by subject – Page 11 – Retraction Watch

Anthropology groups cancel conference panel on why biological sex is “necessary” for research

Two anthropology organizations co-hosting a conference this fall have removed from the program a panel presentation entitled “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology.”

The panel had been slated for the joint annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA), to be held in Toronto in November.

In a letter informing the panelists of the decision, Ramona Pérez and Monica Heller, presidents of the AAA and CASCA, respectively, wrote that the executive boards of the two groups had reviewed the submission “at the request of numerous members” and decided to remove it from the conference program. They wrote:

Yale professor’s book ‘systematically misrepresents’ sources, review claims

The first book of a Yale professor of Chinese history contains a “multitude of problems,” according to a no-holds-barred review published last month.

Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine: The Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century Qing State appeared last August from Harvard University Press. Its author, Maura Dykstra, is now an assistant professor of history at Yale.

In an extensive review that appeared in the Journal of Chinese History on August 31, George Qiao, an assistant professor of history and Asian languages and civilizations at Amherst College in Massachusetts, wrote that Dykstra’s book “fails to meet basic academic standards” and is “filled with misinformation.”

The book’s problems, according to Qiao, include typos, as well as:

Guest post: Genomics has a spreadsheet problem

Surveys show spreadsheets are the most widely used analytical tool in academic research. But they are prone to errors. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Public Health England lost 16,000 test results after using an old Excel file format to handle data. Whether this mix-up hampered local infection control is anybody’s guess, but it certainly could have.

The software is causing trouble for other lines of research, too, as our team and others have shown: Genomics studies that rely on Excel spreadsheets to manage data turn out to be riddled with erroneous gene names, or gene-name errors, and the issue is affecting more and more journals.

Exclusive: Probe suggests new retraction awaiting embattled Korean heart doctor

A prominent physician-scientist in South Korea may soon be facing his fourth retraction. Last month, Hui-Nam Pak of Yonsei University was found guilty of duplicate publication, a form of academic misconduct, according to a report from the school’s committee on research integrity Retraction Watch has obtained.

Pak, a cardiologist, has had dozens of papers flagged on PubPeer. As we reported in February, journals pulled two of his papers the previous month after a whistleblower pointed out problems with the articles. One was retracted for “a number of issues related to scientific misconduct,” while the other was a duplicate publication. A third paper by Pak was retracted years earlier after mistakenly being published twice by the same journal.

Our February story triggered a flood of comments, many of them malicious. Some likened whistleblowing to “academic vandalism.” Others asserted that “whistleblowers deserve strong legal penalties” and that “immoral whistleblowers” seemed bent on ruining Pak’s “outstanding career.” Many comments were rejected for not adhering to our commenting policies, in particular making unsubstantiated claims.

The September 12 report from Yonsei University (in Korean) explains that an “informant” reported two of Pak’s papers to the school’s Research Ethics Integrity Committee on March 7.

Swedish beauty study that sparked ‘storm of criticism’ is cleared

The economist behind a controversial study showing attractive female students got lower grades after classes moved online during the pandemic has been acquitted of research misconduct, according to a report from his former institution.

But the researcher, Adrian Mehic, did not get off without reproof: Even if the work kept to the letter of the law, it may still have had “unethical consequences,” Erik Renström, vice-chancellor of Lund University in Sweden, wrote in the June 8 report (in Swedish).

In the study, a jury made up largely of final-year high schoolers rated the looks of university students based on pictures taken from social media accounts. The ratings were then linked to other publicly available data about the students, including academic performance. The findings, published in the journal Economics Letters in August 2022, made headlines across the globe.

But the students had not consented to the research, nor were they informed about it. The revelation unleashed “a storm of criticism at the university,” according to local media.

Paper that found ‘climate crisis’ to be ‘not evident yet’ retracted after re-review

An article published last January in a physics journal attracted attention for its conclusion that–contrary to mainstream climate science–extreme weather events have not become more intense or more frequent as the temperature of the earth’s surface has increased.

Now, the journal’s editors have retracted the article after a post-publication review found “that the conclusions of the article were not supported by available evidence or data provided by the authors.”

In the abstract of “A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming,” published in The European Physical Journal Plus, the authors wrote:

Ex-cops tangle with journals over strip clubs and sex crimes

A study by two economists who found opening strip clubs or escort services caused sex crimes in the neighborhood to drop contains “fatal errors” and should be retracted, argues a group of past and current law enforcement officers, including three academics.

“None of us are prudes or even anti-strip club,” Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and a former Baltimore police officer, wrote in a thread on X (formerly Twitter). “But if you claim strip clubs reduce sex crimes – and by 13 percent! – you’re delving into serious policy issues.”

He added: “This is very typical of academics getting out of their field. They have second-hand data. They crunch the numbers … They don’t know what the data mean.”

Paper that helped form basis of pricy research tool retracted

Nearly four years after a critic pointed out flaws in a paper about a controversial research tool involved in nearly 20 retractions, the owner of that instrument has lost the article after he failed to overcome the editors’ concerns about the work.

The owner is Donald Morisky, of the University of California, Los Angeles, whose name should be well-familiar to readers of Retraction Watch.

Morisky developed the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS), then began charging researchers up to six-figure sums to license the use of the tool in their own studies. Those who didn’t sign agreements in advance were ordered to retract their papers that used the MMAS, pay Morisky’s company retroactively, or risk legal action. (We wrote about all this in Science back in 2017. We also wrote about how Morisky and his former business partner, Steve Trubow, have been engaged in litigation over ownership of a spin-off “widget” Trubow says belongs to him. That case is ongoing.)

Outcry over ‘terminal anorexia’ response letter prompts retraction

The authors of a response to an article critiquing the use of the term “terminal anorexia” retracted their letter last month after receiving major backlash from researchers, healthcare providers, and people with eating disorders.

“Regardless of inequities in care, terminal anorexia nervosa exists: a response to Sharpe et. al,” which defended the use of the term, was published May 20 in the Journal of Eating Disorders.

The letter was a response to “Inaccessibility of care and inequitable conceptions of suffering: a collective response to the construction of “terminal” anorexia nervosa,” an article published earlier in the month in the same journal by researchers with lived experiences of eating disorders. The article outlined methodological problems with the criteria for diagnosis of a “terminal eating disorder” put forward in “Terminal anorexia nervosa: three cases and proposed clinical characteristics,” a previous paper by two of the authors of the response letter.

The response was retracted on July 17. Its retraction note reads:

Econ study retracted after researchers find ‘undocumented alterations in the code’

An economics study has been retracted after other researchers identified several inconsistencies in the study’s code and submitted a comment to the journal.

Those critics say the flaws drove the paper’s main findings, but an author of the study says they had no major effect and stands by the results.

The original paper, “Dividend Taxes and the Allocation of Capital,” was published in the American Economic Review in September 2022. It examined the impact of a 2013 increase in the tax rate on dividends in France, concluding an increased rate can encourage the accumulation of capital. The study has been cited four times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The retraction is only the second in the journal’s history. As Retraction Watch has previously reported, research shows that it is less common for economics papers to be retracted than research in other fields.

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