by publisher – Page 21 – Retraction Watch

Journal drops the ball as it tries to juggle an embargo request and Elsevier’s temporary removal policy

So much for author instructions.

Researchers who’d submitted a paper to Social Science & Medicine on smoking in public places briefly lost their article after the journal had some confusion about an embargo they’d requested.

The article, “Neighbourhood greenspace and smoking prevalence: Results from a nationally representative survey in England,” has since been republished in the journal, an Elsevier title. So harm, no foul. But the initial appearance of the paper online earlier this fall surprised senior author Benedict Wheeler, of the University of Exeter Medical School:

Researchers tried to correct a figure after questions on PubPeer. Then the real trouble started.

Pro tip to would-be fraudsters: If you’re going to submit new figures to support your claims, make sure they’re not obviously fake.

That’s a lesson a group of cancer researchers learned the hard way for their 2016 article in DNA and Cell Biology titled “miR-106a-5p suppresses the proliferation, migration, and invasion of osteosarcoma cells by targeting HMGA2.” The corresponding author was Fang Ji, of The Second Military Medical University in Shanghai.

The paper appeared on PubPeer earlier this year, where a commentor noted dryly:

Following Retraction Watch and PubPeer posts, journal upgrades correction to a retraction

A year ago, we posted on the case of a paper in the Journal of Cell Science in which editors:

allowed a group of researchers in Italy to correct a 2016 paper with questionable images after a faculty member in their institution — and a frequent co-author of the group’s — said his investigation found no reason to doubt their integrity.

At the time, the journal told us they were unaware that Fulvio Magni — to whom they were directed “as the person who oversees ethics issues for the institute” — was a frequent co-author with the researchers who had authored the corrected paper.

The same day we posted on the case — Oct. 29, 2019 — a PubPeer commenter pointed out new issues in Figure 4 of the paper. And now, the journal has retracted the paper:

Editors say they won’t retract intelligent design paper despite subject being “not in any way a suitable topic” for their journal

The editors of a journal that published a highly controversial paper on intelligent design say retraction is off the table, at least for the moment.

The drama involves an article in the September issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, an Elsevier title, titled “Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems.” The authors, Steinar Thorvaldsen, of the University of Tromsø, Norway, and Ola Hössjer, a mathematician at Stockholm University in Sweden, tried to make the case that they saw evidence of a Master Builder in biological systems:

The bizarre anti-vaccine paper a Florida professor has been trying to have retracted to no avail

Fly, meet elephant’s back.

Robert Speth has spent the last 19 months trying to get two of the world’s largest medical publishers to retract an article he considers to be a “travesty” of pseudoscientific claims and overtly anti-vaccination bias. In the process, he has uncovered slipshod management of a journal’s editorial board that angered, among others, a former FDA commissioner.

The paper that triggered Speth, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., appeared in 2018 in Clinical and Translational Medicine. Titled (awkwardly) “Cancer; an induced disease of twentieth century! Induction of tolerance, increased entropy and ‘Dark Energy’: loss of biorhythms (Anabolism v. Catabolism),” it was written by Mahin Khatami, formerly a program director at the National Institutes of Health.

Although you might not be familiar with Khatami, who was born in Iran but trained in the United States, her bio speaks (loudly) for itself:

Elsevier journal disavows, but does not retract, paper on intelligent design

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:

‘Prince of panspermia’ has a paper retracted, and sues Springer Nature

A neuroscientist once dubbed the “prince of panspermia” has lost a 2019 paper claiming that Venus may hold life seeded from Earth.

The paper, titled “Life on Venus and the interplanetary transfer of biota from Earth,” was written by Rhawn Gabriel Joseph, whose affiliations have included outfits called Astrobiology Associates of Northern California San Francisco and the Brain Research Neuroscience Laboratory.

A once-avid YouTuber, Joseph also has a consulting business, charging $500 for a 30-minute phone call, $500 an hour to review documents and $250 per page for his writing services. He’ll also sit with you face-to-face (six feet away and fully masked, we trust) for three hours if you have $5,000 for the privilege.

That’s high-priced lawyer money. Speaking of which, according to Vice, Joseph in 2014 tried to use the courts to force NASA to investigate what he believed was evidence of life on Mars.

“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:

“A wholly frustrating and embarrassing process”: Authors retract paper on HPV vaccine and preterm birth

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:

Springer Nature journal takes eight months to retract paper after US government misconduct finding

A Springer Nature journal waited eight months to retract a paper flagged by the Office of Research Integrity for containing fabricated data — a delay the publisher blames on “staff changes and human error.”

The 2014 article in Neuropsychopharmacology by Alexander Neumeister included “falsified and/or fabricated research methods and results,” according to the findings of the ORI investigation, which were reported in late December of last year. But the retraction notice is dated September 8, 2020.

The notice itself sounds a lot like a child who says “I’m invisible because my eyes are closed.” It reads:

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