clinical study retractions – Page 65

Macchiarini dismissed from Karolinska

The Karolinska Institutet has dismissed former rising star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini from his post, effective immediately.

A KI news release, dated today, states:

The Staff Disciplinary Board at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to relieve Paolo Macchiarini of his duties as a researcher at KI. He is to be informed immediately that his contract has been rescinded.

For a refresher on the story, check out our constantly updating timeline. As a brief recap: Continue reading Macchiarini dismissed from Karolinska

“A big mistake:” Paper about the dangers of Wi-Fi pulled for plagiarism

A report that presents guidelines for treating people allegedly harmed by signals from Wi-Fi and mobile phones was pulled two weeks after publication for plagiarism.

However, the retraction note, published in the March issue of Reviews on Environmental Health, doesn’t use the word “plagiarism,” and instead blames the move on lost citations and errors. The editor of the journal, David Carpenter, told us the report — which takes the controversial stance that WiFi can cause harm to some people — was retracted because “major sections of it had been taken directly” from another source, without reference.

The journal didn’t catch the plagiarism because it didn’t send the report out for peer review, Carpenter said:

[W]e didn’t subject the article to the full peer review that is applied for all other submissions, and that always include an on-line search for plagiarism.

The reason, Carpenter told us: the paper “was the outcome of a large committee.”

Here’s the retraction note for “EUROPAEM EMF Guideline 2015 for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of EMF-related health problems and illnesses:”

Continue reading “A big mistake:” Paper about the dangers of Wi-Fi pulled for plagiarism

NEJM: No plan to clarify wording that led to allegations of breached confidentiality

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has no plans to change the wording of an article that led to allegations of breached patient confidentiality and caused a minor social media firestorm this past weekend, the journal told Retraction Watch.

The paragraph in question appeared in an essay by Lisa Rosenbaum chronicling the history of power morcellation, a technique to remove gynecological organs that the FDA has subjected to a “black box warning” because it can also spread tumors: Continue reading NEJM: No plan to clarify wording that led to allegations of breached confidentiality

Antifungal drug paper didn’t have institution’s approval

Authors have pulled a paper on an antifungal drug that is potentially toxic because it lacked final approval from their institution.

The study describes a patient who had experienced liver toxicity after taking voriconazole. During the study, the authors re-administered the drug to the patient using “a slow dose titration.” But their institution didn’t approve the study before it was published online.

Here’s the retraction note for “Successful Rechallenge with Voriconazole following Medication-Induced Hepatotoxicity,” published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. Continue reading Antifungal drug paper didn’t have institution’s approval

Corrections chip away at asbestos paper for conflicts of interest, “misleading” citation

The journal Epidemiology Biostatistics and Public Health has issued back-to-back corrections for a 2015 paper after the authors failed to disclose conflicts of interest with the asbestos industry and included an “erroneous citation.”

The mistaken citation was more than just a clerical error, critics argue — it undermines one of the key arguments of the paper, “Critical reappraisal of Balangero chrysotile and mesothelioma risk,” which disputes claims that an asbestos mine in northwest Italy was responsible for numerous cases of an aggressive form of cancer called mesothelioma. The authors, led by Edward Ilgren formerly of Oxford University, claim that “myriad sources” of other forms of asbestos—rather than the asbestos produced at the mine, called chrysotile—exist in the region “to account for the alleged cases.”

However, according to a recently added correction, the citation does not support one of the authors’ claims about how other forms of asbestos arrived at the mine area.

Continue reading Corrections chip away at asbestos paper for conflicts of interest, “misleading” citation

Retracted anesthesia study “was not conducted in reality”

We’ve come across a new way to say the data in a paper are not reliable:

It has been found that the study represented in the article was not conducted in reality.

That’s from the retraction note for a paper that Anesthesia Essays and Researches has retracted for data falsification. The rest of the retraction note for “Intrathecal dextmedetomidine to reduce shoulder tip pain in laparoscopic cholecystectomies under spinal anesthesia” explains:

Continue reading Retracted anesthesia study “was not conducted in reality”

NEJM corrects 3 papers after prominent cancer scientist left off credit for breakthrough

The New England Journal of Medicine has corrected three highly cited papers to credit researchers who played a role in the work.

The papers describe a treatment in which engineered T cells fight leukemia, originally hailed as a “major advance” in the New York Times. Since the first paper appeared in 2011, co-author Carl June at the University of Pennsylvania has received more than $7 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health, according to MIT Technology Review. But according to a newly published correction, the three NEJM papers failed to note in the acknowledgement section that an important component of the experiments was supplied by researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

The correction, made 11 months after a request from co-author and Penn researcher David Porter, explains the contribution of the St Jude’s researchers:

Continue reading NEJM corrects 3 papers after prominent cancer scientist left off credit for breakthrough

Another paper by GM researcher pulled over manipulation concerns

A researcher who published findings questioning the safety of genetically modified organisms has lost a second paper following concerns of image manipulation.

Last week, the journal animal retracted a 2010 paper by Federico Infascelli, an animal nutrition researcher at the University of Naples, which claimed to find modified genes in the milk and blood of goats who were fed genetically modified soybeans. The retraction stems from an investigation that concluded the authors likely manipulated images, according to the note. Earlier this year, another journal retracted one of Infascelli’s papers that contained a duplicated figure.

In February, Italian paper La Repubblica (which we read with Google Translate) reported that the university found problems in three of his articles and issued a warning.

Here’s the retraction note for “Fate of transgenic DNA and evaluation of metabolic effects in goats fed genetically modified soybean and in their offsprings:”

Continue reading Another paper by GM researcher pulled over manipulation concerns

Journal bans 8 authors for plagiarism

A medical journal has banned eight authors after discovering that they had published plagiarized work.

We don’t see official author bans as often as we see plagiarism (occasionally, and all the time, respectively). That’s why we’re flagging this case, which is a little old — the International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health announced the ban in March 2015, after it retracted three of the authors’ papers for plagiarism.

All three papers — about recovering from orthopedic problems — have a first author in common: Rajesh Valjibhai Chawda, who was affiliated with the CU Shah Medical College and Hospital in India at the time of the research. (We couldn’t find a webpage for him.)

After an author on one of the original articles alerted the journal of one instance of plagiarism, the journal launched an in-house inquiry, the retraction note explains:

Continue reading Journal bans 8 authors for plagiarism