an institutional investigation.

The school released the findings of its investigation in January, with a full report in Japanese. The university has not responded to our request for comment.

According to a machine translation of the report, the university found former graduate student Helin Xing, former assistant professor Isao Yamawaki, and former associate professor Yoichiro Taguchi were involved in misconduct. A recent paper of Taguchi’s lists his affiliation as Matsumoto Dental University in Nagano, Japan. He and Xing have not responded to our requests for comment. We were not able to find a current affiliation or email address for Yamawaki.

Osaka misconduct investigation leads to four retractions, with more likely

Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University

A microbiologist formerly of Osaka University has lost four papers, with at least one more retraction pending, after an institutional investigation found fabrication and falsification of data in his published research.

The investigation found evidence of manipulated results in seven of the papers examined. The university published the notice of its completed inquiry, along with a full report in Japanese, on February 6.

The report did not name the scientists or cite the articles investigated, but it did include a figure or table with altered data from each paper. Three papers retracted in February mentioned an investigation by Osaka University in the notices; Yukihiro Hiramatsu was the first author on all three. Comparing the figures in the report with ones in Hiramatsu’s publications, we identified the seven articles. (See the list here.)

Don’t tread on me: Snake paper retracted for ‘soft-stepping’ technique

*Bothrops jararaca* is a pit viper species prevalent in southeastern Brazil.
*Credit: Butantan Institute*

Agitating snakes isn’t something most of us would do on purpose, but for a group of researchers, it was central to their research. The authors of a May 2024 paper in Scientific Reports achieved that by “softly” stepping on the head, tail and mid-body of newborn, juvenile and adult pit vipers to see how often they would bite.

But the technique wasn’t quite what the authors’ ethics committee had in mind when approving the study. The journal retracted the paper last month, noting the ethics approval the authors received “did not include newborn snakes or the use of the ‘soft stepping’ method.”

Lead author João Miguel Alves-Nunes blamed the retraction on a “communication error” by the ethics committee. The researchers believed they had approval both to step on snakes and to include newborn snakes, Alves-Nunes, a former researcher at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil, said in an email to Retraction Watch.

ICYMI: Dean under investigation for plagiarism following Retraction Watch story: report

A university dean is being investigated for plagiarism following our coverage of accusations against him, a Bulgarian newspaper reported last month.

The Academic Ethics Commission in Bulgaria has launched an investigation into Milen Zamfirov, dean of the faculty of educational sciences at Sofia University, Dnevnik reported February 25.

The accusations concern a 2021 paper he wrote with his colleague Margarita Bakracheva, “In Search of Integrativity of Sciences: the Principle of Supplementarity in the Story of Pauli and Jung.” As we reported in December 2024, the paper “seems to have significant overlap” with other sources.

Journal updates retraction notice to include plagiarism following Retraction Watch report

The editor-in-chief of a journal updated a retraction notice to acknowledge the data in the paper were “completely plagiarized” following allegations in a letter to the editor that were the subject of a Retraction Watch post last week.

The original retraction, requested by the authors, cited only “major errors in data.” The notice for the October 2023 paper, which is signed by the Indian Journal for Critical Care Medicine (IJCCM) editor-in-chief Atul Kulkarni, now reads:

Following scrutiny of the article further and other facts brought to the notice of the IJCCM, I have decided to change the reason for the retraction. This article is withdrawn after having been found that the data was completely plagiarized (in toto) from the work of another researcher.

Researcher alleges group stole thesis data presented at conference

A researcher in India has asked a journal to amend a retraction “for major errors in data” because, he says, the data weren’t wrong – they were stolen.

The October 2023 paper, “Prediction of Weaning Outcome from Mechanical Ventilation Using Ultrasound Assessment of Parasternal Intercostal Muscle Thickness,” was originally published in the Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine (IJCCM). The journal is published by JP Medical, and is indexed in Clarviate’s Web of Science.

The undated retraction statement says the authors “wish to withdraw the article . . . due to major errors in data.” The DOI no longer links to the article, and the full text is no longer available online.

In a letter to the editor published Nov. 30, 2024 in IJCCM, researcher Sundara Kannan alleged the authors stole his data.

Journals investigating dozens of papers by leading Canadian urologists

A high-profile Canadian urologist received an editorial expression of concern for one of his papers this month, after anonymous comments on PubPeer flagged suspected data duplication in dozens of his articles.

By our count, sleuths have flagged 30 papers co-authored by Martin Gleave, a professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada and co-founder of the Vancouver Prostate Centre. According to the posts on PubPeer, images in these studies appear “much more similar than expected” based on analyses using the similarity detection software ImageTwin. The issues include similarities within individual papers and across multiple publications, with some comments suggesting the alleged reuse of tumor specimens.

Gleave, an appointee to the Order of Canada for his work developing treatments for prostate cancer, has received more than $120 million (approximately $84 million USD) in funding throughout his career, according to his profile on the Vancouver Prostate Centre website. He is also a co-founder of OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals, with several of the findings from the flagged papers connected to the company and related patents.

Exclusive: Researcher who received settlement to leave University of Iowa won’t be starting new job

A cardiology researcher who left the University of Iowa with a six-figure settlement earlier this year won’t be starting the new job he’d lined up at the Providence VA Medical Center, Retraction Watch has learned.

Justyn Charon, a spokesperson for the Providence VA, previously told us the researcher, Kaikobad Irani, would begin his new position “around November.” When we followed up, Charon confirmed, “there is currently no plan for Dr. Irani to be employed by VA Providence.”

In the meantime, the University of Iowa in Iowa City has launched an investigation about the leak of a report regarding Irani to Retraction Watch that appears to be an attempt to identify the source of the document.

Dean in Bulgaria accused of plagiarism

Earlier this year, Milen Zamfirov, dean of the faculty of educational sciences at Sofia University in Bulgaria, was named an exceptional scientist in the social sciences and humanities. As part of the accolades at the prestigious Pythagoras Science Awards from the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science, Zamfirov received a commemorative plaque, diploma, and a cash prize of 8,000 BGN (US $4,300).

Now, he is accused of plagiarising past research in a paper he co-authored with Margarita Bakracheva, who received a certificate of excellence from the Union of the Bulgarian Scientists earlier this year.

Their study, titled, “In Search of Integrativity of Sciences: the Principle of Supplementarity in the Story of Pauli and Jung,” was published in Bulgarian in 2021.

But the paper seems to have significant overlap with other sources, according to Irene Glendinning, a researcher and consultant based in Leicester, UK.

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