Category: sexual and marital therapy

Wikipedia page reincarnated as paper: Authors plagiarized paper on reincarnation

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When an entry on Wikipedia dies, can it come back as a paper in a peer-reviewed journal?

Apparently not, according to the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, which has retracted a 2013 article about reincarnation after discovering the authors lifted text from a “old revision” of a Wikipedia entry on the subject.

The article, “The mystery of reincarnation,” states that:

One of the mysteries puzzling human mind since the origin of mankind is the concept of “reincarnation” which literally means “to take on the flesh again.”

The article presents how different religions describe reincarnation, and apparently provides “some research evidence” about the phenomenon. But according to the retraction notice, the authors, led by AK Nagaraj of Mysore Medical College, took on the words again of other writers:

Continue reading Wikipedia page reincarnated as paper: Authors plagiarized paper on reincarnation

You’ve been dupe’d: Data so nice, you see them twice

j repro infertLast Friday we resurrected a previous feature of Retraction Watch, compiling five retractions that appeared to be simple acts of duplication.

This week, we spotlight another five unrelated retractions which, as we said last week, cover duplications in which the same – or some of the same – authors published the same – or some of the same – information in two different papers.

Most duplications are straightforward — all authors simply send the same or similar study to two or more journals, a violation of most journals’ terms of use.  For instance: Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Data so nice, you see them twice

You’ve been dupe’d: Meet authors who like their work so much, they publish it twice

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When our co-founders launched the site in 2010, they wondered whether there would be enough retractions to write about on a regular basis. Five+ years and three full-time staffers later, and we simply don’t have the time to cover everything that comes across our desk.

In 2012, we covered a group of duplication retractions in a single post, simply because duplications happen so frequently (sadly) and often don’t tell an interesting story. So in the interest of bookkeeping, we’re picking up the practice again.

Here are five unrelated retractions for your perusal: all addressing duplications, in which the same – or mostly the same – authors published the same – or mostly the same – information in two different – or sometimes the same – journals.

So, on the buffet table we offer the following entrees: Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Meet authors who like their work so much, they publish it twice

IVF embryo paper pulled for plagiarism, errors, lack of permissions

6A journal is pulling an article (with approval of “most” of the authors) because a similar paper had already been published in Chinese.

That wasn’t the only problem with “Aneuploidy analysis of non-pronuclear embryos from IVF with use of array CGH: a case report,” published in the Journal of Molecular Histology. 

The retraction note lists the three things that led to the paper’s retraction:

Continue reading IVF embryo paper pulled for plagiarism, errors, lack of permissions

Author retracts statements about gay conversion therapy

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Key assertions in a paper on homosexuality have been removed from the Journal of the Islamic Medical Association of North America, in what the notice describes as a “partial retraction.”

The 2006 article “Homosexuality: An Islamic Perspective,” states that conversion therapy can be effective, and that gay people have poorer health. Those statements are among those that lack evidence, according to a note on the paper published in July. The retraction pulls those assertions, among others, and instead argues that a homosexual person should be helped to “accept his or her LGB identity,” and find a welcoming community.

The 2006 article is definitely a perspective — it states the opinion of the sole author, M. Basheer Ahmed, who has a private psychiatry practice in Texas, as to whether homosexuality is a choice. He thinks yes, though the science on the matter is fairly clear that it’s not.

But we still think it’s interesting that a journal chose to take back some of the statements contained in the article. Here’s the abstract from the “partial retraction” note:

Continue reading Author retracts statements about gay conversion therapy

Study claiming dramatically higher rates of male military sexual trauma is retracted

psychological servicesA study that found a 15-fold increase in the rate of sexual trauma among men in the U.S. military — and sparked suggestions of “an epidemic of male-on-male sex crimes” in the military among conservative media outlets — has been retracted because of a flaw in the analysis.

The study, published just last week, appeared in Psychological Services, an American Psychological Association (APA) journal. In an announcement Sunday titled “American Psychological Association Retracts Article Positing Excessively High Rates of Sexual Trauma Among Military Men,” the APA said that “Scholars raised valid concerns regarding the design and statistical analysis which compromise the findings.” Here’s the text: Continue reading Study claiming dramatically higher rates of male military sexual trauma is retracted

Sex addiction article retracted, republished

Screen Shot 2015-10-14 at 2.01.12 PMAn open-access journal with a speedy peer review process has been having some issues with a retracted article on the biology of sex addiction.

Here’s the simple timeline of events: “Hypersexuality Addiction and Withdrawal: Phenomenology, Neurogenetics and Epigenetics,” a review article, was published by Cureus in July, following a two-day peer review. In the weeks that followed, the paper received a number of criticisms. So the journal quietly corrected it, then issued a formal correction, then retracted the paper — and now, finally, has republished it. The editor of the journal, Stanford professor emeritus John Adler, admitted the “decision was dumb” to initially fix the article without an alert, but it was ultimately doomed by “political” issues — namely, a larger debate over whether or not “sex addiction” exists at all.

We’ll start with the retraction. According to the note, it stems from the mistaken characterization of how sex addition — “hypersexuality” — is described in the current “bible” of psychiatry:

Continue reading Sex addiction article retracted, republished

Divorce study felled by a coding error gets a second chance

home_cover (1)A journal has published a corrected version of a widely reported study linking severe illness and divorce rates after it was retracted in July due to a small coding error.

The original, headline-spawning conclusion was that the risk of divorce in a heterosexual marriage increases when the wife falls ill, but not the husband. The revised results — published again in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, along with lengthy explanations from the authors and editors — are more nuanced: Gender only significantly correlates with divorce rate in the case of heart disease.

The authors’ note, from Iowa State’s Amelia Karraker and Kenzie Latham, at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, explains that the coding error led them to over-estimate how many marriages ended in divorce:

Continue reading Divorce study felled by a coding error gets a second chance

“Whoops.” Paper cites retracted gay canvassing paper — but blame me, says journal editor

arch sex behavBy now, most Retraction Watch readers are likely familiar with the retraction in May of a much-ballyhooed study in Science on whether gay canvassers could persuade people to agree with same-sex marriage. It turns out that before that retraction appeared, a different study that cited the Science paper made its way online.

Kenneth Zucker, the editor of Archives of Sexual Behavior, which published the study online in February, 2015, decided he had some ‘splaining to do. The article has now been published as the lead paper in the current issue of the journal, which also includes a comment from Zucker. He explains what happened: Continue reading “Whoops.” Paper cites retracted gay canvassing paper — but blame me, says journal editor

“To our horror”: Widely reported study suggesting divorce is more likely when wives fall ill gets axed

home_coverA widely reported finding that the risk of divorce increases when wives fall ill — but not when men do — is invalid, thanks to a short string of mistaken coding that negates the original conclusions, published in the March issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

The paper, “In Sickness and in Health? Physical Illness as a Risk Factor for Marital Dissolution in Later Life,” garnered coverage in many news outlets, including The Washington Post, New York magazine’s The Science of Us blog, The Huffington Post, and the UK’s Daily Mail . 

But an error in a single line of the coding that analyzed the data means the conclusions in the paper — and all the news stories about those conclusions — are “more nuanced,” according to first author Amelia Karraker, an assistant professor at Iowa State University.

Karraker — who seems to be handling the case quickly and responsibly —  emailed us how she realized the error:

Continue reading “To our horror”: Widely reported study suggesting divorce is more likely when wives fall ill gets axed