Category: wolters kluwer lippincott

Pain paper scratched for authorship issues

ejacoverA group of pain researchers in Austria has lost their 2014 paper in the European Journal of Anaesthesiology because one of the authors wasn’t, well, one of the authors.

The article, “Intravenous nonopioid analgesic drugs in chronic low back pain patients on chronic opioid treatment: A crossover, randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study,” came from a team at the Medical University Vienna and Evangelical Hospital Vienna.

During the study, the authors tested whether intravenous infusions of nonopioid drugs (such as paracetamol, or Tylenol) helped people with chronic back pain who take opioids regularly. They found that people’s pain levels decreased in the days leading up to treatment, when they were receiving a placebo, but not after the actual infusion. The results likely stem from “expectation-related mechanisms,” they wrote. Continue reading Pain paper scratched for authorship issues

Heart study bleeds into three papers, one retracted and one withdrawn

janWith the increasingly hectic pace of modern life, everybody is always on the look out for time-saving tricks and tips.

Scientists at the National University of Singapore and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University certainly found one, but we really can’t recommend it: doing one randomized controlled trial (RCT) with several outcomes, and publishing them as three separate 2014 papers with “considerable overlap.”

So far, one paper has been retracted, and another withdrawn.

Continue reading Heart study bleeds into three papers, one retracted and one withdrawn

Fake peer review fells two more papers

medicineThe number of papers retracted for fake peer reviews — well in excess of 100, by our count — continues to grow.

The latest to join the list are “Rebamipide plus proton pump inhibitor versus proton pump inhibitor alone in treatment of endoscopic submucosal dissection-induced gastric ulcer: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials” and “Association study of TGFBR2 and miR-518 gene polymorphisms with age at natural menopause, premature ovarian failure and early menopause among Chinese Han women,” both published in 2014 in Medicine.

Here’s how both notices, signed by senior publisher Duncan A. MacRae, read: Continue reading Fake peer review fells two more papers

Psych paper falls afoul of journal’s plagiarism policy (hint: don’t plagiarize)

jcpharmacopharmThe Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology has retracted a 2011 paper on depersonalization disorder by a pair of authors in Azerbaijan who got a bit too familiar with their source material without proper attribution. And the journal has offered its readers a handy — if depressingly obvious — admonition about publication ethics.

The article, “Lamotrigine in the immediate treatment of outpatients with depersonalization disorder without psychiatric comorbidity. Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study,” by researchers at the Central Mental Clinic for Outpatients of Baku City, purported to find that: Continue reading Psych paper falls afoul of journal’s plagiarism policy (hint: don’t plagiarize)

Controversial editor and patient safety expert had undisclosed COIs in 9 of 10 papers

denham
Charles Denham

A new editorial in the Journal of Patient Safety accuses former editor and patient safety expert Charles Denham of having undeclared conflicts of interest in nine out of ten articles he published in the journal.

Denham was at the center of massive controversy earlier this year, when the government accused him of taking more than $11 million in kickbacks from medical supply company CareFusion. Supposedly, he took the money to influence the National Quality Forum, where Denham was a co-chair of safe practices, to endorce ChloraPrep, a CareFusion antiseptic.

Cheryl Clark, at HealthLeaders Media, was first to report on the new editorial. Here’s what the editors wrote: Continue reading Controversial editor and patient safety expert had undisclosed COIs in 9 of 10 papers

Hmm: Authors retract paper rather than allow discussion of politics of organ donation in China

transplantationOrgan donation in China, particularly the practice of using organs from executed prisoners, which the government pledged to stop by the middle of this year, has been a controversial subject. For a group of authors in that country and the U.S, a letter criticizing their work that introduced “the political situation of organ donation in China” was cause to retract their own paper.

Here’s the notice in question from Transplantation, for a study published three months ago: Continue reading Hmm: Authors retract paper rather than allow discussion of politics of organ donation in China

Paper on liver failure in babies withdrawn for lab mix-up

jpgnA paper on liver failure in infants has been retracted due to a lab error, though the author contends that the paper still holds a valuable message for pediatricians — one that could save lives.

To get to that, though, we had to make it through what turns out to be an unnecessarily vague retraction notice (more on that in a moment) in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology & Nutrition:
Continue reading Paper on liver failure in babies withdrawn for lab mix-up

CrossFit to be tied: Fitness company sues journal to retract “sloppy and scientifically unreliable work”

Lawsuits are usually dry and boring, so it’s always fun to read one with a little life.

Here’s one of those: CrossFit, the fitness program famous for its brief, strenuous exercises and passionate devotees, is suing the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NCSA), which it considers its staid competitor for the nation’s sweat and cash.

According to CrossFit, the NSCA published a study with a “falsified rate of injury,” “in an effort to portray CrossFit as ‘dangerous’ and therefore a fitness program that should be avoided.”

No matter that the study, published in NSCA’s official research journal, the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, concluded overall that CrossFit is a useful form of exercise. The suit says that the authors fudged a few statistics about participants’ injuries. Here’s the relevant section from the paper, titled “Crossfit-based high-intensity power training improves maximal aerobic fitness and body composition:”

Continue reading CrossFit to be tied: Fitness company sues journal to retract “sloppy and scientifically unreliable work”

Immunology researcher with Expression of Concern has cluster of recent retractions, corrections

j heart lung transplantXia Jiahong, an immunology researcher at Huazhong Science and Technology University in Wuhan, China, who had a paper subject to a fascinating Expression of Concern earlier this month, turns out to have had a few other entries in his retraction and correction record recently.

Here’s a retraction in the January 2014 issue of the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, for “Combined treatment with chemokine receptor 5 blocker and cyclosporine induces prolonged graft survival in a mouse model of cardiac transplantation,” a paper first published in 2010: Continue reading Immunology researcher with Expression of Concern has cluster of recent retractions, corrections

First retraction appears in case of cardiologist Poldermans

EBPOM_00219_M3Don Poldermans, the cardiology researcher in the Netherlands whose prominent career came to disgrace in a rather confusing scandal, finally has a retraction.

Poldermans, formerly of Erasmus Medical Center, copped to charges of misconduct but not of fraud in the case — which, if you speak Dutch, you can read about in detail here.

As we wrote in 2012: Continue reading First retraction appears in case of cardiologist Poldermans