by reason for retraction – Page 23

PLOS flags nearly 50 papers by controversial French COVID researcher for ethics concerns

The publisher PLOS is marking nearly 50 articles by Didier Raoult, the French scientist who became controversial for promoting hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19, with expressions of concern while it investigates potential research ethics violations in the work.

PLOS has been looking into more than 100 articles by Raoult, but determined that the issues in 49 of the papers, including reuse of ethics approval reference numbers, warrant expressions of concern while the publisher continues its inquiry.

In August of 2021, scientific sleuth Elisabeth Bik wrote on her blog about a series of 17 articles from IHU-Méditerranée Infection that described different studies involving homeless people in Marseille over a decade, but all listed the same institutional ethics approval number. One of those papers, “Distinguishing Body Lice from Head Lice by Multiplex Real-Time PCR Analysis of the Phum_PHUM540560 Gene,” about which Bik also posted on PubPeer, was published in PLOS ONE in 2013, and is receiving an expression of concern today.

A paper used capital T’s instead of error bars. But wait, there’s more!

Mere days after tweets went viral pointing out that the purported error bars in one figure of a paper were really just the capital letter T, the publisher has marked it with an expression of concern. [12/22/22: The paper has now been retracted; see an update on this post.]

And that’s not all that’s strange about the paper.

The July 2022 article, “Monitoring of Sports Health Indicators Based on Wearable Nanobiosensors,” was published in a special issue of the journal Advances in Materials Science and Engineering, a Hindawi title.

The article purports to show that using nanoparticles can better measure the biochemical fitness levels of elderly people than other methods.

Buzzy Lancet long COVID paper under investigation for ‘data errors’

An early and influential paper on long COVID that appeared in The Lancet has been flagged with an expression of concern while the journal investigates “data errors” brought to light by a reader.

An editorial that accompanied the paper when it was published in January of last year described it as “the first large cohort study with 6-months’ follow-up” of people hospitalized with COVID-19. The article has received plenty of attention since then.

Titled “6-month consequences of COVID-19 in patients discharged from hospital: a cohort study,” the paper has been cited nearly 1,600 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. Altmetric finds references to it in multiple documents from the World Health Organization.

‘Just some eccentric guy in Australia’: The story of a non-retraction for plagiarism

After reading a paper published in The Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England last March, Andrew Thomas, an orthopedic surgeon in the UK, noticed that it was very similar to an article published the previous December in another journal.

He wrote a letter to the editor of Annals, notifying the journal of the similarity between its paper, “The possible effect of different types of ventilation on reducing operation theatre infections: a meta-analysis,” and “The effect of type of ventilation used in the operating room and surgical site infection: A meta-analysis,” published in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.

In his letter, Thomas pointed out several apparent mistakes in the analyses, and also noted similarities between both papers and a 2017 article published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, which has been cited 93 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

Despite the similarities Thomas noted, which another surgeon verified with anti-plagiarism software, the journal has not retracted the paper, but flagged it with an expression of concern so readers can “draw their own conclusions.” At the same time, the journal retracted an unrelated article that was also found to be similar to one published elsewhere, then the retraction was changed to an expression of concern, and now neither notice appears online.

Biotech exec stole an image and reused others while in academia, US federal watchdog says

A pioneer in the field of exosome biology engaged in research misconduct by reusing images he had falsely relabeled in two published papers and several grant applications, according to a U.S. government research watchdog.

The case goes back several years, as the scientist’s former institution seems to have been investigating his work for nearly a decade.

Douglas Taylor, who in the 1970s discovered that tumor cells release exosomes, “used falsely labeled images to falsely report data in figures, and in one finding, intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly plagiarized, reused, and falsely labeled an image to falsely report data in a figure,” according to the published finding from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Scientist goes to court to clear his name after fake peer review retractions

A scientist who lost 11 papers for fake peer review and other reasons went to court to pin the misconduct on a coauthor – and received a favorable judgment.

