Paper on canine gastrointestinal illness dogged by lack of disclosures

leisergu, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A veterinary journal has retracted — in a big way — a 2021 paper about bowel disease in dogs by a group of authors who failed to disclose key conflicts of interest and then appear to have lied about the omission when pressed.

The article, “Utility of the combined use of 3 serologic markers in the diagnosis and monitoring of chronic enteropathies in dogs,” appeared in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, an official title of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. 

The first author was Juan Estruch, of Vetica Labs, a rather opaque company based in San Diego and of which Estruch is listed in securities documents as having been the CEO back in 2015.

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Scholar with a history of making up author names has a 1985 paper corrected

A scholar who famously fabricated a meeting between Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky used a bogus name to publish a 1985 paper in the journal History –  and it was far from the first time. 

Arnold Harvey, also known as AD Harvey, apparently created a small (precisely how small is unclear) community of scholars, including Stephanie Harvey, Graham Headley, Trevor McGovern, John Schellenberger, Leo Bellingham, Michael Lindsay and Ludovico Parra, as well as the Latvian poet Janis Blodnieks. 

In a ruse outlined in this 2013 article for the Times Literary Supplement by Eric Naiman, of UC Berkeley, this fictitious klatch would critique each other’s papers. (Take note, peer review rings of the 2010s.)

As The Guardian wrote in a 2013 profile of Harvey that’s well worth a read:

Continue reading Scholar with a history of making up author names has a 1985 paper corrected

Student of yoga tourism won’t get PhD as he earns five retractions

Photo by Amanda Mills, USCDCP on Pixnio

For Pramod Sharma, the study of yoga tourism has proven to be a downward-facing dog. 

Last year, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Roorkee blocked Sharma – who posed as a legit yoga researcher but in reality stole other people’s work – from receiving his PhD after determining that his thesis was “plagiarized and lacks originality.” What’s more, according to the institution, a 2018 article by Sharma contained a “discrepancy in data…casting a doubt on the validity of the results.” 

Journals have now retracted five papers by Sharma, although earlier concerns about the work didn’t reach his PhD committee in time to prevent him from defending his thesis in 2019. 

We reviewed the IIT report on the Sharma case, and pulled out a couple of the choicest passages:

Continue reading Student of yoga tourism won’t get PhD as he earns five retractions

Researchers sound alarm on ‘predatory’ rankings

Hey, researchers and universities, want to be included in a new ranking scheme? No problem, just pony up some cash. 

Tanvir Ahmed, a postdoc at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, says this year has seen a rise in news stories— for example from Bangladesh, Kashmir, and Nigeria —  reporting so-called predatory rankings. These come to light due to the lack of knowledge about rankings at universities and the media in certain countries, he says. 

Ahmed is referring to AD Scientific Index, which charges $30 USD for an individual researcher to be included in the ranking and an unspecified sum for institutions wishing to be ranked. 

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Paper on sexual orientation and neuropsychiatric disorders earns an expression of concern

Dick Swaab By Sxologist Wikipedia – , CC BY 2.0

An Elsevier journal has issued an expression of concern for a paper it published earlier this year by a Dutch researcher who studies the neurobiology of sexuality.

The article,“Sexual orientation, neuropsychiatric disorders and the neurotransmitters involved,” was written by a group led by Dick Swaab, of the Department of Neuropsychiatric Disorders at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam. 

The abstract of the latest study reads: 

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Pentagon-funded Duke research on soldier brain damage under investigation

Duke University is investigating potential misconduct in a trio of studies of ways to identify brain damage in soldiers. 

The studies were conducted by Mohamed B Abou-Donia and Brahmajothi Mulugu, and appeared in the February 2020 issue of Military Medicine, which has issued an expression of concern about the articles. The research was performed using funding from the U.S. Department of Defense; two of the studies were presented as posters at the 2018 Military Health System Research Symposium.

Dr. Mulugu is listed as a research scientist in the Department of Pediatrics at Duke. Abou-Donia, who has been at the institution for nearly 50 years, is a professor of pharmacology, cancer biology and neurobiology.

The three papers are:

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Weekend reads: Chair leaves post during investigation of double-dipping allegations; geoscientist fined; prof claims another’s papers are hers

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 199. There are now more than 31,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Chair leaves post during investigation of double-dipping allegations; geoscientist fined; prof claims another’s papers are hers

AHA “regrets any confusion” and is reviewing meeting policies after outcry over Covid-19 vaccine abstract

Days after a leading heart journal issued an expression of concern for a meeting abstract suggesting that vaccines against Covid-19 may cause cardiac damage, its publisher, the American Heart Association (AHA), says it is reviewing how it screens such submissions. 

As we reported late last month, “Mrna COVID Vaccines Dramatically Increase Endothelial Inflammatory Markers and ACS Risk as Measured by the PULS Cardiac Test: a Warning,” was presented at the AHA’s 2021 Scientific Sessions in mid-November and was published in Circulation. 

The author was Steven Gundry, a cardiac surgeon by training who now sells dietary supplements on his website. Gundry also sees patients at the Center for Restorative Medicine and International Heart & Lung Institute in California and offers advice on YouTube. (His critics say what Gundry peddles costs much more than it’s worth.)

After an outcry, Circulation flagged the published poster with the following notice: 

Continue reading AHA “regrets any confusion” and is reviewing meeting policies after outcry over Covid-19 vaccine abstract

Engineering researcher who suddenly left postdoc has ninth paper retracted

An author with ties to researchers believed to have published hundreds of problematic papers has earned his ninth retraction, this time for forged authorship. 

Mostafa Jalal, once a postdoc at Texas A&M University, is alleged to have “engaged in some manner of collaboration or communication” with three other researchers, including Ali Nazari, who has now had 85 papers retracted and lost his job at Swinburne University in 2019. Those retractions came after the whistleblower, the pseudonymous Artemisia Stricta, called attention to problems in Nazari’s work.

In a 42-page report we wrote about in August 2020, Artemisia drew attention to four main groups centered on Jalal, Nazari, Ehsan Mohseni of the University of Newcastle in Australia, and Alireza Najigivi of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. The whistleblower lists a total of 287 potentially compromised papers. 

Continue reading Engineering researcher who suddenly left postdoc has ninth paper retracted

Authors retract, resubmit “very poorly conducted” meta-analysis of COVID-19 treatment

A journal has retracted a meta-analysis on Covid-19 after concerned readers complained about the quality — or lack thereof — of the study. 

The article, “A meta-analysis of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) antibody treatment for COVID-19 patients,” appeared in Therapeutic Advances in Chronic Disease, a SAGE title. 

According to the retraction notice: 

Continue reading Authors retract, resubmit “very poorly conducted” meta-analysis of COVID-19 treatment