by subject – Page 24 – Retraction Watch

‘Regrettably it took too long to investigate and retract this paper.’

A journal has expressed regret over its sluggish response to image hijinx in a 2017 paper on the antimalarial properties of a kind of pea plant.

The article, “Antimalarial efficacy of Pongamia pinnata (L) Pierre against Plasmodium falciparum (3D7 strain) and Plasmodium berghei (ANKA),” was written by P. V. V. Satish and K. Sunita, of the Department of Zoology and Aquaculture at Acharya Nagarjuna University.

The paper drew scrutiny on PubPeer four years ago, where commenters noted issues with the figures.

Time passed, and the paper was cited six times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. Now, according to the retraction notice:

‘The notices are utterly unhelpful’: A look at how journals have handled allegations about hundreds of papers

Retraction Watch readers may recall the names Jun Iwamoto and Yoshihiro Sato, who now sit in positions 3 and 4 of our leaderboard of retractions, Sato with more than 100. Readers may also recall the names Andrew Grey, Alison Avenell and Mark Bolland, whose sleuthing was responsible for those retractions. In a recent paper in in Accountability in Research, the trio looked at the timeliness and content of the notices journals attached to those papers. We asked them some questions about their findings.

Retraction Watch (RW): Your paper focuses on the work of Yoshihiro Sato and Jun Iwamoto. Tell us a bit about this case.

How can universities and journals work together better on misconduct allegations?

Retractions, expressions of concern, and corrections often arise from reader critiques sent by readers, whether those readers are others in the field, sleuths, or other interested parties. In many of those cases, journals seek the input of authors’ employers, often universities. In a recent paper in Research Integrity and Peer Review, longtime scientific publishing consultant Elizabeth Wager and Lancet executive editor Sabine Kleinert, writing on behalf of the Cooperation & Liaison between Universities & Editors (CLUE) group, offer recommendations on best practice for these interactions. Here, they respond to several questions about the paper.

Retraction Watch (RW): Many would say that journals can take far too long to act on retractions and other signaling to readers about problematic papers. Journals (as well as universities) often point to the need for due process. So what would a “prompt” response look like, as recommended by the paper?

‘Preprints are works in progress’: The tale of a disappearing COVID-19 paper

When a Twitter user tipped us off last week to the mysterious disappearance of a preprint of a paper on a potential new therapy to treat Covid-19, we were curious. Was it a hidden retraction, or something else?

The article, titled “Effectiveness of ZYESAMI™ (Aviptadil) in Accelerating Recovery and Shortening Hospitalization in Critically-Ill Patients with COVID-19 Respiratory Failure: Interim Report from a Phase 2B/3 Multicenter Trial,” had popped up on SSRN on April 1.

The trial was funded by NeuroRX, the maker of Zyesami, which trumpeted the results in a series of press releases dating back to February 2021. NeuroRX has been partnering with Relief Therapeutics on the development of the drug, but that marriage seems to be rather rocky.

Guillaume Cabanac, a computer scientist in France, tweeted that by May 10 the paper had vanished with only a trace of meta-data. As another Twitter user noted, however, the article had reappeared on the preprint server with a different title. (We see the post date on SSRN as May 11.)

We took a look at the two articles and found some interesting differences.

Drug company withdraws court motion requesting retraction of papers critical of its painkiller

A drug maker has blinked in a lawsuit against the leading anesthesiology society in the United States, along with several anesthesiology researchers, who it claims libeled the company in a series of articles and other materials critical of its main product.

As we reported last month, Pacira Biosciences, which makes the local anesthetic agent Exparel, field the suit in federal court in April, alleging that the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), the editor of its flagship journal, Anesthesiology, and others, were unfairly targeting the drug.

The company asked the court for a preliminary injunction to retract two papers and an editorial about Exparel that Anesthesiology published in February. But on May 7, Pacira withdrew the motion, about a week after the ASA filed its own motion calling for a quick hearing on the merits of the company’s motion.

