by journal – Page 2 – Retraction Watch

Medical societies call for BMJ to retract ‘misleading and irresponsible’ guideline

*The BMJ’s* clinical practice guideline for chronic spine pain

Thirty-four medical professional societies have called for The BMJ to retract a recently published guideline recommending against the use of interventional procedures, such as steroid or anaesthetic injections, to treat chronic back pain.

The journal published the guideline in February as part of its Rapid Recommendations program alongside a meta-analysis and systematic review of published research on the procedures, which the guideline panel used to inform its recommendations. The publications received international news coverage and enough chatter on social media platforms such as X and Bluesky to place them in the top 5 percent of all articles scored by Altmetric, a data company that tracks digital mentions of research.

The societies, led by the International Pain and Spine Intervention Society, represent clinicians who prescribe or perform the interventional spine procedures the guideline recommends against. The groups “have serious concerns about the methodology and conclusions drawn in these publications and their potential impact on patient care,” they wrote in a statement dated March 18, and summarized in a rapid response on the BMJ’s website. The statement has since been published in The Spine Journal and Interventional Pain Medicine.

Replication probe finds ‘statistically improbable data’ tied to institute in Bangladesh

A Bangladesh-based organization focused on development economics and its founder have been churning out papers filled with misstatements, inconsistencies, ethical lapses and “statistically improbable data,” according to researchers involved in an ongoing effort to replicate the work.

One journal has already retracted a paper for falsely claiming to describe a randomized, controlled trial and data collection that failed to adhere to the journal’s ethical guidelines. The study, published in the European Economic Review, was retracted following a March 11 report from the Institute for Replication, or I4R. The group is conducting a broader probe into the Global Development & Research Initiative (GDRI), the organization that implemented the intervention described in the paper.

GDRI’s founder and the study’s sole author is Asad Islam, a developmental economist at Monash University in Australia. Since 2022, Islam has received over $2 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and other organizations, according to a copy of his resume. Islam did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the retraction or the broader concerns about the work. But in a statement posted to his now-deleted account on X, he wrote:

Indian university’s channel on publisher’s platform disappears

Screenshot of Saveetha University’s Cureus channel from February 6, 2025

The Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences in India has been on our radar for a while. So when we got word the university’s channel on an open access journal platform disappeared, we were curious what might be going on.

Just this year, we reported Saveetha was among 14 universities with “questionable publication practices,” defined as unusually fast growth in research output, as measured by published journal articles.

Our 2023 investigation into Saveetha’s dental school uncovered an elaborate self-citation scheme: Undergraduates write manuscripts as part of their exams; student and faculty reviewers then insert scores of citations to papers by Saveetha faculty to inflate the university’s citation rankings.

Former Italian university head faces retractions and criminal investigations

A prominent Italian pharmacologist under investigation for embezzlement and rigging university contracts has garnered a dozen and a half retractions in the last year for image alterations and duplications.

But Salvatore Cuzzocrea, the former rector of the University of Messina, told us he did not agree with the retractions because they were decided “without clear communication,” and that none of the papers had problems that he wasn’t able to reply to.

Cuzzocrea, a professor of pharmacology at Messina, is set to face an Italian court over rigging bids for university contracts and is under investigation for allegedly embezzling more than 2 million euros worth of reimbursements.

Former VA physician admitted to altering images and deleting data, documents show

A former cancer specialist sanctioned for “recklessly falsifying data” admitted during an investigation interview that he periodically altered images, documents obtained by Retraction Watch show. He also stated “he may have inadequately or improperly labeled and organized” image files, increasing the chances the images were confused or misidentified.

Alan Lichtenstein, previously a staff physician at the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and faculty member at UCLA, engaged in research misconduct, according to a November 2024 notice in the Federal Register. Documents we obtained through a public records request revealed his admissions, made during an inquiry that preceded the misconduct ruling.

