Legal Threats – Retraction Watch

Lawsuit fails to block retraction of paper claiming to link heart-related deaths to COVID-19 vaccines

*Greg J. Marchand in a photo from his research institute’s website.*

A Taylor & Francis journal has retracted a widely-read paper linking cardiac-related mortality to COVID-19 vaccines after an unsuccessful legal attempt by the lead author to block the withdrawal. That author says he is considering further legal action against the publisher.

The article, “Risk of all-cause and cardiac-related mortality after vaccination against COVID-19: A meta-analysis of self-controlled case series studies,” drew swift criticism when it was published in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics in August 2023. At the time, critics and sleuths were quick to challenge the data and methods used in the paper, which now has more than 143,000 views on the Taylor & Francis website and has been cited 15 times, including by two letters to the editor of the journal and a response from the authors, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The retraction notice, posted online January 16, states the retraction resulted from concerns that arose about the methodology of the study and the integrity and availability of the data. The authors provided a full response to the queries; however, the publisher determined the validity of the findings remained in question, the notice states. It continues:

Court: University disclosure of researcher’s misconduct did not violate due process

An appellate court has dismissed a legal challenge by a cancer researcher against her former institution, ruling the university’s misconduct investigation and disclosure process did not violate her right to due process.

In 2020, The Ohio State University determined that Flavia Pichiorri, a former postdoc in the lab of Carlo Croce, was responsible for manipulating and reusing images in four publications, spanning from her time in Croce’s lab through establishing her own lab at Ohio State. Pichiorri sued the Ohio State Board of Trustees in April 2023 alleging the release of its misconduct findings to “prestigious journals” and her new employer violated her due process rights, defamed her, and inflicted emotional distress, among other claims.

But in a December 19 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit concluded Pichiorri’s complaint never identified an adequate “liberty interest” worthy of procedural protections under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The appeals court affirmed a lower court’s decision tossing the complaint for failure to state a constitutional claim.

Court tosses out researcher’s bid to overturn funding ban

A federal court has terminated a former researcher’s lawsuit against the U.S. government agency that barred her from receiving federal funds following an agency investigation that lasted 10 years.

Ivana Frech — formerly Ivana De Domenico — sued the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in 2023 after the agency concluded she engaged in research misconduct while at the University of Utah, by “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating” images in work funded by the National Institutes of Health. In her legal complaint filed shortly after ORI’s debarment, Frech alleged the agency’s misconduct findings and debarment decision were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, unsupported by substantial evidence, and contrary to law and regulation.”

On December 12, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia threw out Frech’s suit, ruling in favor of the government’s motion for summary judgement. Summary motions are granted when a court finds no genuine dispute over material facts and a lack of conflicting evidence for a jury to weigh. The decision allows ORI’s three-year debarment – which runs through August 2026 – and misconduct conclusions against Frech to stand.

Computing society pulls works for ‘citation falsification’ months after sleuth is convicted of defamation

An international computing society has begun retracting conference papers for “citation falsification” only months after the sleuth who flagged the suspect articles was convicted for defamation in a lawsuit filed by one of the offending authors.

So far, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has pulled at least 27 of the papers, but dozens more remain, according to Solal Pirelli, a software engineer in Lausanne, Switzerland, who raised concerns about the articles more than two years ago. Some of the proceedings allegedly include plagiarized works, while others are plagued by citation stuffing.

The retraction notices from September 10 state:

Taylor & Francis threatens legal action against anonymous group’s ‘highly defamatory’ claims

Taylor & Francis has threatened legal action against an online group that has made allegations, based largely on vague insinuations rather than evidence, about the publisher and a member of its research integrity team.

The group, ScienceGuardians, is an anonymous organization whose website serves as what they call an online “journal club.” On X, it has been posting so-called “investigations” of several sleuths, publishers and organizations, what it calls “perpetrators of the PubPeer Network Mob.” Its targets have included sleuths Kevin Patrick and Reese Richardson, and others such as Science editor-in-chief Holden Thorp, and its posts are often amplified by those whose work has been questioned on PubPeer or retracted.

