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Author denies Chinese censorship prompted COVID-19 retraction

The corresponding author of a recently published – and then quickly retracted – letter in The Lancet decrying the failure of the Chinese Ministry of Health to pay doctors and other health care workers says authorities did not pressure him to withdraw the piece.

The letter begins:

As the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end in China, medical personnel who have worked tirelessly to fight the omicron (B.1.1.529) variant are now facing a new challenge. Despite their heroic efforts, many of them are now struggling to receive the financial compensation they deserve.

The second sentence cites a blog post on Weixin.

Journal hasn’t retracted ‘Super Size Me’ paper six months after authors’ request

Six months after the authors of a 2012 paper requested its retraction, a marketing journal is still investigating the concerns, Retraction Watch has learned. Other researchers had failed to replicate the findings – that consumers choose portion sizes based on their desire to signal higher social status – and discovered anomalies in the data.

The paper, “Super Size Me: Product Size as a Signal of Status,” appeared in the Journal of Consumer Research and attracted media attention from The New York Times and NPR, among other outlets. The lay media interpreted the findings as helping to explain the rise in obesity in the United States. The article has been cited 180 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The same authors requested the retraction of another paper, “Dynamics of Communicator and Audience Power: The Persuasiveness of Competence versus Warmth, published in 2016 and cited 61 times, which the journal is also still investigating.

Journal pulls papers by embattled scientist at national research center in France

A nanotechnology journal has retracted two papers coauthored by a scientist in France who is accused of manipulating or reusing graphs and figures in nearly two dozen instances, Retraction Watch has learned.

The scientist, Jolanda Spadavecchia (pictured), is research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). In December, an article in the newspaper Le Monde described allegations of misconduct in Spadavecchia’s lab.

Spadavecchia is second author of one of the retracted papers, “Interaction of Thermus thermophilus ArsC enzyme and gold nanoparticles naked-eye assays speciation between As(III) and As(V);” she is senior author of the other, “One-pot synthesis of a gold nanoparticle–Vmh2 hydrophobin nanobiocomplex for glucose monitoring.”

Exclusive: Committee recommended pulling several papers by former Cornell med school dean

Following an investigation launched by Cornell University, a committee recommended pulling several papers by lung-disease researcher Augustine M. K. Choi, who served as dean of Weill Cornell Medicine until this year, Retraction Watch has learned.

Choi’s latest retraction, which brings him up to three so far, came on March 15, when The Journal of Clinical Investigation pulled “UCP2-induced fatty acid synthase promotes NLRP3 inflammasome activation during sepsis.” The paper has been cited 178 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The retraction notice reads:

Gov’t committee in Pakistan lets plagiarizing vice-chancellor off the hook

A government expert committee in Pakistan last year cleared a university vice-chancellor of plagiarism charges based on inconsistent claims of ignorance, Retraction Watch has learned.

The committee, which was convened by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), also appears to have flouted rules that would have held the vice-chancellor responsible even if he had no knowledge of any plagiarism committed by work under his supervision. HEC funds and oversees higher education in Pakistan.

“This sends the wrong message to the academic community and undermines the credibility of the HEC,” Farukh Iqbal, who brought the charges, told Retraction Watch.

The case seemed simple enough at first. But it has since spiraled into a saga that may reveal as much about the value of political muscle in Pakistan as it does about academic dishonesty.

Ob-gyn loses PhD after committee finds he made up research

It was déjà vu last month when a university in Belgium stripped Egyptian physician Hatem Abu Hashim of his doctorate after he was found to have fabricated data in his thesis.

Just weeks earlier, another Egyptian doctor, Ahmed Badawy, lost the PhD degree he had earned at a Dutch university in 2008. Abu Hashim and Badawy are both professors in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Mansoura University in Egypt.

According to an investigation by the Vrije Universeit Brussel (VUB), which awarded Abu Hashim his PhD in 2013, the researcher was in “serious violation of scientific integrity” based on “overwhelming evidence of fabrication of statistical outcomes” and “clear lack of statistical proficiency.”

Exclusive: Deepfake pioneer to lose two papers after misconduct finding of faked data

Two papers coauthored by a computer scientist whose work on visual effects has been credited in big-name Hollywood movies will soon be retracted after a publisher’s investigation found falsification of data in the articles.

Retraction Watch has also learned that the University of Southern California (USC) found that Hao Li “falsely presented his research” in the two publications while he was a professor there. The articles, both published in journals of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), describe a system to create a 3D digital avatar head from a person’s photo using artificial intelligence.

Li co-founded and is CEO of Pinscreen, a startup which is commercializing that technology. On its website, Pinscreen touts its products as “the most advanced AI-driven versatile avatars.” Besides personalized avatars for use in virtual or augmented reality systems, Pinscreen offers the ability to replace a person’s face in videos, creating what’s known as “deepfakes.”

Urologist blames Big Pharma as concerns mount over his research

With retractions piling up and more than a dozen expressions of concern now added to the list of his publishing woes, a urologist in Iran claims his research is being targeted by American drugmaker Johnson & Johnson.

Mohammad Reza Safarinejad, who offered no evidence for his allegations, says he retired from academia about 10 years ago and now runs a private clinic in Tehran. He has published scores of studies on topics ranging from treatments for premature ejaculation to saffron’s effect on semen, some of which have garnered hundreds of citations.

Starting in 2011, however, journals began pulling his papers over such issues as failure to verify data and inappropriate statistical analyses. The latest retraction, from August 2022, brings the tally up to 15, according to the Retraction Watch Database. And on January 10, The Journal of Urology issued expressions of concern for 14 of his papers, which have been cited a total of nearly 800 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The journal states:

Was a paper from Taiwan retracted because of a geopolitical dispute?

A study in the journal Smart Materials in Medicine has earned a retraction, seemingly not because of scholarly malfeasance or an inadvertent oversight, but because of a “lack of agreement on affiliation format.”

The crucial fact seems to be that almost all of the article’s authors, including its two senior authors, list affiliations in Taiwan, raising the question if the retraction is based on the geopolitical dispute about whether Taiwan is an independent nation or part of China.

The article, “Anti-microbial/oxidative/inflammatory nanogels accelerate chronic wound healing,” was published online in late 2021. The journal is not indexed in Clarivate’s Web of Science, although there are 10 citations of the article listed on the article’s web page as of January 12. There is no Twitter chatter indicating anything amiss with the article’s conclusions or methods, and no discussion about it on PubPeer.

It’s unclear when exactly the paper was retracted. Its cryptic retraction notice states:

Russian publishing watchdog decries ‘retraction misuse’ following ban on ‘LGBT propaganda’

In the wake of a new law that bans “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences” in Russia, some journals have retracted articles they fear could attract state attention, a move a publishing watchdog in the country has called “self-censorship.”

As we reported in December, the Russian philosophy journal Logos retracted an article about lesbian fashion magazines for being “in violation of standards,” citing the new ban.

More journals have followed suit, according to the Russian Council on Publication Ethics, which issued a statement decrying “retraction misuse” by journals in response to the law, though it also expressed concern for the safety of journal staff and authors if they ignored it. The statement began:

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