A public-health journal has retracted a study from Ethiopia that made unlicensed use of a questionnaire developed by a U.S. researcher known to aggressively protect his intellectual property.
This time, he didn’t have to: The journal’s publisher flagged the copyright infringement itself, Renee Hoch, managing editor at PLOS Publication Ethics, told Retraction Watch:
A biochemistry study has been retracted nearly a year after a whistleblower found significant overlap between the article and one published in a different journal by the same research group.
The study examines how berberine, a compound found in plants such as tree turmeric, might improve kidney injury in diabetic mice. People sometimes take berberine supplements to help treat diabetes, but the evidence for its effectiveness is mixed. The authors of the paper are researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.
The study was retracted on May 23 at the request of the journal’s editor-in-chief, according to the retraction notice. It states, in part:
Two orthopedic surgeons in Turkey will not attain tenured professorships following alleged research misconduct that, so far, has also cost them a pair of publications, Retraction Watch has learned.
Have you heard about hijacked journals, which take over legitimate publications’ titles, ISSNs, and other metadata without their permission? We recently launched the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker, and will be publishing regular posts like this one to tell the stories of some of those cases.
When web domains of legitimate journals expire, fraudulent publishers have an opening to hijack them by registering the expired domains and creating clone websites that mimic the genuine journal.
In 2015, John Bohannon found fraudulent publishers had hijacked the websites of several legitimate journals indexed in Web of Science. The expired domains of GMP Review and Ludus Vitalis, which Web of Science listed as their official homepages, were registered by the fraudulent publishers, who created clone journals offering to publish papers for a fee.
Taking over expired domains remains a successful strategy for fraudulent publishers, because potential authors may use the websites listed in scientometric databases to verify the authenticity of a journal. Recently, three examples have come to light of journals with domains that expired and were hijacked by fake journals.
Springer Nature will retract an article that reported results of a survey of parents who thought their children’s gender dysphoria resulted from social contagion. The move is “due to concerns about lack of informed consent,” according to tweets by one of the paper’s authors.
The article, “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1655 Possible Cases,” was published in March in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. It has not been cited in the scientific literature, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, but Altmetric, which tracks the online attention papers receive, ranks the article in the top 1% of all articles of a similar age.
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) is, the article stated, a “controversial theory” that “common cultural beliefs, values, and preoccupations cause some adolescents (especially female adolescents) to attribute their social problems, feelings, and mental health issues to gender dysphoria,” and that “youth with ROGD falsely believe that they are transgender,” in part due to social influences.
Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and the paper’s corresponding author, tweeted:
The chair of the Department of Pulmonary Immunology at the University of Texas at Tyler Health Science Center lost a paper last year after an institutional investigation found several issues with the data in the article.
Although the researcher, Ramakrishna Vankayalapati, is still identified as the chair on his online profile and the department’s website, he no longer holds that position, Retraction Watch has learned.
An engineering journal has retracted an article that was posted on a website claiming to sell author positions. The retraction comes nearly two years after we reported on the website and a whistleblower informed the journal.
A 2021 article that found journals from the open-access publisher MDPI had characteristics of predatory journals has been retracted and replaced with a version that softens its conclusions about the company. MDPI is still not satisfied, however.
María de los Ángeles Oviedo García, a professor of business administration and marketing at the University of Seville in Spain, and the paper’s sole author, analyzed 53 MDPI journals that were included in Clarivate’s 2018 Journal Citation Reports.
The former director of the Southwest National Primate Research Center at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio has been removed from the post after the U.S. Office of Research Integrity found he had faked data.
Last August, ORI found that Deepak Kaushal, who remains a professor at Texas Biomed, “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, and/or recklessly falsifying and fabricating the experimental methodology to demonstrate results obtained under different experimental conditions.”
Citing Kaushal’s admission, ORI said that he had engaged in research misconduct in work supported by 8 grants from the National Institutes of Health, and faked data in two grant applications and one published paper that has since been retracted.
The former director of a cancer research center faked data and presented others’ published data and text as his own in four grant applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and one research record, according to a U.S. government watchdog.
Johnny J. He, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science (RFUMS) in Chicago, Ill., “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying, fabricating, and plagiarizing experimental data and text” published by other scientists, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) said today.
He did not immediately respond to an email or phone call seeking comment.