On September 7, the group published a string of claims on X about Nick Wise, a sleuth who joined Taylor & Francis in January as a research integrity manager. The ScienceGuardians post characterized the move as Wise “infiltrated” the publisher’s research integrity office. The post states he is responsible for 1,300 posts on PubPeer (which we have noted he does under his real name), and, ScienceGuardians claims, more than 100 others under the name “Simnia avena.”

Exclusive: Cancer researcher sues MD Anderson over misconduct finding

A biochemist who worked as a postdoc at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has sued the institution to dispute findings of research misconduct.

The researcher, Sonia Melo, now at the University of Porto in Portugal, alleges MD Anderson did not follow its own policies while conducting its investigation. Melo lost a prestigious grant in 2016 after one of her papers was retracted for containing duplicated images.

MD Anderson’s investigation concerned a paper published in Cancer Cell in 2014. On August 7 the journal marked it with a “temporary Expression of Concern” detailing duplicated and relabeled data found in the probe, which was completed in May 2024. The article has been cited 1,462 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

Editors won’t retract talc and cancer article J&J says is false in court

A journal will not retract a paper linking use of talc-based baby powder to cancer, despite legal pressure from the pharmaceutical giant that made the product.

A lawyer representing a unit of Johnson & Johnson in May asked editors of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine to retract a paper on cases of mesothelioma associated with cosmetic talc, following the court-ordered release of the identities of the people described in the article.

The lawyer alleged many of the patients had other exposures to asbestos than cosmetic talc, rendering the article’s fundamental claims “false.”

How academic leaders should respond to shock and awe

The first weeks of the second Trump administration have brought unprecedented shock and awe to science. In response, the leaders of the scientific community must cease their hand-wringing and align behind two strong approaches to dealing with the chaos: protest and candor.

I write these words as an attorney representing whistleblowers of scientific fraud. Prior to law school, I was an investigative journalist focused on this same phenomenon. Today I represent scientists and technical experts independent of whether the falsified data they have uncovered support a political agenda. Twenty years of experience investigating, exposing and, when necessary, litigating cases of scientific fraud, has, however, led me to think in terms of a different kind of politics: the politics of nonconfirmatory data. Any research-based organization – a university, a healthcare provider, a laboratory or a corporation – faces a daily challenge from data gathered by scientists within that contradict the scientific hypotheses that are bringing in the money.

Biotech company agrees to pay $4 million to settle data falsification allegations

A biotech company whose CEO faced allegations of manipulating data in papers used in NIH grant applications will pay a settlement of $4 million to resolve those allegations, the Department of Justice announced January 6.

The settlement is the latest installment in a series of allegations surrounding research by Leen Kawas, the former CEO of the company, Bothell, Wash.-based Athira Pharma. In October 2021, four months after placing cofounder and then-CEO Kawas on leave, an internal investigation found she falsified images in her doctoral dissertation and at least four research papers.

But concerns had been raised about the images as early as 2016, and Athira failed to report them, the DOJ statement noted. Those papers “were referenced in several grant applications submitted to NIH, including in a grant that NIH funded in 2019,” the statement continued.

Journal pulls pesticide article a year after authors engaged lawyer to fight retraction decision

A public health journal has retracted an article on unintentional pesticide poisonings a year after the authors enlisted a lawyer’s help to fight the decision.

Last year, we reported BMC Public Health had decided to retract the article, “The global distribution of acute unintentional pesticide poisoning: estimations based on a systematic review,” which appeared in December 2020. The article has been cited nearly 300 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, including more than 100 since the journal told the authors it would be retracted.

The authors listed affiliations with the Pesticide Action Network, a collection of organizations opposed to pesticides. In their review, they declared unintentional pesticide poisoning “a problem that warrants immediate action.”

The retraction notice cites a letter to the editor from employees of pesticide manufacturer Bayer, and the trade organization CropLife International, which criticized the analysis. The authors stood by their findings in a response, stating the critics “do not seem to have understood our estimation method.”

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