Category: wiley

The authors of an article linking scores on a “wokeness” scale and mental health issues are  blaming political bias for the retraction of their paper in March following post-publication peer review. 

The article, “Do Conservatives Really Have an Advantage in Mental Health? An Examination of Measurement Invariance,” appeared in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology last August. It has been cited twice, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, one being the retraction notice. 

“Following publication of this article, concerns were raised by third parties about the conclusions drawn by the authors based on the data provided,” according to the March 26 notice. After investigating, the publisher and the journal “concluded that the article contains major errors involving methods, theory, and normatively biased language,” which “bring into doubt the conclusions drawn by the authors,” the notice stated. The authors disagreed with the decision.

In a blog post, one author, Emil Kirkegaard, called the journal’s action “my first politically motivated retraction.” Kirkegaard’s studies and writings are provocative, on topics including race and IQ.

We write plenty of stories about lengthy investigations and long wait times for retractions. So we are always glad when we can highlight when journals act in a relatively timely fashion.

The Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences, published by Wiley on behalf of Kaohsiung Hospital in Taiwan, seemed to exhibit some urgency after a sleuth raised concerns in December 2024 about a 2019 paper with problematic figures. 

The sleuth, who has asked us to remain anonymous but goes by “Mitthyridium jungquilianum” on PubPeer, had pointed out similarities between the 2019 paper and another article by different authors, published in Oncotarget in 2014. One figure from each work was “more similar than expected” to each other, Mitthyridium wrote, citing ImageTwin. 

A university and a publisher are teaming up to combat paper mills in a unique way: By enlisting a Ph.D. candidate.

In April, the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University in the Netherlands announced it would be collaborating with Wiley to establish a four-year research position focused on paper mills.

“Of course one Ph.D. will not fix the problem,” said Cyril Labbé of Grenoble Alpes University in France, whose lab hosted a Ph.D. student in 2014 to detect computer-generated manuscripts. “But going this way is far more constructive than resorting to empty rhetoric and wooden language, as some publishers tend to do.”

A U.K.-based surgeon who was suspended last year for conducting colorectal surgeries that caused harm to hundreds of women has had nine of his research papers flagged and one withdrawn.

In July 2024, Tony Dixon, formerly of Southmead Hospital and Spire Hospital in Bristol, England, was suspended for six months by a tribunal at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) after an investigation found the surgeries caused harm in 259 of his patients who underwent a procedure to treat rectal prolapse.

The MPTS panel extended the suspension in January for another six months, during which time Dixon is unable to operate on patients, a spokesperson for the U.K.’s General Medical Council (GMC) told Retraction Watch. 

A Wiley journal has retracted more than two dozen articles in the last few months for peer review issues. 

The articles, which appeared in Environmental Toxicology, have been retracted in batches, the latest on February 16-17, with previous sets in January and November.

The retraction notices of all 26 papers read in part:

The decision to abandon a process to re-evaluate a review recommending exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) has reignited calls for the article to be withdrawn. 

The 2019 version of the Cochrane Library review, “Exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome,” has accumulated 67 citations, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

The review recommends exercise therapy to treat ME/CFS, a treatment approach that drew widespread criticism from the patient community and researchers, who say physical activity isn’t an adequate remedy for the condition. According to the petition, Cochrane’s former editor-in-chief admitted the review in question wasn’t “fit for purpose,” although the editor-in-chief’s statement did not use that phrase.