Category: elsevier

An Elsevier journal has disavowed, but not yet retracted, a paper creationists are calling a “a big deal for the mainstreaming” of intelligent design. 

The article, “Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems,” appeared in the September issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, but has been online since June. Authors Steinar Thorvaldsen, of the University of Tromsø, Norway, and Ola Hössjer, a mathematician at Stockholm University in Sweden, write: 

The authors of a 2018 paper purporting to find that the HPV vaccine guards against preterm birth have retracted the article after discovering they made a statistical error which could have masked the opposite effect. 

The researchers, from New Zealand, also failed to appropriately disclose their financial ties to a company, CSL Limited, which owns the rights to the HPV vaccine in Australia and New Zealand.

The paper, “Association of prior HPV vaccination with reduced preterm birth: A population based study,” was published in Vaccine, an Elsevier journal. According to the abstract: 

Elsevier says it is investigating how one of its journals managed to publish a paper with patently absurd assertions about the genetic inheritance of personality traits.

The paper, “Temperament gene inheritance,” appears this month in Meta Gene and was written by authors in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It states: 

If bats and pangolins could review scientific papers, they’d definitely have given the following article an “accept without revisions.” 

An international group of researchers has proposed that COVID-19 hitched a ride to this planet from space. Same for the fungal infection Candida auris. 

We’ve heard plenty of bizarre theories about the novel coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, from its having been manufactured in a Chinese lab to its links to 5G cell technology. But this one wins the prize for being, as one Twitter user said, “batshit.”

This retraction reminds us of an old joke about food in the Borscht Belt resorts: It’s terrible, and such small portions!

A group of researchers in Japan and Singapore objected to being included on a 2019 paper without their consent — and someone’s feelings appear to have been hurt for having been left off the bogus list of authors. 

The paper, “Effect of copper substitution on the local chemical structure and dissolution property of copper-doped β-tricalcium phosphate,” appeared in Acta Biomaterialia, an Elsevier title. 

Scopus is the world’s largest database of abstracts and citations, and calls itself “comprehensive,” “curated,” and “enriched.” But my recent experience with it suggests its curation could use some work.

In October 2019, I discovered that the Scopus profile of the journal Transylvanian Review contained numerous faked articles. How did I know? A few years ago, a legitimate Scopus indexed journal, Transylvanian Review, was hijacked and listed on the well-known — but controversial — Beall’s List of predatory and unscrupulous publishers.

Many of these articles appeared on the cloned website and were authored by Iraqi researchers.

The cats are back. 

As promised, Biological Conservation has replaced a controversial paper on feral cats in China whose cringeworthy title — “Where there are girls, there are cats” — prompted an outcry on social media that resulted in a temporary retraction. 

The new article boasts a different, non-gendered title: “Understanding how free-ranging cats interact with humans: A case study in China with management implications.” But it makes more or less the same point: Where there are women, there are more cats: