by reason for retraction – Page 31

Student of yoga tourism won’t get PhD as he earns five retractions

For Pramod Sharma, the study of yoga tourism has proven to be a downward-facing dog.

Last year, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Roorkee blocked Sharma – who posed as a legit yoga researcher but in reality stole other people’s work – from receiving his PhD after determining that his thesis was “plagiarized and lacks originality.” What’s more, according to the institution, a 2018 article by Sharma contained a “discrepancy in data…casting a doubt on the validity of the results.”

Journals have now retracted five papers by Sharma, although earlier concerns about the work didn’t reach his PhD committee in time to prevent him from defending his thesis in 2019.

We reviewed the IIT report on the Sharma case, and pulled out a couple of the choicest passages:

Researchers sound alarm on ‘predatory’ rankings

Hey, researchers and universities, want to be included in a new ranking scheme? No problem, just pony up some cash.

Tanvir Ahmed, a postdoc at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, says this year has seen a rise in news stories— for example from Bangladesh, Kashmir, and Nigeria — reporting so-called predatory rankings. These come to light due to the lack of knowledge about rankings at universities and the media in certain countries, he says.

Ahmed is referring to AD Scientific Index, which charges $30 USD for an individual researcher to be included in the ranking and an unspecified sum for institutions wishing to be ranked.

Paper on sexual orientation and neuropsychiatric disorders earns an expression of concern

Dick Swaab By Sxologist Wikipedia – , CC BY 2.0

An Elsevier journal has issued an expression of concern for a paper it published earlier this year by a Dutch researcher who studies the neurobiology of sexuality.

The article,“Sexual orientation, neuropsychiatric disorders and the neurotransmitters involved,” was written by a group led by Dick Swaab, of the Department of Neuropsychiatric Disorders at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam.

The abstract of the latest study reads:

Engineering researcher who suddenly left postdoc has ninth paper retracted

An author with ties to researchers believed to have published hundreds of problematic papers has earned his ninth retraction, this time for forged authorship.

Mostafa Jalal, once a postdoc at Texas A&M University, is alleged to have “engaged in some manner of collaboration or communication” with three other researchers, including Ali Nazari, who has now had 85 papers retracted and lost his job at Swinburne University in 2019. Those retractions came after the whistleblower, the pseudonymous Artemisia Stricta, called attention to problems in Nazari’s work.

In a 42-page report we wrote about in August 2020, Artemisia drew attention to four main groups centered on Jalal, Nazari, Ehsan Mohseni of the University of Newcastle in Australia, and Alireza Najigivi of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. The whistleblower lists a total of 287 potentially compromised papers.

Abstract linking COVID-19 vaccines to heart trouble risk earns expression of concern

A leading heart journal has issued an expression of concern for a meeting abstract it published earlier this year by a cardiac surgeon who sells dietary supplements of questionable utility.

The case is the second involving a recent meeting of the American Heart Association.

The abstract, titled “Mrna COVID Vaccines Dramatically Increase Endothelial Inflammatory Markers and ACS Risk as Measured by the PULS Cardiac Test: a Warning,” was presented at the AHA’s 2021 Scientific Sessions in mid-November and was published in Circulation.

The author was Steven Gundry, a cardiac surgeon by training who now sells dietary supplements on his website. Gundry also sees patients at the Center for Restorative Medicine and International Heart & Lung Institute in California and offers advice on YouTube.

But critics have accused Gundry of peddling worthless — if ultimately expensive — advice.

Exclusive: Shell employee confesses to graduate student misdeeds

A former graduate student at Georgia Tech who at least until recently worked at Shell confessed last year to misconduct in three published papers.

Michael Casciato, who earned his doctorate from Georgia Tech in 2013, wrote in a June 22, 2020 email to the editor of an American Chemical Society journal as well as the principal investigator of the lab where he completed his PhD, Martha Grover, and a co-author, Dennis Hess:

Nanotech paper retracted for duplicated images

Researchers in the United States and Singapore have lost a 2016 article in Science Advances after some of the group learned that one of their colleagues appears to have used duplicated images in the work.

The article, “A universal cooperative assembly-directed method for coating of mesoporous TiO2 nanoshells with enhanced lithium storage properties,” was written by Bu Yuan Guan, then of the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, along with colleagues at that institution and Ju Li, of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The paper has been cited 167 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

According to the retraction notice:

University of Glasgow ‘in discussions to retract’ seven papers, confirming Retraction Watch reporting

The University of Glasgow is “in discussions to retract” seven papers by a pharmacology researcher who worked there for more than 25 years, after it learned of allegations on PubPeer by pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis.

The development confirms reporting by Retraction Watch earlier this month. In that post, we wrote:

Journal mulls expression of concern for Cassava Sciences paper

A journal is considering issuing an expression of concern for a 2005 paper by authors tied to a company that’s now under investigation for fraud, Retraction Watch has learned.

[See an update on this post (bottom).]

The article, “Ultra-low-dose naloxone suppresses opioid tolerance, dependence and associated changes in mu opioid receptor–G protein coupling and Gβγ signaling,” was written by a group linked to Pain Therapeutics, Inc., which in 2019 changed its name to Cassava Sciences.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Institutes of Health were investigating claims that the company manipulated data for simulfilam, its experimental drug for Alzheimer’s disease.

As we reported in August, a law firm submitted a “citizen’s petition” to the FDA citing:

Author who squats on domains to fake affiliations and added Wolf Blitzer as a co-author up to a dozen retractions

A putative brain surgeon with a penchant for fabricating his affiliations and co-authors — including Wolf Blitzer of CNN — has lost several more papers to retraction.

As we reported in August, Michael George Zaki Ghali, or someone using that name:

bought two fake web domains for the Karolinska Institutet [KI] to make it look as though he was affiliated with the world-famous medical center and published seven dozen papers in peer reviewed journals owned by Elsevier, IMR Press, Taylor & Francis and Wiley. … Ghali has twice been ordered to turn over domain names linked to Karolinska the real institute, once in June 2020 and again in November 2020.

At the time, we were aware of seven retractions for Ghali, including the one co-bylined with Blitzer. That number has now grown to at least 12, by our count.

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