Japanese university asks surgeon to retract eight ‘fraudulent’ papers

Showa University Hospital

An oral surgeon in Japan falsified images in several papers, granted authorship to whomever he saw fit and stored experimental data sloppily, according to an investigation by Showa University in Tokyo, where the physician was a lecturer at the time of the misconduct. 

As a result of the findings, the university has recommended retracting eight papers by the surgeon, Masayasu Iwase, according to a translation commissioned by Retraction Watch of a December report from the committee that investigated the case. 

The university also is discussing revoking the graduate degrees of two of Iwase’s former students whose dissertations were based on the “fraudulent” papers, the report explains.

Tadashi Hisamitsu, Showa’s president, wrote on the university’s website:

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Police investigating after Polish journal accuses authors of ‘crime of plagiarism’

Polish police are investigating alleged plagiarism in a series of articles by a group of researchers at the University of Life Sciences in Lublin, Retraction Watch has learned.

A university commission also is looking into the allegations, which one of the authors told Retraction Watch had “greatly damaged” his career. While plagiarism is not usually considered a crime, it can be prosecuted under national copyright laws in Poland and elsewhere

The alleged plagiarism was first discovered by a reviewer for Postępy Mikrobiologii – Advancements of Microbiology, a quarterly of the Polish Society of Microbiologists, said Radosław Stachowiak, who worked as the journal’s deputy editor-in-chief until the end of last year. 

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Russian philosophy journal cites law banning “LGBT propaganda” in retraction

A Russian philosophy journal has retracted a paper about lesbian fashion magazines, citing a newly passed law that bans “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences.” 

The journal Logos, which describes itself as “​​the leading Russian-language journal in the fields of philosophy, social sciences, humanities and cultural studies” and counts the philosopher Slavoj Žižek as a member of its editorial council, earlier this month retracted a paper titled “Looking good: The lesbian gaze and fashion imagery.” 

The paper, by Reina Lewis of the London College of Fashion, still appears online, but an entry on the Russian database eLIBRARY indicates it was retracted for being “in violation of standards.” The notice continued: 

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Penn says access to former Twitter employee’s thesis was ‘mistakenly closed off’ following Elon Musk tweets

Elon Musk

An Ivy League university is blaming an “error” for the brief disappearance of the doctoral dissertation of a former Twitter employee whose writings on gay dating apps drew public scorn from Elon Musk.

As Fox News first reported, on Saturday the PhD thesis by Yoel Roth, who until November had been Twitter’s head of trust and safety, seemed to have been removed from the University of Pennsylvania’s ScholarlyCommons website. 

A Penn official told Fox: 

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Iran’s science minister earns four retractions

The science minister of Iran has amassed four retractions recently over concerns about the authenticity of chemicals used in the studies. 

Mohammad Ali Zolfigol, who has held the post of Minister of Science, Research and Technology for more than a year, is first or second author in all four of the papers, which appeared between 2015 and 2016 in journals published by the UK Royal Society of Chemistry. 

The authors acknowledge that they had been using the wrong substance – a molecule called tricyanomethane – claiming to have purchased a fake form of the chemical. But Zolfigol and his colleagues object to the retractions, on grounds that aren’t clear. 

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Former Iranian government official up to two retractions, five corrections

Esmaeil Idani

A lung specialist who has held positions in Iran’s Ministry of Health and National Medical Council now has two retractions and five corrections of his published papers for re-using text. 

In the case of the retractions, the re-used text was an entire paper. 

Esmaeil Idani (who also spells his last name “Eidani”), now affiliated with Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, is a middle author on two papers retracted for republication, and corrections to two of his papers acknowledge duplicated text with each other and a third paper. 

According to an online CV, Idani has worked as “Deputy Secretary of the Medical Education and Training Council” for Iran’s Ministry of Health and Medical Education, and from 2013-2017 was chairman of the Supreme Medical Council of Iran. He has not responded to our request for comment. 

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Didier Raoult papers earn expressions of concern as criminal investigation gets underway

Didier Raoult

A leading microbiology society has issued expressions of concern for four six papers from a group in France led by the controversial scientist Didier Raoult, whose lab is under investigation by the  University of Aix Marseille for “serious malfunctions.” 

The move follows the release last month of a 157-page report by investigators related to France’s Health Ministry the university into Raoult’s research and news that a criminal investigation is underway

As we and others have reported, Raoult was among the most prominent floggers of the notion that hydroxychloroquine could treat COVID-19. But while his studies of the drug might have influenced certain American politicians, they and other research from his group haven’t withstood the scrutiny of his peers

He also has attempted to silence critics of his work, notably Elisabeth Bik, using legal threats and harassment

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Chinese hospital sanctioned at least 35 scientists for research misconduct

Retractions are rolling along for numerous scientists affiliated with the Jining First People’s Hospital in Shandong, China, who were sanctioned in December for research misconduct such as tampering with data and fabricating research.  

For example, one article, “Lycium barbarum polysaccharides alleviates oxidative damage induced by H2O2 through down-regulating microRNA-194 in PC-12 and SH-SY5Y cells,” which appeared in Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry in 2018, was retracted on August 31. 

The retraction notice stated:

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When an independent replication isn’t really independent

Matt Warman

My laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School studies genetic diseases that affect the skeletal system.  We became interested in the protein osteocalcin after Gerard Karsenty at Columbia University reported in several papers using knockout mice – mice lacking the genes which produce osteocalcin – that osteocalcin is a bone-derived hormone that affects glucose metabolism, insulin production, male fertility, muscle mass, and cognition.  If osteocalcin functions similarly in humans, then osteocalcin becomes an exciting and clinically important protein. 

To independently confirm these findings, we created our own osteocalcin knockout mouse strain. We examined glucose metabolism and male fertility in our mice and found none of the effects reported by Karsenty and colleagues; we reported our findings in May 2020.  A group in Japan created a third osteocalcin knockout mouse strain which also failed to confirm Karsenty and colleagues’ findings.  

In earlier years my laboratory also could not independently confirm other results reported by the Karsenty group: a paper I co-authored in 2011 found no evidence of the Wnt co-receptor LRP5 affecting blood serotonin levels, contrary to what Karsenty’s lab published.

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Doctor faces apparent retaliation after alleging data manipulation in published trial

Fouad Fayad

A rheumatologist was suspended from a professional society and his license to practice medicine was threatened after he raised concerns about data manipulation in a published study for which he recruited patients, according to documents seen by Retraction Watch. 

The study, “Added Value of Anti-CD74 Autoantibodies in Axial SpondyloArthritis in a Population With Low HLA-B27 Prevalence,” was published in Frontiers in Immunology in 2019 and has been cited 13 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. In its acknowledgements, it listed Fouad Fayad, a rheumatologist at the University of Saint Joseph and Hotel-Dieu de France University Medical Center in Beirut, as one of the researchers who recruited patients for the trial. 

Fayad alleged that the researchers tested patient samples multiple times and used a mix of old and new values in their analysis. After he reported his concerns to the journal and then the university, which both concluded that they could not confirm or refute his allegations, he has faced apparent retaliation, including the suspension of his membership in the Lebanese Society of Rheumatology. 

In comments to Retraction Watch, the corresponding author for the study noted that the two investigations did not find data manipulation, and said the issue was “based on a background of personal and professional conflicts.” 

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