The retractions for Aram Mokarizadeh, a biomedical researcher previously affiliated with the Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences in Iran, were part of a batch of 58 papers in seven journals that Springer and BioMed Central pulled in 2016 after an investigation found “evidence of plagiarism, peer review and authorship manipulation, suggestive of attempts to subvert the peer review and publication system to inappropriately obtain or allocate authorship.”

After our story on the case appeared, Mokarizadeh told us that a coauthor was “responsible for all problems associated with retraction,” and that he had brought a case to court in Iran to prove it.

BMJ says it’s “an ongoing effort” to find articles by plagiarizing concussion researcher Paul McCrory

Weeks after the British Medical Journal corrected a press release about nine retractions and dozens of expressions of concern to mark articles by a prominent concussion expert, a spokesperson for the journal told us it’s still “an ongoing effort” to identify all the articles on which the expert is the sole author.

The concussion researcher, Paul McCrory, was editor in chief of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, published by the BMJ, from 2001-2008, and published many editorials on which he was the only listed author. McCrory also chaired the influential Concussion in Sport Group, was involved in drafting consensus statements on concussion in sports, and consulted with leagues.

Ten of those articles, however, have been retracted this year for plagiarism, recycling his own work, and misrepresenting a reference.

In comments to us, his only public statements to date about the matter, McCrory acknowledged some of the plagiarism as unintentional “errors,” and offered “my sincere and humble apologies.” He no longer chairs the Concussion in Sport Group, and the Australian Football League has critically reviewed his work for the league, the Guardian Australia reported.

Psychiatrist in Canada faked brain imaging data in grant application, U.S. federal watchdog says

A psychiatrist studying the development of psychosis faked data from studies of brain imaging in a grant application to the National Institutes of Health, a U.S, government watchdog has found.

The federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI) announced sanctions against Romina Mizrahi, associate chair of research in McGill University’s department of psychiatry in Montreal, Canada, for “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying data” in a grant application to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Mizrahi submitted the grant application in question, R01 MH118495-01, “Imaging nociceptin receptors in clinical high risk and first episode psychosis,” in February 2018; it does not appear to have been funded.

According to ORI, Mizrahi:

“A huge relief”: Journal takes down plagiarized paper after Retraction Watch reporting

Following a Retraction Watch story about a 2004 paper that had been copied twice since its publication, one of the journals involved has taken down its version of the article.

Last month, we reported that an undergraduate student researching her thesis had found two papers that copied material from “Models of the medical consultation: opportunities and limitations of a game theory perspective,” published in BMJ Quality and Safety by psychologist Andrew Colman and two colleagues.

One of the plagiarizing articles, “Relevance of Game Theory Models in Medical Consultation: Special Reference to Decision Making,” appeared last year in the International Journal of Research in Engineering, Science and Management (IJRESM). Colman said that the article had copied the structure and main ideas of his, although the text was paraphrased, and it included a figure he had created.

We had emailed the journal before our story was published on Oct. 17 to ask if it would investigate the allegations. We received this reply on November 5th:

Author critical of study involving abortion hires lawyers after journal flags paper

Priscilla K. Coleman testifying before U.S. Congress in 2007

The author of an article on unwanted pregnancies that has received an expression of concern for reasons that remain unclear says she has hired lawyers to defend herself against “defamation.”

Priscilla K. Coleman, a professor of human development and family studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio – whose controversial work on the link between abortion and mental health problems has come under scrutiny – told us that she plans “to actively pursue all options available including legal avenues to rectify the situation” after Frontiers in Social Health Psychology slapped the EoC on her 2022 article.

The paper in question was titled “The Turnaway Study: A case of self-correction in science upended by political motivation and unvetted findings.” The Turnaway Study is an ongoing look by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco at the effects on women – including the physical, emotional, and economic toll – of carrying unwanted pregnancies. The main finding, according to its site, “is that receiving an abortion does not harm the health and wellbeing of women, but in fact, being denied an abortion results in worse financial, health and family outcomes.”

The abstract for Coleman’s review reads, in part:

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