Category: unhelpful retraction notices

Surprise, surprise: Study says retraction notices often aren’t honest about misconduct

A paper published online the other day in the Journal of Medical Ethics puts some numbers on an issue near and dear to Retraction Watch: How transparent are retraction notices when it comes to misconduct?

David Resnik and Gregg Dinse, of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, looked at the 208 cases closed by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity from 1992 to 2011 that involved “official findings of research misconduct.” As they note: Continue reading Surprise, surprise: Study says retraction notices often aren’t honest about misconduct

Hmmm: SAGE’s attorney explains why weight loss retraction notices said less than those of other journals

In May, we broke the story of Edward Shang, a weight loss surgeon who made up most, if not all, of the patients he reported on in at least one study. We’ve been following the case since then, including three more retractions in the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (JPEN).

As we noted in a June 22 post, the notices in JPEN were a bit more lean than the first notice we found, in Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases. The latter read: Continue reading Hmmm: SAGE’s attorney explains why weight loss retraction notices said less than those of other journals

Another opaque notice from the JBC, for paper author says is correct and valid

The Journal of Biological Chemistry has posted another of its inscrutable and opaque retraction notices, this one for a study first published in September 2011. The retraction reads in full: Continue reading Another opaque notice from the JBC, for paper author says is correct and valid

Clinical Endoscopy retracts sedation paper, creates neologism in process

Clinical Endoscopy, the official journal of the Korean Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, has retracted a 2011 paper on sedation practices.

Although the retraction statement is underpowered for information, it has a charming neologism. To wit, the announcement for the paper, “Comparison of midazolam alone versus midazolam plus propofol during endoscopic submucosal dissection,” is a “noticement.”

Unfortunately, that’s about all that’s interesting about this retraction. Or rather, that’s the only thing on which we can comment, given the notice itself:
Continue reading Clinical Endoscopy retracts sedation paper, creates neologism in process

Updated: Ski resort paper hits a (media) mogul and gets retracted

With temperatures at Retraction Watch’s New York HQ threatening to break 100 degrees today — that’s nearly 38 degrees Celsius for those of you in the rest of the world — what better way to take our minds off the heat than by writing about than skiing?

Lucky for us, the author of a paper in the Journal of Maps about new ways to create ski resort maps — aka the “Breckenridge schematic map” — has retracted it. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Updated: Ski resort paper hits a (media) mogul and gets retracted

Why retraction notices matter: Group’s repeated misuse of figures gets different play from five journals

For some journals, thorough retraction notices are the rule — and, when misconduct is involved, the price authors pay for abusing the trust of the editors and the readers. Others seem to take a more casual approach. Guess which we think is best.

Consider the case of a group of researchers in China led by Tan Jinquan, an immune system expert at Wuhan University. Over the past two years or so, Jinquan and colleagues have lost no fewer than a half-dozen papers containing evidence of image manipulation. But, depending on the journal pulling the articles, you might not know it.

Continue reading Why retraction notices matter: Group’s repeated misuse of figures gets different play from five journals

Would you pay $63 for a retraction notice?

For $63 plus tax, you can have a single steak with a side order of fried potatoes and a wedge of crisp iceberg lettuce at the famed Peter Luger steakhouse in Brooklyn. Or you can get a peek at one measly retraction notice from Bentham Science Publishers (at least it’s BYOB).

To be fair, the publisher, based in the United Arab Emirates, does offer a free version of the notice on its own website. But Bentham uses the company Ingenta Connect as a go-between to collect fees —  some of which reach $100 per article, according to a company employee — and as far as we can tell, no such gratis access is available through the middleman. Neither does Ingenta direct readers to the free version in its landing page for the notice.

The article in question, “Solubilization and Amorphization of Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug with Low Molecular Weight Chitosan for a New Guar-Based Colon Delivery Formulation,” by Kadria A. Elkhodairy, Nahla S. Barakat and Fars K. Alanazi, appeared in the March 2011 issue of Letters in Drug Design & Discovery. The retraction notice reads: Continue reading Would you pay $63 for a retraction notice?

A retracted periodontitis-heart disease paper that didn’t make it into the new AHA review

On Wednesday, the American Heart Association announced something that those of us who’d been reading the medical literature carefully had known for a while: Bad gums do not cause heart disease.

Periodontitis is linked to bad heart disease, you see, as studies have shown, and periodontists have sure been using this as an excuse to tell us to floss. But there’s never been a convincing study showing that one causes the other.

In fact, it’s not even clear how you’d do that study. “Let’s see, for a control group, we should have 100 people convince themselves they’re flossing for a year, but not actually floss….oh, what else can we get funding for?”

That “news” prompted an email from Retraction Watch friend Marc Abrahams, Continue reading A retracted periodontitis-heart disease paper that didn’t make it into the new AHA review

Authors retract paper claiming antidepressants prevent suicide

The authors of a study allegedly showing that antidepressants prevent suicide have retracted it over unspecified errors. Here’s the notice:

At the request of the authors and in agreement with the Editor-in-Chief and Wiley-Blackwell, the following article “Antidepressant medication prevents suicide in depression”. Acta Psychiatr Scand 2010;122:454–460 has been retracted. The retraction has been requested and agreed due to unintentional errors in the analysis of the data presented.

The original paper linked “data on the toxicological detection of antidepressants in 18 922 suicides in Sweden 1992–2003” to “registers of psychiatric hospitalization as well as registers with sociodemographic data.” It found: Continue reading Authors retract paper claiming antidepressants prevent suicide

Another withdrawal by MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, again for unclear reasons

Bharat B. Aggarwal, the MD Anderson researcher under investigation at his institution over concerns of image manipulation, has withdrawn a second paper, although you’d never know why from the statement.

The notice for the article, “Evidence for the critical roles of NF-κB p65 and specificity proteins in the apoptosis-inducing activity of proteasome inhibitors in leukemia cells,” is pretty minimal: Continue reading Another withdrawal by MD Anderson’s Aggarwal, again for unclear reasons