Category: Anesthesiology

Boldt’s retraction count upped to 94, co-author takes legal action to prevent 95th

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We’ve found two recent retractions and an expression of concern for Joachim Boldt, former prominent anesthesiologist and currently Retraction Watch leaderboard’s 2nd place titleholder. He now has 94 retractions.

One of the retracted articles contains falsified data, along with a researcher who didn’t agree to be a co-author, according to an investigation by the Justus Liebig University Giessen, where Boldt used to work. The expression of concern is regarding some questionable data. The other new retraction is actually one of 88 papers that a group of editors agreed to retract back in 2011, after they were “unable to verify” approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the studies.

One of those 88 papers, we’ve discovered, has still has not been retracted. According to an editor at the journal, they haven’t removed it because one of Boldt’s co-authors has threatened them with legal action. Continue reading Boldt’s retraction count upped to 94, co-author takes legal action to prevent 95th

Three more retractions for former record-holder Boldt, maybe more to come

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Justus Liebig University in Germany has been investigating concerns that Joachim Boldt, number two on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard and now up to 92 retractions, may have “manipulated” more data than previously believed.

Until now, the vast majority of Boldt’s retractions were thought to have involved inadequate ethics approval. However, new retraction notices for Boldt’s research suggest that there’s evidence the researcher also engaged in significant data manipulation.

The first retraction from the university investigation emerged last year. Two of three new notices cite the investigation specifically, and an informant at the university told us that there are more retractions to come.

Here are the retracted papers that are freshly on the record, starting with an August retraction for a 1991 Anesthesiology paper (cited 37 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge):

Continue reading Three more retractions for former record-holder Boldt, maybe more to come

Unglaublich! Boldt investigation may lead to more than 90 retractions

Ludwigshafen Hospital, via Wikimedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Klinikum_Ludwigshafen_Nordseite.jpg

Self-plagiarism alert: A very similar version of this post is being published online in Anesthesiology News, where one of us (AM) is managing editor.

Unglaublich is the German word for unbelievable, and it’s an apt description for the latest development in the case of Joachim Boldt.

Boldt, a prominent German anesthesiologist, has been at the center of a research and publishing investigation since last October, when the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia retracted a 2009 article of his over concerns of data manipulation. This morning, the German medical board overseeing the case, the Landesärztekammer Rheinland-Pfalz (LÄK-RLP),  released its findings — and they are truly stunning.

According to LAK, somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 of Boldt’s published articles might require retraction because the investigator failed to obtain approval from an institutional review board to conduct the research.

We don’t read German. But, fortunately, the LÄK-RLP announcement was accompanied by a joint letter posted to the websites of 11 major anesthesia journals. We do read English, and here’s what that letter says: Continue reading Unglaublich! Boldt investigation may lead to more than 90 retractions