The documents also reveal a relatively swift process: The initial inquiry by a joint UCLA-VA GLA committee took from June to August 2023 to determine a full investigation should follow. The investigation committee, formally tasked in October of that year, finished its assessment in March 2024. The inquiry committee looked at 18 allegations across 12 papers, and the investigation considered 31 allegations in 13 papers.

Why RFK Jr.’s pick for a vaccine-autism review may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers

David Geier and his father Mark speak to Fox News in 2022.

When it comes to conversations about vaccines and autism, we always have plenty to write about. And the latest news that the Trump administration has tapped David Geier for a study on possible links between immunizations and autism, first reported by the Washington Post, is no exception.

Geier has a long history of promoting the debunked claim of a link between vaccines and autism, STAT and others report. He has published on the topic as recently as 2020. A December 2020 paper lists his affiliation as the Institute of Chronic Illnesses, an organization he founded with his father Mark Geier, court documents say. In 2011, the Maryland State Board of Physicians disciplined Geier for practicing medicine without a license. He’s currently listed in the HHS employee directory as a senior data analyst, the Post reports.

Geier’s first appearance in Retraction Watch was in 2017, when Science and Engineering Ethics, a Springer Nature title, retracted a paper on how conflicts of interest might influence research on the link between vaccines and autism. That paper has been cited 13 times according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

Cureus paper by dean and medical student retracted for mislabeled ECG

The ECG from the retracted paper, which the journal said was mislabeled.

A paper by a medical student and an associate professor in Florida has been retracted for errors with the central finding of the study, an electrocardiogram whose labeling “does not actually represent any of the characteristics” of the tracing.

The paper, “Silent Myocardial Infarction: A Case Report,” was published in Cureus in August 2023 and has been cited once, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The retraction notice dated January 28 details issues with the tracing:

Why do nearly 45,000 scholarly papers cite themselves?

While thousands of papers cite themselves, the percentage that do so is relatively low.
*Haunschild & Bornmann/arXiv.org*

While using bibliometric techniques to measure how disruptive research papers are to their field of study, Robin Haunschild and Lutz Bornmann stumbled across a strange phenomenon.

Just under 45,000 academic papers contained citations to themselves, they found. Haunschild and Bornmann — both information scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany — found these “paper self-citations” in journals indexed by Clarivate’s Web of Science since 1980.

Some 7,943 different journals had at least one self-citing paper, the researchers report in their study, posted on arXiv.org earlier this month. Eight journals alone covered 10% of the sample papers, and 129 publications covered the top third. More than 31,000 of the papers appeared under the ‘article’ category in Web of Science, followed by just over 6,000 listed as ‘corrections’ and just under 2,500 as ‘reviews.’

A second article describing new pain syndrome under scrutiny

Among the critiques of a new article is a figure (left) duplicated from a retracted paper (right).

A second paper on a contested pain disease is under investigation after sleuths raised questions about the methodology and possible fabrication of data.

Last year, Scientific Reports retracted a paper comparing the condition, which the authors dubbed Middle East Pain Syndrome, to rheumatoid arthritis for failing to establish a clear distinction between the two ailments.

The new article, published in January in BMC Rheumatology with two overlapping authors, compares MEPS to fibromyalgia, claiming it is distinct for its “hand tufts spur-like excrescences.”

Food scientist impersonated as an editor and reviewer in Frontiers articles

Frontiers has issued a retraction and multiple corrections for papers in several of its journals after the publisher discovered a reviewer had been impersonated.

Alla El-Din Bekhit is listed as the editor of the retracted article, a study of the potential anti-cancer effects of asparagus extract published in Frontiers in Pharmacology in May 2023. According to the retraction notice, dated January 26, the article contained duplicated images and “concerns were raised regarding scientific validity of the article.” The notice continues:

Further, the investigation confirmed that a non-genuine email address was used to impersonate Alaa El-Din Bekhit and the real Alaa El-Din Bekhit did not take any actions on this manuscript.

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