Category: dermatology retractions

Authors blame ‘unintentional oversight’ for including image of deceased patient in paper

The authors of a case report involving a patient who died of a rare disorder of the bone marrow have removed an image from the article after the person’s mother objected to the use of the photograph. 

The paper, “Dyskeratosis congenita,” appeared in Autopsy Case Reports in 2020 and was written by a group from Upstate Medical University, part of the State University of New York system, in Syracuse. 

We saw the notice in November and were curious if we could learn more. So we filed a public records request for documents related to the article – and received a response last week disclosing correspondence between Robert Stoppacher, a co-author of the report, and the editor-in-chief of the journal.  

In a letter to the journal on Sept. 12, 2021, Stoppacher stated that:

Continue reading Authors blame ‘unintentional oversight’ for including image of deceased patient in paper

‘A costly mistake’ prompts retraction of paper on hair loss

Image by Martin Slavoljubovski from Pixabay

A “costly mistake” has led to the retraction of a paper by a team of dermatology researchers in West Virginia who failed to obtain permission to use the data in their study for the specific purpose for which it was used. 

The article, “Association Between Alopecia Areata and Natural Hair Color Among White Individuals,” which appeared in March 2021 in JAMA Dermatology, was a case-control study based on data from the UK Biobank — a large repository of medical and genetic data from people in the United Kingdom. The senior author on the article was Michael Kolodney, the chair of the department of dermatology at West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown. 

In fact, Kolodney and his colleagues had produced two articles using data from the biobank: one on alopecia areata — an autoimmune condition that causes relatively early-onset hair loss — and another that linked baldness to an increased risk of Covid-19 in men. The Covid research was published in November 2020 as a letter to the editor in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

The Covid paper remains intact. But as the retraction notice indicates, the folks at UK Biobank  hadn’t granted Kolodney’s group permission to publish the alopecia findings:  

Continue reading ‘A costly mistake’ prompts retraction of paper on hair loss

“This unfortunate situation”: Journal retracts bizarre paper about a black hole at the center of Earth

A black hole, not at the center of the Earth (via Wikimedia)

It was a paper that caught the attention — and bemusement — of Twitter:

And now it is no more, along with four more articles from the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences in what was billed as a special issue on Global Dermatology.

Here’s the whole title: “A black hole at the center of earth plays the role of the biggest system of telecommunication for connecting DNAs, dark DNAs and molecules of water on 4+N- dimensional manifold.” (Be warned that the link takes you to a login.)

You may fairly wonder what a terrestrial black hole and skin diseases have in common. The abstract, which we present for posterity, sheds no, ahem, light on the question:

Continue reading “This unfortunate situation”: Journal retracts bizarre paper about a black hole at the center of Earth

Too much skin in the game: Derm journal calls out author for duplication

We often praise authors for doing the right thing by retracting with transparency. Here’s a journal that deserves recognition for its handling of a case of duplicate publication.

Acta Dermatovenerologica Alpina, Pannonica et Adriatica (ADAPA), a European derm publication, has retracted a 2018 article in smack-down fashion, calling out a co-author for deceit. The paper was a case study titled “Inflamed bilateral linear atrophoderma of Moulin in an adult woman: a case report.” According to ADAPA, a reader noticed that a virtually identical article — with the same title — had appeared in a Turkish dermatology publication in late 2017.

In an lengthy editorial, Jovan Miljković, the editor-in-chief of the journal, explained what happened after a review of the two papers found them to be “virtually identical”: Continue reading Too much skin in the game: Derm journal calls out author for duplication

“Youth Guru” loses turkey-neck paper that overlapped with book chapter

Ronald Moy

A prominent cosmetic surgeon and his daughter have lost a 2017 paper on treating men with excessive neck flab — otherwise known as “turkey neck” — because much of the work appears to have duplicated a book chapter he co-authored about the topic.

The first author of the retracted article is Ronald L. Moy, a plastic surgeon to the stars in Beverly Hills, Calif., and a past president of both the American Academy of Dermatology and the American Society of Dermatology. In a 2012 article about area plastic surgeons, LA Confidential Magazine dubbed Moy the “youth guru” and a local leader in the use of “new research and a comprehensive approach to restore a youthful complexion—no cutting required.”

