by journal – Retraction Watch

“Game-changer” breast cancer study retracted as Indiana researcher out of his post

A group of cancer researchers whose work has been questioned by sleuths has been hit with their third retraction in less than a year.

Today, Science Translational Medicine (STM) withdrew a 2021 breast cancer study by former Indiana University researcher Yujing Li and 12 other authors for image falsification. The immunotherapy study had been described by senior author Xiongbin Lu as a “game-changer” for triple negative breast cancer in a 2021 IU press release.

The paper’s April 15 retraction notice states that a joint research misconduct investigation involving Indiana University, The Ohio State University, and the University of Maryland, College Park determined “falsification occurred during creation of figure S9C.” The institutions alerted the American Association for the Advancement of Science of the misconduct late last year and requested the paper’s retraction, according to Meagan Phelan, a spokesperson for AAAS, which publishes STM.

BMJ retracts most of a special issue for ‘compromised’ peer review and ‘improbable device use’

BMJ’s Journal of Medical Genetics has retracted the bulk of a seven-year-old special issue for an “irreparably compromised” review process and “improbable device use.”

Of the eight papers in the 2019 special issue, seven were retracted, including an editorial that “almost exclusively” referred to the other now-retracted papers, according to a statement from the journal.

According to the retraction notice published today, the journal’s investigation found the guest editor for the issue selected the peer reviewers, the majority of whom were affiliated with Nanjing University in China. The guest editor is not named in the issue. The publisher’s investigation also found evidence of compromised peer review in almost all articles, the notice states.

Could a national database of scientific misconduct rulings stop repeat offenders?

*Mark Barnes (courtesy of Ropes and Gray LLC)*

In an editorial published today in Science, Michael Lauer and Mark Barnes call for greater transparency in investigations of scientific misconduct with an aim toward making sure prospective academic employers know of applicants’ past misdeeds. As we’ve reported, in the absence of transparency around findings of misconduct, some universities have discovered too late they hired someone who has turned out to be a serial offender.

Lauer, who served as Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health from 2015-2025, and Barnes, a partner at Ropes and Gray LLC in Boston who has served as acting research integrity officer at several U.S. institutions, propose a tracking system similar to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB). That database logs adverse actions and malpractice payments as a way to inform decisions about individual physicians by hospitals. As Lauer and Barnes note, federal law “requires a hospital to query the NPDB whenever it is considering a new applicant for medical privileges, as well as to conduct repeat queries every 2 years to make sure information on staff is up to date.” We asked Barnes to elaborate on the ideas presented in the op-ed. (He notes he is speaking only for himself here.)

Retraction Watch: You write in your op-ed universities may avoid sharing personal information — presumably including results of misconduct investigations — for fear of legal claims of defamation or violations of privacy. Are those fears valid?

Publisher changes citation, registration policies following Retraction Watch investigation

*Wolters Kluwer global headquarters in the Netherlands*

The Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer has scrapped some of its citation and study-registration requirements at a top-ranked surgery journal founded by the U.K. plastic surgeon Riaz Agha, Retraction Watch has learned.

The move follows our investigation last month that found mandatory citation of reporting guidelines developed by Agha and published in the International Journal of Surgery (IJS) had inflated the impact factor of the open-access title, making it more attractive to authors and readers.

A blanket requirement to register all human studies before manuscript submission, contrary to recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, appeared to serve another of Agha’s business interests: a paid research registry he founded in 2015.

Judge tosses lawsuit over controversial Paxil ‘Study 329’

A judge has dismissed a legal challenge aimed at forcing Elsevier to retract a long-criticized study that concluded the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective for teens.

The 2001 paper, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), has faced scrutiny for more than 20 years by critics who say the study has led to unwarranted and potentially harmful prescribing of the drug to youth. As we reported last October, the journal placed an expression of concern on the paper shortly after a lawsuit was filed by attorney George W. Murgatroyd III against the journal’s owner, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), and Elsevier, which publishes the title.

