Category: infectious disease

A virology journal has retracted and replaced a 2021 article on mosquito-borne infections in Africa after one of the authors identified errors in the publication — an episode that has prompted a change in practice at the journal to avoid similar issues in the future. 

The article, “Mosquito-borne arboviruses in Uganda: history, transmission and burden,” was written by a group in the United Kingdom and Uganda and appeared in the Journal of General Virology last June. 

According to the retraction notice: 

Continue reading ‘We have done a terrible job’: Journal retracts, replaces paper on mosquito-borne infections

The authors of a study comparing hydroxychloroquine and the antiviral agent favipiravir as treatments for COVID-19 have lost the paper after post-publication peer review determined that the data did not support the conclusions. 

“Safety and efficacy of favipiravir versus hydroxychloroquine in management of COVID-19: A randomised controlled trial” appeared in March in Scientific Reports, a Nature title. The authors, from institutions in Egypt, reported that: 

Continue reading Study comparing hydroxychloroquine and antiviral drug for COVID-19 retracted

A World Health Organization (WHO) database of papers about COVID-19 contains hundreds of articles published in hijacked journals whose publishers have stolen titles and legitimacy from the original publications. 

That’s what I found when I analyzed the WHO’s “COVID-19 Global literature on coronavirus disease,” which as of August 1 included more than 318,000 papers sourced from typically trusted databases including the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s Medline, Elsevier’s Scopus, and Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

But the collection hosts hundreds of papers published in hijacked journals with fraudulent publishing practices.  Hijacked, or clone, journals mimic legitimate publishers by creating a clone website or registering an expired one. They accept papers — often wildly out of scope of the original publication — without peer review, and collect fees from the authors.

Continue reading WHO COVID-19 library contains hundreds of papers from hijacked journals

A group of researchers in Canada and India have lost a paper on vaccine hesitancy and Covid-19 because they didn’t have the proper license to mine a database of news articles used in the study. 

The paper, “Tracking COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and logistical challenges: A machine learning approach,” was published in PLOS ONE on June 2. Led by Shantanu Dutta, of the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa, the researchers set out to:

Continue reading ‘A very unfortunate event’: Paper on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy retracted

Earlier this week, we reported on the retractions of two papers on Covid-19 in Texas inmates after the journal was told that the researchers did not have proper ethics approval for the studies. 

According to the senior author on the articles, however, that’s nowhere near the whole story. Kenneth Nugent, of Texas Tech Physicians in Lubbock, told us that he’d repeatedly sought — and received — approval from an institutional review board (IRB) throughout their project, articles on which appeared last year in the  Journal of Primary Care & Community Health, a Sage publication.

The first study, published in August 2020, was titled “A Retrospective Analysis and Comparison of Prisoners and Community-Based Patients with COVID-19 Requiring Intensive Care During the First Phase of the Pandemic in West Texas.” 

The second, from November 2020, was titled “Basic Demographic Parameters Help Predict Outcomes in Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 During the First Wave of Infection in West Texas.” Only the first article has been cited (one time), according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. 

The retraction notice for the papers states that the authors requested their removal: 

Continue reading When a retraction notice leaves out important details: COVID-19, prisoners, and an IRB

A journal has retracted a pair of studies on Covid-19 in prisoners after the authors’ institution found that they had not obtained adequate ethics approval for the research. 

The two studies appeared in the Journal of Primary Care & Community Health, a Sage publication. The authors, from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, were led by Kenneth Nugent, an internal medicine specialist at the institution. 

Continue reading Two Texas studies on COVID-19 retracted because ‘previously approved study protocols appear to violate IRB guidelines around prisoner research’

JAMA Pediatrics has retracted a paper claiming that children’s masks trap too-high concentrations of carbon dioxide a little more than two weeks after publishing it.

The paper, by Harald Walach and colleagues, came under fire immediately after it was published on June 30, and quickly earned an editor’s note. Walach had another paper — which claimed that COVID-19 vaccines caused two deaths for every three deaths they prevented — retracted just a few days later. He also lost an affiliation with a university in Poland.

Walach and his colleagues responded to critics of the JAMA Pediatrics paper earlier this month, as we reported. But the journals apparently found that response wanting, according to the retraction notice:

Continue reading JAMA journal retracts paper on masks for children

A study that touted phototherapy as a way to combat the COVID-19 pandemic has been retracted after Elisabeth Bik noted a litany of concerns about the article, from duplications in the figures to the authors’ failure to disclose conflicts of interest. 

The article, “Methylene blue photochemical treatment as a reliable SARS-CoV-2 plasma virus inactivation method for blood safety and convalescent plasma therapy for COVID-19,” appeared in mid-April in BMC Infectious Diseases, a Springer Nature title. Unlike many papers rushed into publication during the pandemic, it had been in peer review since the previous April. The authors listed affiliations with various institutions in China, including a company called Boxin (Beijing) Biotechnology Development LTD, which helped fund the study — more on that in a moment. 

According to the paper, methylene blue (a versatile medical product that serves as a drug and a dye) when used with something called the “BX-1 AIDS treatment instrument,” could be a wonder therapy for the SARS-CoV-2 infection. 

The authors describe BX-1 as: 

Continue reading Paper from company claiming phototherapy could treat COVID-19 is retracted

The authors of a paper claiming that children’s masks trap concentrations of carbon dioxide higher than allowable standards in Germany have responded to critics who said the study was plagued with poor methods and unreasonable conclusions.

As we reported earlier this week, the corresponding author of the paper, Harald Walach, had his affiliation with Poznan University in Poland terminated because of a different paper he had co-authored, in the journal Vaccines. That paper has been retracted.

In the response, which we’ve made available in full here, Walach and his co-authors on the masks paper in JAMA Pediatrics write that

Continue reading Authors of widely panned study of masks in children respond to critics

A researcher who co-authored a now-retracted paper claiming that two vaccinated people died of COVID-19 for every three deaths prevented has had an affiliation with a Polish university terminated.

Yesterday, Poznan University tweeted about the researcher, Harald Walach:

We wish to emphasize that the claims included in dr Harald Walach’s recent article in @Vaccines_MDPI do not represent the position of @PUMS_tweets. We find that the article lacked scientific diligence and proper methodology. Dr. Walach’s affiliation with PUMS was now terminated.

— Poznan University of Medical Sciences (@PUMS_tweets) July 6, 2021

Today, it confirmed the move in a statement:

Continue reading University terminates affiliation with researcher who had paper on COVID-19 vaccines retracted as mask study comes under scrutiny