by subject – Page 14 – Retraction Watch

‘One would not want to tarnish another journal’: Why a republished COVID-19 masks study doesn’t say it was retracted

When a retracted paper is republished in a new journal, should it note the retraction?

A few readers have asked us that question as they forwarded a paper published in May in Environmental Research, an Elsevier title. The study, “Carbon dioxide rises beyond acceptable safety levels in children under nose and mouth covering: Results of an experimental measurement study in healthy children,” bore striking similarities to a paper by the same authors that was retracted from JAMA Pediatrics in July 2021.

That retraction was the second for the paper’s first author, Harald Walach, who also lost an affiliation with a university in Poland. Walach tells us that he let the editor know about the JAMA Pediatrics retraction before he submitted the manuscript:

An editor invited me to submit a commentary, then he rejected it – and named and blamed me in an editorial

The American Journal of Public Health is the flagship publication of the American Public Health Association, which has more than 25,000 members worldwide. The AJPH boasts that it is “a highly influential publication,” which is why I accepted an invitation from editor-in-chief Alfredo Morabia in 2020 to comment in a journal forum on FDA regulation of e-cigarettes. At that time Morabia invited a range of experts, both advocates and supporters of FDA tobacco regulation and critics.

Notably, I and Derek Yach, former president of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, acknowledged our conflicts of interest with the tobacco industry. My commentary, which was critical of FDA actions, was published here. (I had first published in AJPH a quarter century before.)

At the time of the forum, AJPH editors wrote, “we will invite everyone to reassess the situation in a year.” After a delay perhaps caused by Covid, on March 16, 2022 I was invited by Morabia to submit a commentary by April 1. Neither AJPH invitation email provided any guidance as to form or content for my submission.

I did so, and you can read the draft here. On April 22, Morabia summarily rejected my commentary. That same day, I wrote to him, expressing my confusion and asking for reconsideration (available here). There was no response.

Crystallography database flags nearly 1000 structures linked to a paper mill

A chemistry database of crystal structures has marked nearly 1000 entries with expressions of concern after finding they were linked to articles identified as products of a paper mill.

The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) added notes to 992 structures in its database, according to a notice posted to its website in May. And a crystallography researcher tells us the impact on the field could be significant.

The notes state:

University’s story changes: It requested 33 retractions, not ‘several’

The University of Wyoming has requested that journals retract 33 papers by a former associate dean and “highly cited researcher” at the institution.

The news came just a week after we broke the story that heart researcher Jun Ren had been demoted following an earlier investigation. At the time, a university spokesperson told us that “Based on the findings of this examination, the university is recommending retraction of several publications due to concerns regarding data irregularities inconsistent with published conclusions.”

Exclusive: OSU investigation finds dishonesty and “permissive culture of data manipulation” in cancer research lab

A university investigation found an emeritus professor had committed research misconduct after reviewing dozens of allegations, culminating in a recommendation to retract 10 papers and revoke his emeritus status.

The Ohio State University investigated 20 manuscripts by the cancer research group of Samson Jacob after the university received allegations in 2017 of image manipulation stretching over years of work, according to a misconduct investigation report we obtained via a public records request.

The 209-page report, dated February 9, 2021, tells the story of an investigation spanning more than a decade of Jacob’s lab’s work that encountered “dishonesty” from the lab members interviewed.

After determining that Jacob had committed research misconduct, the investigation committee recommended sanctions and asked for the immediate retraction of 10 papers in addition to the 10 that had already been addressed (nine retracted and one corrected) prior to the close of the inquiry. The school revoked Jacob’s emeritus position in May 2021, the OSU Lantern reported at the time.

The investigation committee reviewed 67 allegations, but declined to probe many more concerns that surfaced for the sake of time, according to the report.

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):

Engineering researcher who cast blame on co-author will soon have 12 retractions

A civil engineering researcher will soon have 12 retractions to his name after a data sleuth notified journals of issues with image reuse in the papers.

Jorge de Brito, a professor at the University of Lisbon, has lost four papers in Construction and Building Materials, two in the Journal of Building Engineering, of which he had been editor-in-chief, and another in Engineering Structures since we reported in March on retractions for a pair of researchers in Iran with whom de Brito had coauthored papers.

Editors of the Magazine of Concrete Research have decided to retract another paper, “Improved bending behaviour of steel-fibre-reinforced recycled aggregate concrete beams with a concrete jacket,” we learned from a staffer who copied Retraction Watch on an email to the data sleuth who raised concerns. The paper has been cited eight times, and this retraction would bring de Brito’s total to 12.

‘Our deepest apology’: Journal retracts 30 likely paper mill articles after investigation published by Retraction Watch

A journal has retracted 30 papers that “could be linked to a criminal paper mill.” The move comes six and a half months after Retraction Watch published an investigation into the operation.

The investigation, by Brian Perron of the University of Michigan, high school student Oliver Hiltz-Perron, and Bryan Victor of Wayne State University, identified nearly 200 published papers with apparent links to a Russian company named International Publisher. Many of those articles were published in the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, or iJET, and the researchers notified the journal of their findings.

In an announcement about the retractions and each retraction notice, iJET editors specifically cite the investigation and Perron’s communications.

A representative retraction notice states:

Papers on Alzheimer’s slapped with expressions of concern

A Science journal has issued expressions of concern for two papers on Alzheimer’s disease over concerns about the integrity of the data.

One involves a 2016 article by a star-studded group of neuroscience researchers over allegations of manipulated data in one of the figures. That paper, “Gain-of-function mutations in protein kinase Cα (PKCα) may promote synaptic defects in Alzheimer’s disease,” appeared in Science Signaling and came from a team led by Rudolph Tanzi and Roberto Malinow, of Harvard and UC San Diego, respectively.

Here’s the notice for the paper, which has been cited 64 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science:

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:

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