by country – Page 15 – Retraction Watch

Two and a half years after findings of misconduct, stem cell researchers up to 19 retractions

A group of researchers at Aichi Gakuin University in Nagoya, Japan, continues to lose papers for duplication of images and text from their previous work, and is now up to 19 retractions.

Please see an update on this post.

Here’s a typical notice, for “Bone morphogenetic protein-induced cell differentiation involves Atg7 and Wnt16 sequentially in human stem cell-derived osteoblastic cells,” a paper published in 2016 in Experimental Cell Research, an Elsevier title:

Researcher leaves post at Australian university years after papers come under scrutiny

Three years after work from his lab was the subject of “serious allegations,” a professor at Deakin University in Australia has left his post, Retraction Watch has learned.

In an October 6, 2020 letter to staff at Deakin’s School of Medicine obtained by Retraction Watch, Dean Gary Rogers writes that Jagat Kanwar, who joined the school’s faculty in 2006, would be leaving effective October 16. Rogers continues:

Authors earn praise — but a “poorly worded” retraction notice — for flagging their errors

The authors of an October 2020 paper on the genetics of thyroid cancer are getting praise from the journal for retracting their article after learning that it contained a critical error.

The paper, “Mendelian randomization supports a causative effect of TSH on thyroid carcinoma,” had appeared in Endocrine-Related Cancer, a bioscientifica property.

Jonathan Fussey, a surgeon at Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, and the first author of the study, told us:

Dear journal: Here’s the information you left out of your retraction notice. You’re welcome.

A biology researcher in Sweden has lost a 2019 article for reasons the journal doesn’t reveal, but which we’ve learned stemmed from misconduct.

The article, “Real time large scale in vivo observations reveal intrinsic synchrony, plasticity and growth cone dynamics of midline crossing axons at the ventral floor plate of the zebrafish spinal cord,” was written by Soren Andersen, then of Uppsala University, and published in the Journal of Integrative Neuroscience.

Here’s the notice:

Hands up! Carpal tunnel expert loses 12th paper for misconduct

You can no longer count on two hands the number of retractions tallied by Young Hak Roh, an orthopedic surgeon at Ewha Womans University in Korea found guilty of “intentional, repetitive, and serious misconduct.”

The hand specialist has notched his 12th retraction in the wake of the institutional investigation, which, as we reported in July, found sweeping violations by Roh of:

“No original data”: Stem cell researchers in Japan up to nine retractions

A group of researchers in Japan who study oral stem cells has lost at least nine papers for fabricated data.

We reported on this group, from Aichi Gakuin University in Nagoya, last year after they lost two papers in PLOS ONE for image manipulation. The new retraction notice appears in the Journal of Oral Biosciences, an Elsevier journal, and refers to several other papers that the editors say are to be retracted.

Here’s the notice for “New findings for dentin sialophosphoprotein studies: Applications of purified odontoblast-like cells derived from stem cells,” which was published in 2016:

The ‘Iran Connection’: A ring of four research groups has published hundreds of dodgy papers, says whistleblower

A scheme of far-reaching research misconduct among several groups of Iranian researchers may have created hundreds of low-quality and fraudulent publications, according to a new detailed report by an anonymous whistleblower who has already forced the retraction of dozens of papers by one author in the ring.

The whistleblower, who goes by the pseudonym Artemisia Stricta, says that he or she is an expert in the field of construction engineering — the same as researchers behind the alleged misconduct.

In a new report now being made public by Retraction Watch, Artemisia draws attention to four main groups centered on Ali Nazari, Mostafa Jalal, a postdoc at Texas A&M University, Ehsan Mohseni of the University of Newcastle in Australia, and Alireza Najigivi of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. The whistleblower lists a total of 287 potentially compromised papers in the 42-page report.

Study of China’s ethnic minorities retracted as dozens of papers come under scrutiny for ethical violations

A legal journal has retracted a 2019 article on the facial genetics of ethnic minorities in China for ethics violations, and the publisher, Springer Nature, is investigating more than two dozen other articles for similar concerns.

The article, “Y Chromosomal STR haplotypes in Chinese Uyghur, Kazakh and Hui ethnic groups and genetic features of DYS448 null allele and DYS19 duplicated allele,” appeared in the International Journal of Legal Medicine.

Three of the authors were affiliated with the notorious Karamay Municipal Public Security Bureau, which the U.S. government hit with sanctions in October 2019 for being:

Fallout over Fukushima fallout papers continues as two are retracted

A radiology journal has retracted two papers about the fallout from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan over concerns that the researchers used “ethically inappropriate data” from the people they studied.

The articles, which appeared in the Journal of Radiological Protection in 2017, were written by Makoto Miyazaki, of the Department of Radiation Health Management at Fukushima Medical University, and Ryugo Hayano, a professor of physics emeritus at the University of Tokyo. As we reported, both papers were initially subject to expressions of concern last year.

The papers have been cited a total of 26 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

The retraction notice for “Individual external dose monitoring of all citizens of Date City by passive dosimeter 5 to 51 months after the Fukushima NPP accident (series): 1. Comparison of individual dose with ambient dose rate monitored by aircraft surveys” reads:

Hand surgeon in South Korea loses seven papers for “serious misconduct”

A surgery journal has retracted seven papers by a group in South Korea after an institutional investigation found evidence of “intentional, repetitive, and serious misconduct” in the work.

The articles, by a team at Ewha Womans University and Seoul National University College of Medicine, appeared in the Journal of Hand Surgery (European Volume) between 2016 and 2019.

According to the journal, in June of 2019, a reviewer raised questions about the sample size in a manuscript by the authors (most of whom remain the same across the papers) — triggering an inquiry by the editors that led to Ewha’s investigation.

That investigation found that the first author on all seven articles, Young Hak Roh, an orthopedic surgeon at Ewha, had committed sweeping violations:

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