by reason for retraction – Page 38

Meta: An expression of concern quotes Retraction Watch

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST)

Sometimes, we become part of the story: A play in several acts.

On Jan. 27, 2021, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) issued a report about the work of Ye Zhang, a materials scientist on the faculty. The Institute, as we reported February 2, found that Zhang had committed plagiarism and had fabricated data in a May 2019 paper in Chemical Communications, and suspended her for six months.

Zhang told us on February 3 that she “dispute[d] the conclusion of the investigation on scientific grounds that refute it entirely.” In a comment the next day, a Retraction Watch commenter asked to see the spectra Zhang and colleagues referred to in the paper. Zhang sent those shortly thereafter, and we posted them to the site.

And now, some four and a half months later, comes an expression of concern, signed by the journal’s executive editor, Richard Kelly. The EOC includes Zhang’s full-throated defense, and a link to that PDF:

‘We apologize again for the inadvertent mistakes during the assembly of data due to our carelessness’

Baodi Clinical College of Tianjin Medical University

Last December, Elisabeth Bik notified journals about 45 articles by a researcher in China which struck her as suspicious. Within weeks, one of those journals — DNA and Cell Biology — had retracted the paper she’d flagged.

That reassuringly brisk response appears to have been an anomaly in the case of Hua Tang, of Tianjin Medical University in China. Only two other retractions have followed, by our count (Tang had a retraction in 2020, bringing his total so far to four). However, FEBS Letters, which published three articles by Tang that Bik had identified as problematic, has now issued expressions of concern for the papers.

The notices for the articles, which appeared between 2011 and 2014, raise questions about the “data integrity” in the work. Here’s the one for “Downregulation of PPP2R5E expression by miR-23a suppresses apoptosis to facilitate the growth of gastric cancer cells,” from 2014:

An exercise in frustration: A researcher is impersonated

The other day, Jamie Burr, an exercise physiologist in Canada, received a curious email from an overseas colleague. The researcher wanted to know if Burr, of the University of Guelph, had written a particular article.

Burr wondered:

Why are they questioning if I wrote something?

Turns out, something was real shady with the slim article.

‘Galling’: Journal scammed by guest editor impersonator

An Elvis impersonator, via Metro Library and Archive

It just keeps happening.

For at least the fourth time in two years, a journal has been scammed by someone impersonating a guest editor. The latest: Behaviour & Information Technology, a Taylor & Francis title, has retracted an entire special issue — at least 10 articles published between 2019 and 2020 — because the guest editor “was impersonated by a fraudulent entity.”

As the retraction notices for the 10 papers report:

Elsevier glitch prompts temporary removal of critique of review on race and heart disease

A timing glitch prompted the temporary removal of a letter to the editor calling out a previously published study for “perpetuating historical harms” through its framing of race and ethnicity.

The letter, “Race is not a risk factor: Reframing discourse on racial health inequities in CVD prevention,” appeared online in April in the American Journal of Preventive Cardiology, an Elseiver property. It came in response to a review article, published the month before, titled “Ten things to know about ten cardiovascular disease risk factors.”

As the abstract of the review stated:

Publisher retracts 20 of a researcher’s papers — then asks him to peer review

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. So the saying goes.

What about fool me 20 times?

In December of last year, Dove Press — a unit of Taylor & Francis — retracted 14 papers by Marty Hinz, a Minnesota physician who has been sanctioned by the U.S. FDA as well as the Minnesota state medical board. In March, Dove retracted six more. A typical notice:

PNAS bans author for refusing to share algae strain

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) has sanctioned a researcher who violated the journal’s policy by refusing to share a strain of algae that he used in a 2018 paper.

Zhangfeng Hu was one of two corresponding authors, and the last author, of the paper, “New class of transcription factors controls flagellar assembly by recruiting RNA polymerase II in Chlamydomonas.” The paper has been cited three times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

May Berenbaum, PNAS’ editor in chief, tells Retraction Watch:

US federal watchdog loses director to another government role

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity, which oversees investigations into allegations of misconduct in grants from the NIH, is once again without a permanent director.

Elisabeth (Lis) Handley, who became director in 2019, has taken on a new role in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), of which ORI is a part. Wanda Jones, who has served as interim and deputy director of the agency, will serve as acting director, according to an HHS spokesperson.

Handley has become principal deputy assistant secretary for health. In a memo to staff, assistant secretary for health Rachel Levine wrote:

First, this paper was corrected. Now it has an expression of concern. And maybe, just maybe, it will be retracted.

Never let it be said that journals are not deliberative when it comes to correcting the record.

Of course, “deliberative” also means “slow.”

Take a 2018 article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases (JID) by a group of authors in India.

Exclusive: Six years after a misconduct investigation, more than half of suspect papers remain unflagged

When the University of Colorado at Denver completed an investigation in 2015 into the work of a former faculty member, the school recommended that nine papers be corrected or retracted.

But six years after the close of that investigation, the researcher, urologist Hari Koul, has had just two papers retracted and one corrected.

Multiple journal editors told Retraction Watch they had not been informed that papers published in their journals were recommended for retraction or correction, according to documents obtained by Retraction Watch via a public records request. And emails show Koul was still negotiating the retraction of at least one of the papers last year.

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