clinical study retractions – Page 5

250th COVID-19 retraction is for faked ethics approval

Researchers in Iran have lost a paper on Covid-19 infection in a two-month-old boy after the journal learned that they’d fabricated ethics approval for the article.

It’s the 250th Covid-19 retraction by our count.

“Coronavirus disease 2019 in a 2-month-old male infant: a case report from Iran” appeared in December 2020 in Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics. The senior author of the paper was Sajjad Ahmadpour, of the Gastroenterology and Hepatology Diseases Research Center at Qom University of Medical Sciences.

According to the retraction notice (which doesn’t appear in the expected place but can be found here):

Researcher attacks journal for retracting his paper on COVID-19 drug

A journal has retracted a paper reporting the results of a clinical trial in which a drug cut COVID-19 hospitalization for men by 90%.

The research group’s other work has attracted a lot of attention in Brazil – including praise from president Jair Bolsonaro and criticism from research regulators – for their dramatic results. In a Twitter thread, one of the authors claimed, without evidence, that the journal “may have received bribery to persecute us and retract our study.”

The article, “Proxalutamide Reduces the Rate of Hospitalization for COVID-19 Male Outpatients: A Randomized Double-Blinded Placebo-Controlled Trial,” was published in Frontiers in Medicine last July and has been cited 15 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The study quickly attracted criticism, according to the retraction notice:

A paper claimed to describe ‘the first potent and specific anti-COVID-19 drug.’ Now it’s retracted.

A paper about the discovery of “the first potent and specific anti-COVID-19 drug” has been retracted after it emerged that the compound wasn’t so novel after all.

The article, published in May 2021 in Chemical Papers has been cited seven times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

As the paper’s sole author, Amgad M. Rabie, writes in the abstract:

Former Weill Cornell cancer researcher up to 20 retractions; investigation’s findings are with Feds

The journal Cancer Prevention Research has retracted nine papers at once from a group of cancer researchers led by Andrew Dannenberg, formerly of Weill Cornell Medicine.

The bundle of retractions brings Dannenberg’s total to 20, according to our database, nearly doubling the 11 he had previously. Kotha Subbaramaiah, also formerly of Weill Cornell Medicine, is a coauthor on all of the newly retracted papers, and two of the notices point the finger at figures that he prepared.

Dannenberg and Subbaramaiah retired from Cornell in the space of three months in late 2020 and early 2021, Retraction Watch has learned, and the university has forwarded a report of their investigation into the matter to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

Failed to properly register your trial? Just use a different study’s number. Actually, don’t.

Researchers in China have lost a 2019 paper on sedation in people undergoing cardiac surgery after readers complained that the authors had failed to properly register the trial.

The paper, “Effect of Perioperative Administration of Dexmedetomidine on Delirium After Cardiac Surgery in Elderly Patients: a Double-Blinded, Multi-Center, Randomized Study,” appeared in Clinical Interventions in Aging, a Dove Press title.

Last year, a commenter on PubPeer flagged the article, which has been cited 26 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science:

After we tried to correct claims about ‘deadly’ water filters in Flint, we were accused of scientific misconduct—and that was just the beginning

The Sept. 10, 2019 PBS article accompanying the FRONTLINE documentary “Deadly Water” was topped by a provocative headline: “The EPA Says Flint’s Water is Safe — Scientists Aren’t So Sure.” The PBS story relied on a study of adverse health outcomes for people given point-of-use (POU) water filters during the Flint Federal Emergency.

We were astonished. Several of us worked closely with residents to first expose the problems with lead and Legionella that defined the Flint Water Crisis. We were supportive of later humanitarian efforts to provide Flint residents with the free point of use (POU) lead filters, since they effectively remove lead from water used for drinking and cooking. These off-the-shelf water filters are routinely used in about a third of U.S. homes, so we were mystified as to how they could have wrought such devastation when deployed in Flint.

Another ivermectin-COVID-19 paper is retracted

A paper on the potential use of ivermectin to treat Covid-19 has been retracted for a litany of flaws, joining at least 10 other articles on the therapy some liked to promote without evidence to fall.

The article was part of a special issue of Toxicology Reports on Covid-19 that has received an expression of concern; six of the eight articles still have EoCs. Two, including one “Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19?,” have now been retracted.

The newly retracted article, “Use of ivermectin in the treatment of Covid-19: A pilot trial,” was written by a group from Brazil and the United States and appeared in March 2021.

According to the retraction notice:

Journal retracts C-section paper with ‘impossible’ data

An ob-gyn journal has retracted a clinically influential 2016 paper on the use of steroids in women undergoing cesarean delivery, citing questions about the data.

The article, “Antenatal corticosteroid administration before elective caesarean section at term to prevent neonatal respiratory morbidity: a randomized controlled trial,” appeared in the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology (EJOG), and was written by a group at Cairo University in Egypt led by Adel Nada.

The study purported to involve nearly 1,300 women – making it the largest analysis of women receiving steroids for the indication in the trial. But Ben Mol, an ob-gyn researcher and data sleuth at Monash Medical Centre in Australia, noted that the paper – which has been cited 32 times, per Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science – was based on a thesis by the second author, M.M. Shafeek. Something in the two articles caught Mol’s eye, he told Retraction Watch:

COVID-19-vitamin D paper retracted by Springer Nature journal

A journal has retracted a 2021 paper claiming that vitamin D “significantly reduced the inflammatory markers associated with COVID-19 without any side effects” following criticism that led them to “no longer have confidence in the conclusions.”

The paper “Impact of daily high dose oral vitamin D therapy on the inflammatory markers in patients with COVID 19 disease,” appeared in Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature journal, on May 20, 2021. The paper earned a correction on August 30, and has been cited 29 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist at the University of Wollongong who has been involved in efforts to clean up the literature around COVID-19 and other subjects, tells us that he told the journal about the errors in early November 2021. Meyerowitz-Katz outlined his criticisms of the paper – which he called “one of the most influential” in the push to use vitamin D for COVID-19 – in a Medium post on April 3.

Study on reducing parents’ anxiety about children’s circumcision retracted

A pair of researchers in Turkey have lost a 2021 paper on a randomized controlled trial in pediatric surgery after a reader raised concerns about the methodology reported in the article.

However, the retraction notice – detailed though it might be – reveals that the problems could, and likely should, have been caught during peer review.

The paper, “Effect of care programme based on Comfort Theory on reducing parental anxiety in the paediatric day surgery: Randomised controlled trial,” appeared last July in the Journal of Clinical Nursing, a Wiley title. The authors, Fahriye Pazarcikci and Emine Efe, were affiliated with Isparta University of Applied Sciences and Akdeniz University, respectively.

“Paediatric day surgery” turns out to be male circumcision in boys ages 4 to 7 years, as the trial registration information on ClinicalTrials.gov indicates. Circumcision is mentioned in the full text of the paper, but not the abstract.

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