No delight for Turkish surgeon in authorship dispute over case study

A surgeon in Turkey has won a court case in which he argued that he deserved to be named in  a list of authors from his institution who’d published a paper. But even that doesn’t appear to have satisfied the aggrieved medic, as you’ll see. 

The article, “Late onset traumatic diaphragmatic herniation leading to intestinal obstruction and pancreatitis: two separate cases,” was written by a group from the Department of General Surgery at Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital. The list of authors comprised Tolga Dinc, Selami Ilgaz Kayilioglu and Faruk Coskun … but not Baris Yildiz, a colleague in the department. 

The paper appeared in Case Reports in Emergency Medicine, a Hindawi title, which has issued a rather byzantine expression of concern about the article: 

Continue reading No delight for Turkish surgeon in authorship dispute over case study

Chemistry researcher who studies oil wells is up to seven retractions

via Wikipedia

A chemistry researcher in India is up to seven retractions and one correction for problematic images and other issues. 

The researcher, Mahendra Yadav, was the first author on an article titled “Corrosion inhibition of tubing steel during acidization of oil and gas wells,” which appeared in 2013 in the Journal of Petroleum Engineering (JPE). Yadav, who also has a correction for similar concerns, and who has a fairly extensive entry in PubPeer, is listed as being affiliated with the Department of Applied Chemistry at the Indian School of Mines, in Dhanbad. 

According to the notice

Continue reading Chemistry researcher who studies oil wells is up to seven retractions

The first rule of Fight Club is … you do not republish Fight Club

Another Brad Pitt boxing

A pair of therapists has lost a paper in Sage Open because they’d previously published the article in another journal (more on that in a bit). 

The article, “Bridging the gap between theory and practice with film: How to use Fight Club to teach existential counseling theory and techniques,” appeared in 2013. The authors were Katarzyna Peoples, a counselor at Walden University, and Stephanie Helsel, a therapist whose LinkedIn page lists her as an adjunct professor at Waynesburg University in Pennsylvania. The two appear to have connected at Duquesne University, where each received her doctoral degrees. 

Here’s the gist of the article

Continue reading The first rule of Fight Club is … you do not republish Fight Club

“This is a case of good science:” Nature republishes retracted glacier paper

via NASA

Nature has republished a paper on glacier melt that was retracted more than a year ago after the author became aware that he had made an error that underestimated such melt.

The paper, originally titled “Asia’s glaciers are a regionally important buffer against drought,” was subjected to an expression of concern in 2017 after two researchers noticed that the author, Hamish Pritchard, of the British Antarctic Survey, had mistaken annual figures for water loss for decade-long water loss figures. It was retracted in February 2018, and is now republished as “Asia’s shrinking glaciers protect large populations from drought stress.”

Hester Jiskoot, who had reviewed the paper for us for previous posts, and is now chief editor of the International Glaciological Society’s journals, told Retraction Watch this week that the episode

Continue reading “This is a case of good science:” Nature republishes retracted glacier paper

“Great dismay:” When a lack of originality is tough to swallow

Findings in dysphagia lusoria

Researchers in India have retracted their 2013 case report of a “novel” way to treat a swallowing disorder because, well, the way wasn’t novel at all.

The article, “A novel approach for the treatment of dysphagia lusoria,” was published in the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery by a group from the Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research in Bangalore.

Per the abstract:

Continue reading “Great dismay:” When a lack of originality is tough to swallow

Study of autism and vitamin D earns retraction after questions about reliability

Marco Vertch

A pediatrics journal has retracted a 2016 article purporting to be the first randomized controlled trial on the effects of vitamin D supplements on autism over concerns about the reliability of the findings.

The paper, “Randomized controlled trial of vitamin D supplementation in children with autism spectrum disorder,” appeared in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and has been cited 27 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, earning it a “highly cited paper” designation compared to its counterparts of a similar age.

The authors came from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China, Chile, the UK and Norway. According to the abstract, the researchers looked at the effects of vitamin D supplements on 109 boys and girls with autism:

Continue reading Study of autism and vitamin D earns retraction after questions about reliability

RETRACTED: Authors’ remorse: Researchers retract paper so they can publish it in a journal with a higher impact factor

via Derek Markham/Flickr

It was bound to happen. After more than 4,700 posts, Retraction Watch has a retraction of its own.

Earlier this month, we wrote about the opaque retraction of a paper from an open-access spine journal whose editor told us that the researchers yanked their article so that they could republish it in a more prestigious outlet.

Turns out, that wasn’t the case.

Continue reading RETRACTED: Authors’ remorse: Researchers retract paper so they can publish it in a journal with a higher impact factor

Journalist’s questions lead to expression of concern for paper on melatonin and pistachios

Nicola Kuhrt

A spectroscopy journal has issued an expression of concern over a 2014 paper by researchers in Iran on the amount of the sleep hormone melatonin in pistachios after German authorities — prompted by a journalist’s questions — concluded that the analysis was in error.

The article, “Expression of concern to spectrofluorimetric determination of melatonin in kernels of four different pistacia varieties after ultrasound-assisted solid-liquid extraction,” was published in Spectrochimica Acta A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy, an Elsevier journal.

The authors, from the University of Kerman, reported: Continue reading Journalist’s questions lead to expression of concern for paper on melatonin and pistachios

Caught stealing a manuscript, author blames a dead colleague

William Faulkner

As William Faulkner wrote in Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Farzad Kiani learned that lesson the hard way.

Kiani, of Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, was the “author” of a 2018 review article in Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing titled “A survey on management frameworks and open challenges in IoT.” According to the abstract: Continue reading Caught stealing a manuscript, author blames a dead colleague

Here we go again: Paper linking vaccines to cognitive damage (in sheep) retracted

In what seems like another entry in our occasional “Retraction Watch Mad Libs” series, Elsevier has withdrawn a paper that claimed to link the aluminum in vaccines to behavioral changes in sheep.

The paper, which appeared online in Pharmacological Research in November of last year, was swiftly picked up by antivaccine advocates such as Celeste McGovern, whose article about it was posted on Children’s Health Defense, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s, site.

But it also earned harsh criticism from Skeptical Raptor and Orac, who called it Continue reading Here we go again: Paper linking vaccines to cognitive damage (in sheep) retracted