Wiley medical journal retracts dozens of papers for manipulated peer review, with more to come

International Wound Journal, a Wiley title, has retracted 27 papers since June with notices mentioning “manipulated” or “compromised” peer review. 

“A comprehensive investigation examining manipulated peer review in this journal is in progress,” a Wiley spokesperson told Retraction Watch. The publisher anticipates retracting more articles as the investigation continues.  

The first retraction of the batch, of the November 2023 article “Analysis of the Association Between Serum Levels of 25(OH)D, Retinol Binding Protein, and Cyclooxygenase-2 and the Disease Severity in Patients with Diabetic Foot Ulcers,” appeared June 14. The notice stated Wiley and the journal’s editor in chief “concluded that the peer review process of this article was manipulated” following an investigation by the publisher. 

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Wiley corrects retraction notices for ‘inaccurate’ description of why articles were pulled

The Journal of Biochemical and Molecular Toxicology, a Wiley title, has corrected a pair of retraction notices in which “the reasons for the retraction were described inaccurately,” according to the corrections. The original notices also did not include “the authors’ disapproval of the retraction.” 

The retracted articles, “The cardioprotective effects of a combination of quercetin and α-tocopherol on isoproterenol-induced myocardial infarcted rats,” and “Protective effects of caffeic acid on lactate dehydrogenase isoenzymes, electrocardiogram, adenosine triphosphatases, and hematology on isoproterenol-induced myocardial infarcted rats,” both appeared in the same journal in 2011, but in different issues. They have been cited 35 times, collectively, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

In 2020, Elisabeth Bik posted about the papers on PubPeer, pointing out figures in the articles, which have the same corresponding author, were “unexpectedly similar” to each other. “Note that the lanes represent very different experiments,” she wrote. 

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Give or take a year or two: Case reveals publishers’ vastly different retraction times

Eric Ross

On March 1, 2022, Eric Ross, then a psychiatrist-in-training in Boston, alerted two major publishers to a pair of disturbingly similar papers he suspected had been “fabricated.” 

“The articles are written by the same corresponding author and contain much of the same unrealistic data,” Ross, now an assistant professor at the University of Vermont, in Burlington, wrote in an email whose recipients included the editors-in-chief of Wiley’s CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics and Springer Nature’s Neurotherapeutics.

Ross listed several “red flags” he felt clearly pointed to “research misconduct” in the two papers, which reported on two separate clinical trials of new antidepressant add-on medications (metformin and cilostazol). He also emphasized that fake medical research could have real consequences:

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‘Misleading’ and ‘false’ portrayal of racism-related experiences leads to retraction

A health services journal has retracted a recent commentary about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) activities at the University of Minnesota after the authors said they had unintentionally “mischaracterized the authenticity of experiences represented.” 

The four-page commentary, titled “Transactional and transformative diversity, equity, and inclusion activities in health services research departments,” had appeared in the journal Health Services Research for almost three months before its retraction in March. It was co-authored by three employees at the University of Minnesota: professor Janette Dill, lecturer Stuart Grande and Tongtan Chantarat, a research scientist at the institution. 

The article details the DEI-related activities within the school’s Division of Health Policy and Management that were implemented from 2020 onwards amid calls for racial equity. (Minneapolis, where the university’s main campus is based, was the site of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020.) They label some efforts as “performative”, but go on to outline hopes for “transformative change” in the division – referring to attempts to build trust and relationships with students and faculty belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups. 

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Anatomy journal retracts 13 papers

The Anatomical Record is correcting itself in a big way, pulling 13 articles, including several linked to paper mills

The papers, all by authors in China, were published between 2019 and 2021. 

Some were flagged in a September 2021 report on research misconduct by the Chinese government. They join a slew of articles The Anatomical Record has retracted since 2020 for similar concerns. 

Here’s an example of a retraction notice, this one for “Long noncoding RNA TUG1 facilitates cell ovarian cancer progression through targeting MiR-29b-3p/MDM2 axis,” which appeared in January 2020 from a group at the Department of Pharmacy at the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University: 

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Paper by former NIH researcher alleging ‘Ponzi schemes’ by government, pharma retracted

Mahin Khatami

Mahin Khatami, a former researcher with the U.S. National Institutes of Health who has argued in print that cancer results from ‘dark energy’ and that the government and the pharmaceutical industry are collaborating in ‘scientific/medical Ponzi schemes’ to keep people sick, has lost a paper to retraction.  

As we reported last fall, Robert Speth, a pharmacy science researcher at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., has been urging Clinical & Translational Medicine (CTM) to retract Khatami’s articles — and one in particular — for what is now more than two years.

In mid-October a spokesperson for Wiley, which publishes the journal, told us that she was trying to get more information from the editors about why Khatami’s bizarre paper was acceptable material. 

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A tale of three journals: Paper retracted when associate editor submits to the wrong title

What a difference a D makes. 

Ask Kevin Pile. Pile edits the International Journal of Rheumatic Diseases (let’s call it the IJRD), a Wiley publication. Last year, he published a guest editorial by Vaidehi Chowdhary, a rheumatologist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., on a form of kidney disease. 

But it turns out that Chowdhary, a member of Pile’s editorial team, had intended to submit her article, “When doing the right thing is wrong: Drug efflux pumps in steroid‐resistant nephrotic syndrome,” to a different journal, the Indian Journal of Rheumatology, or IJR. We think you can see how this all went down. 

According to Pile, the episode was “a tail of consecutive mistakes”:

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Retractions could mean fewer submissions for journals, says new analysis

Thomas Gaston

What affects the number of submissions a journal receives? A new study in Learned Publishing, led by staff at Wiley, aimed to find out — and the results, based in part on our database, suggest that retractions may correlate with submission numbers. We asked corresponding author Thomas Gaston to answer a few questions about the paper.

Tell us about your study — why and how you did it, and what you found.

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Food poisoning researcher up to four spoiled papers

via Wikimedia

The Journal of Food Safety has retracted two papers by a group from Iran over concerns that the work was tainted by problems with peer review and bad data. 

The articles, both of which appeared in 2018, came from the lab of Ebrahim Rahimi, of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Tehran. Rahimi, by our count, has now lost four papers for questionable peer review and findings. 

For Rahimi’s article, “Antibiotic resistance properties and genotypic characterization of enterotoxins in the Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from traditional sweets,” the retraction notice reads: 

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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:

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