A journal has retracted a meta-analysis on Covid-19 after concerned readers complained about the quality — or lack thereof — of the study.
The article, “A meta-analysis of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) antibody treatment for COVID-19 patients,” appeared in Therapeutic Advances in Chronic Disease, a SAGE title.
According to the retraction notice:
Continue reading Authors retract, resubmit “very poorly conducted” meta-analysis of COVID-19 treatmentA group of researchers in Egypt have lost a second paper on possible treatments for Covid-19 after questions were raised about the legitimacy of their trial findings — and additional retractions might be coming soon.
As we reported in September, the group lost an article in Scientific Reports about a purported trial comparing favipiravir and hydroxychloroquine to treat the infection.
That move followed an expression of concern, issued in early August, for a paper in the Archives of Virology by Dabbous and his colleagues about favipiravir, titled “Efficacy of favipiravir in COVID-19 treatment: a multi-center randomized study.”
The journal has now retracted the article:
Continue reading Group’s second paper on potential treatments for COVID-19 is retracted
A group of neurosurgery researchers in Tunisia have lost a 2021 case study on childhood meningitis after the editors discovered evidence of plagiarism and image manipulation.
The article, “A case of meningitis due to Achromobacter xylosoxidans in a child with a polymalformative syndrome: a case report,” appeared in the Pan African Medical Journal and was written by a team lead by Mehdi Borni, of the Department of Neurosurgery at University Hospital Center Habib Bourguiba, in Sfax.
According to the notice:
Continue reading ‘Clear evidence of theft’ brings down meningitis paper with dodgy images
A Wisconsin physician who has been pushing unproven treatments for Covid-19 has lost a paper on a hospital protocol his group says radically reduced deaths from the infection after one of the facilities cited in the study said the data were incorrect.
Pierre Kory, whose titles have included medical director of the Trauma and Life Support Center Critical Care Service and chief associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, in Madison, has become a key figure in the controversy over the use of ivermectin — the deworming agent that proponents insist can treat Covid-19 despite a lack of evidence that it does.
In late December 2020, Kory — who rails on Twitter about unfair and incompetent journals — and another ivermectin advocate, Paul Marik, of Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, and several other authors published a paper in the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine on a group they’d created called the Front-Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. Per the article:
Continue reading Bad MATH+? Covid treatment paper by Pierre Kory retracted for flawed resultsThe authors of a study purportedly showing that ivermectin could treat patients with SARS-CoV-2 have retracted their paper after acknowledging that their data were garbled.
The paper, “Effects of a Single Dose of Ivermectin on Viral and Clinical Outcomes in Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infected Subjects: A Pilot Clinical Trial in Lebanon,” appeared in the journal Viruses in May. According to the abstract:
Continue reading Ivermectin-COVID-19 study retracted; authors blame file mixup
Three years ago, we wrote that the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists had in 2017 asked several journals to retract a total of nine papers by Yuhji Saitoh, formerly of Yachiyo Medical Center and Tokyo Women’s Medical University.
According to the society, Saitoh had committed ethics violations in 10 articles, three of which had already been retracted and seven of which remained in the wild. (Saitoh had been a frequent co-author with Yoshitaka Fujii, currently our record holder for most retractions by a single researcher — 183 — but the JSA report found that he’d committed misconduct on his own, too. He has 53 retractions, according to our count, placing him seventh on our leaderboard.)
Four of those 10 articles appeared in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia and two others were published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia. (The seventh paper, in the Fukushima Journal of Medical Sciences, has since been retracted.)
Continue reading Four years after anesthesiology society’s request, four articles remain unretracted
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 infectionsThe 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 journal has retracted a study that sought to dispel fears about the risks — real and inflated — associated with travel to high altitudes after receiving complaints from a group of experts who found fault with the paper.
That’s the official version. The backstory is somewhat more complex.
“Acute Mountain Sickness, High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, and High Altitude Cerebral Edema: A view from the High Andes” was published online in February 2021 in Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology, an Elsevier title. The authors were Gustavo Zubieta-Calleja and his daughter, Natalia Zubieta-DeUrioste, of the High Altitude Pulmonary and Pathology Institute in La Paz, Bolivia — which, at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, is no stranger to hypoxia.
According to the abstract:
Continue reading ‘Misleading and inaccurate information’: Rocky tenure for high mountain paper as complaints prompt retraction
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