His co-author was his daughter, Lauren Moy, who appears to be working with him in his Rodeo Drive dermatology practice.

Continue reading “Youth Guru” loses turkey-neck paper that overlapped with book chapter

Hey, that’s my case study: Another retraction after doctors claim rights to case write-up

A group of researchers have retracted their 2016 case report about a rare dermatologic disorder in the wake of disputes about authorship and institutional approval.

The paper describes a young boy with Job’s Syndrome, in which patients experience painful, itchy and frequently disfiguring skin lesions, along with a constellation of other possible symptoms. The condition is extremely rare, occurring in less than one in 1 million births.

This isn’t the first time a journal has retracted a case study after another group of authors claimed ownership of the case. Earlier this year, we covered a retraction from a neuro-ophthalmology journal after the doctors who treated a patient suffering from a gruesome eye trauma took issue with the fact that radiologists had already published their diagnostic images as a case study.

According to the notice for this latest retraction:

Continue reading Hey, that’s my case study: Another retraction after doctors claim rights to case write-up

Authors retract tanning-UV radiation study for lacking approval

Researchers have agreed to pull a 2015 study exploring whether a plant extract can safeguard tanners from ultraviolet exposure after not obtaining formal approval from an ethics committee.

According to the first author, the problem lay in a misunderstanding – when they originally applied for approval six years ago, the researchers believed they didn’t need to go through a formal approval process, since the compound was commercially available without a prescription. Once they realized their mistake, they chose to retract the paper.

Here’s the retraction note for “Oral Polypodium leucomotos increases the anti-inflammatory and melanogenic responses of the skin to different modalities of sun exposures: a pilot study,” published in Photodermatology Photoimmunology & Photomedicine.  Continue reading Authors retract tanning-UV radiation study for lacking approval

Crow’s feet filler study omitted pharma funding, gets retracted

JKMSA paper on a filler for eye wrinkles did not disclose that it was funded by a pharmaceutical company that produces the cosmetic.

The paper explicitly noted that the authors do not have any financial conflicts of interest, and that a government program supported the study. According to the journal, a reader alerted them to the conflict of interest.

The cooperate tie wasn’t a secret, though — one of the authors was listed as affiliated with the  company, Pharma Research Products, based in Korea.

Here’s the retraction notice for “A Phase III, Randomized, Double-Blind, Matched-Pairs, Active-Controlled Clinical Trial and Preclinical Animal Study to Compare the Durability, Efficacy and Safety between Polynucleotide Filler and Hyaluronic Acid Filler in the Correction of Crow’s Feet: A New Concept of Regenerative Filler:”

Continue reading Crow’s feet filler study omitted pharma funding, gets retracted

Case report on cyst surgery sliced by journal for plagiarism

Contemporary Clinical DentistryA case report that detailed the removal of a cyst from the side of a young woman’s face has been retracted for plagiarizing text from a similar case report published two years earlier.

Contemporary Clinical Dentistry posted the notice on July 31. Parts of the 2014 report were “directly copied” from a report published in 2012 by the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology. Neither of the reports share authors in common.

The notice reads:

Continue reading Case report on cyst surgery sliced by journal for plagiarism

Skin study retracted twice in triple publication rub

Indian Journal of DermatologyThe Indian Journal of Dermatology has retracted a paper on the potential genetic markers of psoriasis that had already been retracted once for redundant publication.

The journal is chalking it up to an “administrative error” that caused it to publish a paper that had already appeared in two other outlets.

According to one of the authors, the “most junior” author published the paper in 2008 in the The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine “without informing other authors.”

When first author Ahmad Settin and the other authors sent it to the IJD in 2009, they were told its small sample size made it a letter to the editor; they decided to “decline submission” and send it to to Acta Dermatovenerologica Alpina, Pannonica et Adriatica, where it was published later that year. When Acta discovered the first version, it retracted the paper in 2013.

Meanwhile, editors at the IJD ended up posting the article, “Association of cytokine gene polymorphisms with psoriasis in cases from the Nile Delta of Egypt,” in 2011 without telling the authors. So they, too, now have to retract it:

Continue reading Skin study retracted twice in triple publication rub