Category: india retractions

The editor-in-chief of a journal updated a retraction notice to acknowledge the data in the paper were “completely plagiarized” following allegations in a letter to the editor that were the subject of a Retraction Watch post last week. 

The original retraction, requested by the authors, cited only “major errors in data.” The notice for the October 2023 paper, which is signed by the Indian Journal for Critical Care Medicine (IJCCM) editor-in-chief Atul Kulkarni, now reads: 

Following scrutiny of the article further and other facts brought to the notice of the IJCCM, I have decided to change the reason for the retraction. This article is withdrawn after having been found that the data was completely plagiarized (in toto) from the work of another researcher.

Continue reading Journal updates retraction notice to include plagiarism following Retraction Watch report

A researcher in India has asked a journal to amend a retraction “for major errors in data” because, he says, the data weren’t wrong – they were stolen.

The October 2023 paper, “Prediction of Weaning Outcome from Mechanical Ventilation Using Ultrasound Assessment of Parasternal Intercostal Muscle Thickness,” was originally published in the Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine (IJCCM). The journal is published by JP Medical, and is indexed in Clarviate’s Web of Science. 

The undated retraction statement says the authors “wish to withdraw the article . . . due to major errors in data.” The DOI no longer links to the article, and the full text is no longer available online. 

In a letter to the editor published Nov. 30, 2024 in IJCCM, researcher Sundara Kannan alleged the authors stole his data. 

Continue reading Researcher alleges group stole thesis data presented at conference

A controversial rocket scientist in India earned his fourth retraction in October after an investigation at a physics journal found a core part of his work was “inaccurate and paradoxical.”

At issue is a highly technical concept developed by V.R. Sanal Kumar, a professor of aerospace engineering at Amity University in New Delhi. Other scientists have denounced the concept, which Kumar has dubbed “Sanal flow choking,” as “absolute nonsense,” as we reported in April.

The editors of AIP Advances appear to agree. An October 9 notice announcing the retraction of “A closed-form analytical model for predicting 3D boundary layer displacement thickness for the validation of viscous flow solvers” stated:

Continue reading Embattled rocket scientist loses paper following Retraction Watch report

An Indian paper mill featuring prominently in our recent investigation in Science and a companion piece on our website shut down its WhatsApp community six days after the stories ran, Retraction Watch has learned.

The company, called iTrilon, used the messaging platform to hawk authorship of “readymade” publications to scientists “struggling to write and publish papers in PubMed and Scopus-Indexed Journals.” It claimed to have connections at journals that allowed the mill to guarantee acceptance of most of its papers.

But on January 24, Sarath Ranganathan, iTrilon’s scientific director, deactivated the WhatsApp community he had been curating.

Continue reading Indian paper mill disbands WhatsApp community following investigation

A chemistry researcher in India has had seven of his papers retracted after the publisher concluded that some images in the papers showed “unexpected similarities” or had been duplicated.

The retraction notices, issued in late March by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in the U.K., all state that: 

The authors informed the Editor that the characterization of the original samples was outsourced, and they do not have the original raw data for the published results.

Given the significance of the concerns about the validity of the data, and the lack of raw data, the findings presented in this paper are not reliable.

The corresponding author, Dhanaraj Gopi of Periyar University in Tamil Nadu, had several papers flagged on PubPeer starting in 2019, including some that have not been retracted. 

Continue reading Chemist in India loses seven papers, blames outsourcing of images

An engineering researcher is up to nine retractions for image issues, having lost eight papers in the last month.

Yashvir Singh, of India’s Graphic Era University — ironically enough, given the reasons for the retractions —  is the first author on seven of the papers, and second author on the eighth, which appeared between 2016 and 2019.  All eight articles were published in journals owned by Taylor & Francis, and have been cited more than 80 times in total, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. 

Issues with the 2017 paper “Effect of load on friction and wear characteristics of Jatropha oil bio-lubricants,” in Biofuels were flagged in a post on PubPeer last July.  

Biofuels issued this notice on January 18: 

Continue reading Engineering professor up to nine retractions for image problems

A team of physicists in India has notched their third retraction for problematic images and other issues that also have prompted at least four corrections of their work. 

The authors, Sk. Shahenoor Basha, of the Solid State Ionics Laboratory at KL University in Guntur, and M.C. Rao, of Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada, have lost a 2018 article in the International Journal of Polymer Science titled ““Spectroscopic and electrochemical properties of [PVA/PVP]:[MgCl2{6H2O}] blend polymer electrolyte films.” 

According to the retraction notice: 

Continue reading ‘A satisfactory explanation was not provided’: Physicists in India lose third paper