by reason for retraction – Page 16

Science rescinds expression of concern issued last month

Science has rescinded an expression of concern it issued one month ago after the authors provided data that “addressed concerns about the integrity of the paper.”

The journal had published the expression of concern for the 2021 article “Light-induced mobile factors from shoots regulate rhizobium-triggered soybean root nodulation” after two separate readers contacted the editorial team about an issue in the paper, as we reported at the time. The expression of concern noted that “that data presented in Fig. 5 assessed GmNSP1 expression rather than GmNIN expression.”

The article has been cited 43 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The journal is publishing the newly submitted data as a correction, as well as an editor’s note explaining the removal of the expression of concern. The new notice states:

Exclusive: City of Hope cancer researcher goes to court to fight misconduct finding

An alumna of the lab of Carlo Croce, a high-profile cancer researcher at The Ohio State University with 14 retractions, has sued the institution over the results of its investigation that found she committed research misconduct.

Flavia Pichiorri is now a principal investigator with her own lab researching potential therapies for multiple myeloma at City of Hope – a cancer center that also owns Cancer Treatment Centers of America – in Duarte, Calif.

She worked at Ohio State from 2004-16, first as a postdoctoral researcher in Croce’s lab, then as a research scientist, and finally as an assistant professor of hematology. She has been a PI on grants that garnered millions of dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health since switching jobs.

Journal asks scientist to step down from editorial board after sleuth’s comments linked him to paper mill

An engineering researcher has stepped down from an editorial board at the request of a journal’s leadership following a sleuth’s comment on a Retraction Watch post linking him to paper mill activity.

Masoud Afrand, an assistant professor of engineering at the Islamic Azad University in Iran, was, until recently, on the editorial board of the journal Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements. He also was listed on the website of Scientific Reports as a member of the journal’s editorial board in the subject of mechanical engineering.

He now has neither position. He has not responded to our requests for comment.

‘Shocked and flabbergasted’: Journal updates duplicate article it had said was “sufficiently” different from original

A journal for conference proceedings which published a duplicate article has updated the later version, after originally telling the researcher who noticed the duplication that the articles were different enough to warrant publishing both.

The article, titled “Production and storage of polarized H2, D2, and HD molecules,” was published twice in the journal Proceedings of Science, in 2018 and in 2019. The first version represented proceedings from a talk given at the 2017 XVII International Workshop on Polarized Sources, Targets & Polarimetry in Kaist, South Korea; the second was from the 23rd International Spin Physics Symposium in Ferrara, Italy, held in 2018.

The later version has minor differences from the first, including more technical details about the study’s methods.

PoS, which is run by the International School for Advanced Studies based in Trieste, Italy, functions as a repository for various conference proceedings. It is run by a small staff, and each submission is reviewed by an individual conference’s editorial board.

A researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, contacted PoS after coming across the two nearly identical versions of “Production and storage of polarized H2, D2, and HD molecules.” A journal representative first told the researcher that the journal would investigate the situation, then that “the contributions differ sufficiently in order to warrant both their publication,” according to an email seen by Retraction Watch.

Publisher blacklists authors after preprint cites made-up studies

Last month, a millipede expert in Denmark received an email notifying him that one of his publications had been mentioned in a new manuscript on Preprints.org. But when the researcher, Henrik Enghoff, downloaded the paper, he learned that it cited his work for something off-topic.

Stranger still, the authors of the now-withdrawn preprint, a group of researchers in China and Africa, also referenced two papers by Enghoff that he knew he hadn’t written. It turned out they didn’t exist.

“I’ve never had anything like this happen before,” Enghoff, a professor at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, in Copenhagen, told Retraction Watch.

Scientist sues publisher to block expression of concern

A gastroenterology researcher has sued a scientific journal to stop it from publishing an expression of concern for one of her papers.

Soudamani Singh, an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Translational Sciences at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, W. Va., is the middle author of “Cyclooxygenase pathway mediates the inhibition of Na-glutamine co-transporter B0AT1 in rabbit villus cells during chronic intestinal inflammation,” published in PLOS ONE in September 2018. The article has been cited nine times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

We previously reported that the corresponding author of the paper, Uma Sundaram, vice dean of research and graduate education at the Edwards School and chair of its department of clinical and translational science, told us he had contacted PLOS to request a correction to the article.

Former UPenn prof faked more than 50 figures, says government watchdog

A pharmacy researcher who left the University of Pennsylvania sometime last year has been found guilty of research misconduct in multiple federal grant applications and five published papers, four of which have already been retracted.

As we have reported, William Armstead, who is retired from Penn, was working among other things on the effects of brain injury on piglets – experiments in which the animals were slaughtered. He has had seven papers retracted, and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in September that he had left the university. Penn did not respond to several requests for comment when we attempted to reach officials there about Armstead’s work.

According to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, much of that work appears to have been suspect:

BMJ journal retracts e-cigarette paper after authors disclose tobacco industry funding late in the process

BMJ Open has retracted a paper describing a study in which people with diabetes will be switched from cigarettes to vaping after the journal learned – late in the process of publication – that the authors were indirectly funded by the tobacco company, Philip Morris International.

The paper, “International randomised controlled trial evaluating metabolic syndrome in type 2 diabetic cigarette smokers following switching to combustion-free nicotine delivery systems: the DIASMOKE protocol,” was originally published on April 1, 2021. Its retraction notice, dated June 20, 2023, reads:

Science paper marked with expression of concern after readers pointed out data issue

A paper published in Science two years ago has been flagged with an expression of concern while the editors give the authors a chance to correct a data issue identified by two different readers.

“Light-induced mobile factors from shoots regulate rhizobium-triggered soybean root nodulation,” was published in September 2021 and has been cited 43 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The notice, published today, states:

How can universities and journals better work together on research misconduct?

When it comes to delays in correcting the scientific record — and less-than-helpful retraction notices — it’s not uncommon to see journals blaming universities for being slow and less than forthcoming, and universities blaming journals for being impatient and not respecting the confidentiality of their processes. So in 2021 and 2022, a group of university research integrity officers, journal editors and others gathered to discuss those issues.

In a new paper in JAMA Network Open, the group recommends specific changes to the status quo to enable effective communication between institutions and journals:”

(1) reconsideration and broadening of the interpretation by institutions of the need-to-know criteria in federal regulations (ie, confidential or sensitive information and data are not disclosed unless there is a need for an individual to know the facts to perform specific jobs or functions), (2) uncoupling the evaluation of the accuracy and validity of research data from the determination of culpability and intent of the individuals involved, and (3) initiating a widespread change for the policies of journals and publishers regarding the timing and appropriateness for contacting institutions, either before or concurrently under certain conditions, when contacting the authors.

We asked Susan Garfinkel, the associate vice president for research compliance at The Ohio State and the corresponding author of the article, some questions.

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