clinical study retractions – Page 12

Researchers face disciplinary action as dozens of their studies fall under scrutiny

A group of obstetrics researchers in the Middle East is facing disciplinary action after questions were raised about the validity of the data in dozens of their published studies.

The tale — involving contaminated clinical trials, potentially fabricated PhDs, findings of misconduct that went ignored, accusations of terrorist sympathies and unresponsive journals — requires some unpacking, so bear with us.

We begin with a study that appeared in April in the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology (EJOG). Esmée Bordewijk, a PhD student at the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Amsterdam University Medical Center, and her colleagues reported that they stumbled on the problems while conducting a literature review on ovulation induction for the venerable Cochrane Database:

Heard about the study claiming men who carry guitar cases are more attractive? It’s been retracted.

A controversial psychologist has lost a bizarre paper which claimed that men who carry guitar cases do better with the ladies.

The article, which had appeared in the journal The Psychology of Music in 2014, was one of many papers by Nicholas Guéguen that have raised eyebrows among his peers and some data sleuths — notably James Heathers and Nick Brown — who believe the results don’t withstand scrutiny.

Guéguen, of the Université Bretagne-Sud, in France, was the subject of a misconduct investigation that in 2019 cleared him of wrongdoing. That finding came shortly after, as we reported nearly a year ago to the day, he lost a 2014 paper in the Archives of Sexual Behavior on how high heels really do make women sexier:

“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:

What

(and I cannot stress this enough)

*the fuck*https://t.co/bt2d8ebryg
— Paul Byrne (@ThePlanetaryGuy) September 22, 2020

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:

Journal retracts paper claiming smarter people are more likely to use a condom to avoid HIV

A psychology journal has retracted a 2020 paper purporting to find that smarter people are more likely to use a condom during sex to avoid HIV.

The new study, by researchers from Singapore and the United States led by Sean Lee of the Singapore Management University School of Social Sciences, appeared in Personality and Individual Differences.

The paper claimed to find that:

The list of retracted COVID-19 papers is up to 33

To the list of COVID-19 papers that have been retracted so far, add this:

The Korean Journal of Anesthesiology has retracted an article it published last month on ventilating COVID patients because it was nearly identical to one that had appeared in a different journal three months earlier.

The offending article, “Noninvasive versus invasive ventilation: one modality cannot fit all during COVID-19 outbreak,” was written by Abhishek Singh, an anesthesiologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

‘Women’s respect is a priority for us’: Journal finally retracts paper claiming women with endometriosis are more attractive

The journal that published a paper claiming that attractive women were more likely to develop endometriosis has finally retracted the article, more than a month after the authors called for the move.

The article, “Attractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis: a case-control study,” appeared in September 2012 in Fertility and Sterility, an official publication of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Over the years, it had been the subject of criticism.

In early August, the authors of the paper, from Italy, called for the retraction of the work. But that didn’t happen until now.

Per the retraction notice, which is undated — as has become common for Elsevier journals that overwrite their original HTML pages — but seems to have appeared within the last few days:

Going cold turkey: Infectious disease-poultry researcher up to 14 retractions

Nine strikes in a row in bowling is called a “golden turkey.” So what do you call 10 papers on poultry pulled at once for plagiarism?

We first wrote about Sajid Umar in July 2018, when he’d lost a 2016 article in Scientifica for plagiarism and other sins, and then again earlier this summer when he notched two more retractions from Poultry Science for “grave mistakes.”

Now, the World’s Poultry Science Journal, a Taylor & Francis title, has pulled 10 more of Umar’s articles — bringing his total to 14, by our count. According to the retraction notice for the 2017 paper “Mycoplasmosis in poultry: update on diagnosis and preventive measures”:

University of Kentucky demotes cancer researcher following finding of misconduct by scientist in his lab

A misconduct scandal at the University of Kentucky has led to the demotion of a senior cancer researcher for his lack of oversight of a now-former scientist who fabricated data in at least four papers and two grant applications.

According to the university, the inquiry began in April 2019, after the institution received complaints about suspect figures in six papers published by UK researchers. The lead on the articles was John D’Orazio, a clinician and researcher with appointments at the Markey Cancer Center and UK Healthcare.

In November 2019, UK investigators turned their attention to Stuart Jarrett, a co-author on all six papers who had joined D’Orazio’s lab in 2012 but left in September 2019.

According to the university:

Major indexing service rejects appeals by two suppressed journals

Journals hoping that Clarivate Analytics — the company behind the Impact Factor — would reverse their decision to suppress their titles from the closely watched metric are batting .500.

In July, as we reported, Clarivate suppressed 33 journals from its Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which means they will not have a 2019 Impact Factor, because of what Clarivate said was excessive self-citation. As affected journals have noted, suppression from the list can have a major impact on journals and researchers, many of whom are judged based on where they publish, using Impact Factor as a key metric.

Two journals — Zootaxa and the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology — successfully appealed the decision, and have been reinstated in the 2019 JCR. But appeals by two others — Body Image and Forensic Science International: Genetics (FSIGEN) — have been denied, Retraction Watch has learned.

Between August 18 and August 26, nearly 500 forensic scientists from 49 countries signed a petition objecting to Clarivate’s move, according to Ulises Toscanini, director of the Laboratory PRICAI-Fundación Favaloro and a professor at Favaloro University in Buenos Aires. Toscanini, president of the executive committee of the Spanish and Portuguese Speaking Working Group of the International Society for Forensic Genetics, said FSIGEN “is a ‘niche’ journal,” and is “broadly recognized as the top journal of the area.” He continued:

Springer Nature ‘continuing to investigate the concerns raised’ about paper linking obesity and lying

What’s the link between obesity and dishonesty?

If that question seems preposterous on its face, you’re probably among the critics of a 2020 paper in Scientific Reports which claimed to find that obese people were more deceptive than thinner folk.

The researchers, led by Eugenia Polizzi di Sorrentino, of the Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies at the National Research Center in Rome:

explore[d] the link between energy, obesity and dishonesty by comparing the behaviour of obese and lean subjects when hungry or sated while playing an anonymous die-under-cup task.

They found that:

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