Category: clinical study retractions

Researchers mistakenly administer three-fold higher dose of anesthesia

Researchers have retracted a 2016 paper after discovering that they accidentally administered three times the reported dose of anesthesia to rats.

In the Experimental Physiology paper, the authors set out to mathematically map how rats’ blood pressure changes under different conditions, which required the rats to be anesthetized. But their findings were called into question when they found the rats had received a much higher concentration of anesthesia than intended. According to the notice, this higher dose compromised the “objectives of the experiment.”

The corresponding author Karol Ondrias, from the Institute of Molecular Physiology and Genetics at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, told us how the dosing error occurred: Continue reading Researchers mistakenly administer three-fold higher dose of anesthesia

Journal flags two more papers by diabetes researcher who sued to stop retractions (and now has 12)

A diabetes journal has issued two notices of concern for papers co-authored by a researcher who took another publisher to court after it did the same thing — but ultimately lost.

The notices are for two papers co-authored by Mario Saad — who, after losing his legal battle with the American Diabetes Association, has since accumulated 12 retractions. Both notices — from the journal Diabetologia, published by Springer and the the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) — say they have alerted Saad to their concerns about some of the images in the papers, and the university where he is based was asked to investigate more than one year ago. Since the journal has not yet received any information from the University of Campinas in Brazil, however, it decided to issue expressions of concern for the two papers.

Here’s the text of the first notice:

Continue reading Journal flags two more papers by diabetes researcher who sued to stop retractions (and now has 12)

Gender-based violence researcher now up to 10 retractions for plagiarism

A publisher has retracted all of the papers it published by a researcher in Nigeria, citing plagiarism.

The papers, all about terrorism and gender-based violence, were written by Oluwaseun Bamidele. The journal editors and the publisher, Taylor & Francis, decided to retract nine papers by Bamidele because of the overlap to other works — which he also failed to reference.

Bamidele — who also lost a paper on Boko Haram for the same reason — told us he didn’t learn about what constitutes plagiarism until his graduate studies, after he’d already written the now-retracted manuscripts:

Continue reading Gender-based violence researcher now up to 10 retractions for plagiarism

Journal: Here’s why we didn’t retract this duplicated paper

Here’s something we don’t see every day: A journal explains in an erratum notice why it chose not to retract a paper that contains data published elsewhere.

According to the Journal of Business and Psychology, the authors violated the journal’s transparency policy by failing to disclose that they’d used the same data in their 2014 in three others. However, the editors ultimately concluded the current paper was different enough from the other three to save it from being retracted.

Here’s the erratum: Continue reading Journal: Here’s why we didn’t retract this duplicated paper

“Dramatic impact:” Authors misread breast cancer treatment database, retract paper

A journal has retracted a 2016 study on the use of radiation by breast cancer patients after the authors misinterpreted what was reported in a national cancer database.

Correcting for the error, according to the retraction notice, had a “dramatic impact on the original article data and conclusions.”

Quyen Chu, a surgeon at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport, told us that the problem appears to stem from a misunderstanding about the US National Cancer Database (NCDB). After the paper was published, the NCDB pointed out to Chu that a key data point had not been reliably or consistently collected during the timeframe relevant to the study. The database’s user’s manual says essentially the same thing; Chu said he and his authors read it, but misunderstood it.

The original Journal of the American College of Surgeons study looked at whether a 2004 National Comprehensive Cancer Network treatment guideline — which suggested some patients could avoid radiation on top of surgery and hormone therapy — led to an actual decrease in radiation therapy. But the error forced the authors to drop tens of thousands of patients treated before 2004, which had a severe impact on their ability to draw conclusions.

Chu told us:

Continue reading “Dramatic impact:” Authors misread breast cancer treatment database, retract paper

Despite author’s protest, journal removes paper on emergency department prices

A journal has temporarily removed a paper showing the dramatic differences in the cost of providing emergency care that caught national attention (and some criticism from emergency care providers), despite the first author’s claims that the results are valid.

The paper, published online in February by the Annals of Emergency Medicine, showed that it can cost significantly more for patients to be treated at emergency departments than at urgent care centers, even for the same conditions. Soon after the paper was published, first author Vivian Ho at Rice University was told by the American College of Emergency Physicians, which publishes the journal, that there were some errors in the appendix, and they wanted to reanalyze the entire paper.

Ho told us:

Continue reading Despite author’s protest, journal removes paper on emergency department prices

Updated: Vaccine-autism study retracted — again

For the second time, a journal has quickly retracted a study that suggested vaccines raise the risk of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

The study first raised a furor last year, prompting a Frontiers journal to quickly retract it. After it was republished in the Journal of Translational Science this month, that journal has also retracted it.

Although the titles of the two papers changed, the abstracts were nearly identical. Both studies surveyed the parents of 666 home-schooled children, 39% of whom where not vaccinated, and concluded that vaccination increased the risk of neurodevelopmental problems, particularly if children were born prematurely.

A representative of the Journal of Translational Science told us “Pilot comparative study on the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated 6- to 12-year-old U.S. children” has been retracted, and it will update us with an explanation.

Here’s more from the (now-retracted) abstract:

Continue reading Updated: Vaccine-autism study retracted — again

Can we do math unconsciously? Replicators of a prominent 2012 study have some doubts

In 2012, news media were abuzz with a new finding from PNAS: Authors based in Israel had found evidence that our brains can unconsciously process more than we thought — including basic math and reading.  In other words, the authors claimed people could read and do math without even knowing what they were doing.

With such a major development in the field of consciousness research, other groups quickly got to work trying to replicate the findings. Those efforts have taken some twists and turns — including a recent retraction of a replication paper that was, itself, not reproducible (which is not something we see every day). But overall, five years after the initial, remarkable result, the replication efforts are calling it into question.

According to Pieter Moors at KU Leuven, a researcher in this field:

Continue reading Can we do math unconsciously? Replicators of a prominent 2012 study have some doubts

After researcher is convicted of sexual assault, journal retracts her co-author’s paper

A disability journal has retracted a paper supposedly penned by a man with severe disabilities, citing duplication.

Although the reason for the retraction may sound run-of-the-mill, this situation is far from ordinary.

The author, known as DMan Johnson — or simply “D.J.” — has cerebral palsy, and was communicating using a controversial technique called “facilitated communication” with Anna Stubblefield, the former chairwoman of philosophy at Rutgers University. In October 2015, Stubblefield was convicted of sexually assaulting D.J., who has been diagnosed with spastic quadriplegia and severe mental retardation. The following month, she was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

In October 2015, Disability Studies Quarterly issued a statement that it was taking a second look at papers by Stubblefield, but did not specify which ones.

Continue reading After researcher is convicted of sexual assault, journal retracts her co-author’s paper

Researcher who sued to prevent retractions now has 12

A diabetes researcher who once sued a publisher to prevent several retractions has just issued his 12th.

The latest retraction, like several others for Mario Saad, appears in the journal Diabetes. Although in the past Saad expended considerable effort to protect four other Diabetes papers from this same fate, the latest retraction was initiated by the authors, citing several duplicated images. The American Diabetes Association had flagged the 2009 paper with an expression of concern earlier this year.

In 2015, Saad brought a lawsuit against the ADA, claiming that it “wrongfully published” four expressions of concerns in its flagship journal Diabetes, in an attempt to prevent the papers from being retracted. He lost, and the papers were retracted in 2016.

The lawsuit also did nothing to deter the ADA from flagging other potentially problematic papers with expressions of concerns, including the latest 2009 Diabetes paper, on which Saad is last and corresponding author.  Continue reading Researcher who sued to prevent retractions now has 12