In his complaint, filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Murgatroyd claimed the journal is violating the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA) by continuing to “publish, distribute, and sell a fraudulent scientific article that contains material facts” that mislead the public and endanger adolescent mental health and safety. AACAP and Elsevier are profiting from the article by charging readers to buy access to the paper, according to the complaint.

BMJ retracts cardiac stem cell paper, removes authors months after sleuths flag data ‘mismatch’

The BMJ has retracted a paper on stem cell therapy for heart failure after sleuths flagged the work for “serious” inconsistencies in data.

Published in October, the paper reported the results of a phase III clinical trial of more than 400 patients in Shiraz, Iran, looking at whether stem cell therapy lowers the risk of heart failure after a heart attack. The journal announced the results in a press release, and news of the findings appeared in several outlets. New Scientist called the study the “strongest evidence yet that stem cells can help the heart repair itself.”

A week after the study was published, sleuths took to PubPeer to point out inconsistencies between the data reported in the article and the dataset uploaded with it. The concerns included a “curious repeating pattern” of records in the dataset and a high number of integers for the height and weight of patients.

The Lancet retracts half-century-old unsigned commentary on talc for undisclosed industry ties

The Lancet has retracted a 49-year-old unsigned commentary on the safety of cosmetic talc after two researchers discovered the author was a paid consultant to Johnson & Johnson, at the time a leading producer of talc products.

The anonymous commentary has been used for decades by corporate defense attorneys to claim scientific proof of talc products’ safety, according to critics. But one such attorney says the paper “would not be relied upon to any significant degree.”

Published in 1977, the article argued against government-mandated regulatory testing for asbestos in cosmetic talc. Around that time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was considering such monitoring, a task that ultimately became the responsibility of cosmetics companies.

Embattled journal brand mistakenly invites out-of-scope researchers to join board

Springer Nature has launched a new agriculture journal under the troubled Cureus brand. As part of its launch, the publisher invited at least one researcher with irrelevant specialities to join its editorial board, Retraction Watch has learned.

The new journal comes after Clarivate’s Web of Science delisting the original and long-embattled Cureus Journal of Medical Science in October for concerns about article quality.

The flagship Cureus was founded in 2009 by John Adler Jr., a Stanford University neurosurgeon, as an open-access journal for clinicians who didn’t have grants. Springer Nature acquired the journal in December 2022. In 2024, the publisher launched Cureus Journals — open-access journals on engineering, computer science and business — using the brand name.

Controversial editorial practices boost plastic surgeon’s publishing empire

In the summer of 2022, a researcher in Indonesia submitted a case report to Annals of Medicine and Surgery, one of several open-access journals founded and edited by Riaz Agha, a plastic surgeon and publisher in London. The manuscript, Agha responded, needed various changes to be considered for publication.

Among them: It should cite Agha’s paper on how to write surgical case reports, published two years earlier in the highly ranked International Journal of Surgery (IJS), the plastic surgeon’s flagship publication.

“Thanks Sir,” the Indonesian researcher replied. “I’ve added [the reference] to the manuscript.”

Although practices vary, the journals Agha founded aren’t alone in requiring authors to follow, and sometimes even cite, reporting guidelines. But a conflict of interest can arise when an editor demands authors reference guideline papers published in the editor’s own journals – as Agha does in his instructions to authors, reporting guidelines and editorial correspondence.

Former Mount Sinai postdoc falsified images in grant updates, ORI says

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has sanctioned a former postdoctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York for manipulating images in two grant updates and a manuscript.

Chen-Yeh “George” Ke committed research misconduct by intentionally falsifying images in an unpublished manuscript supported by federal funds and by reporting the fabricated results in two research performance progress reports, according to a summary published March 10 on the ORI website and to be published in the Federal Register.

Ke, now a manager at Level Biotechnology in Taiwan, according to LinkedIn, did not return messages seeking comment. A spokesperson from Mount Sinai acknowledged our message but did not comment before our deadline.

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