According to an unusually forceful statement (for a medical society) from the ASA:

“Yep, pretty slow”: Nutrition researchers lose six papers

Six months after we reported that journals had slapped expressions of concern on more than three dozen papers by a group of nutrition researchers in Iran, the retractions have started to trickle in.

But clock started nearly two years ago, after data sleuths presented journals with questions about the findings in roughly 170 papers by the authors. So far we’ve seen only six retractions, from two journals, of the suspect papers. As one of the sleuths said, “yep, pretty slow.”

Central to the case is Zatollah Asemi, of the Department of Nutrition at Kashan University of Medical Sciences. As we wrote last November:

“We didn’t want to hurt them. We are polite”: When a retraction notice pulls punches

A group of anesthesiology researchers in China have lost their 2020 paper on nerve blocks during lung surgery after finding that the work contained “too many” errors to stand. But after hearing from the top editor of the journal, it’s pretty clear “too many errors” was a euphemism for even worse problems.

The article, “Opioid-sparing effect of modified intercostal nerve block during single-port thoracoscopic lobectomy: A randomised controlled trial,” came from a team at Anhui Medical University. The senior author was Guang-hong Xu. The paper appeared online in early December in the European Journal of Anaesthesiology.

At which point it caught the attention of a reader in Australia, who emailed the journal to point out fishiness in the data.

Charles Marc Samama, the editor-in-chief of the EJA, told us:

Clinical trial paper that made anemia drug look safer than it is will be retracted

A study that a pharmaceutical company admitted last month included manipulated data will be retracted, Retraction Watch has learned.

The paper, “Pooled Analysis of Roxadustat for Anemia in Patients With Kidney Failure Incident to Dialysis,” was published in Kidney International Reports in December 2020. The study analyzed data from a clinical trial for roxadustat, a drug intended to help anemic patients make more red blood cells. The medicine was tested in more than 1,500 patients with kidney failure that had been on dialysis for less than four months.

The paper compared roxadustat to a standard treatment, epoetin alfa. Epoetin alfa is not given to anemic patients who have kidney disease and are not dependent on dialysis, according to reporting in April by FiercePharma, because it can increase the risk of a cardiovascular event, including heart attacks.

In the study, roxadustat was as effective as epoetin alfa for these patients, but carried a 30 percent lower risk for death, heart attacks or strokes.

Then, on April 6th, Fibrogen announced, according to FiercePharma, that researchers had

Ecologist who lost thesis awards earns expressions of concern after laptop stolen

Readers may roll their eyes at the various excuses authors use — including flooded labs and “my laptop was stolen” — when their data are unavailable for further scrutiny following questions. But here’s a case in which a stolen laptop is a real story.

On April 5, Daniel Bolnick, the editor-in-chief of The American Naturalist, posted an expression of concern for three studies published in 2018 and 2019:

This Editorial Expression of Concern serves to notify readers of The American Naturalist that the Editorial Board has identified data archiving and statistical concerns regarding three previously published papers.

The statement continues, noting that author Denon Start — who has had two awards from his PhD rescinded, and whose employment status is unclear — “no longer has access to these data:”

Journal retracts paper by ‘miracle doctor’ claiming life force kills cancer cells

A “miracle doctor” in China and his colleagues have lost a 2007 paper on the ability of the martial art qigong to treat cancer after the journal that published the work said it failed to properly vet the findings.

Well, the first part of that is true. The second part is implied. We’ll explain.

The paper, “External Qi of Yan Xin Qigong induces G2/M arrest and apoptosis of androgen-independent prostate cancer cells by inhibiting Akt and NF-B pathways,” appeared in December 2007 in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, a Springer Nature journal. It has been cited 20 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

The first author on the study was Yan Xin, whose biography states that he is a “miracle doctor” and one of the world’s experts in the healing properties of qi — the universal life force in traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy. His co-authors include researchers at Harvard, McMaster University in Canada, and the New Medical Science Research Institute in New York City.

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