Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: Paying for publication?; deeper looks at citation practices; preprints and retractions

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

‘I needed a publication in order to submit my thesis’: Author admits to stealing a manuscript
Science issues expression of concern nine months after one of its reporters uncovers potential misconduct
Publisher cancels special issue honoring plagiarizing dean following Retraction Watch inquiries
Preprint on discrimination against women reinstated by Elsevier server after removal for legal threats
Journal retracts a paper, then publishes it in an issue 11 months later

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 211. There are now more than 32,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?

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

‘I needed a publication in order to submit my thesis’: Author admits to stealing a manuscript

Svein Åge K. Johnsen and Ingeborg Olsdatter Busterud Flagstad, of the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, have been trying to publish a manuscript on the psychology of green entrepreneurship.

In January 2021, they submitted it to the International Small Business Journal, a SAGE publication. The editors rejected it without sending it to peer review. So did The Journal of Entrepreneurship, another SAGE title. So Johnsen and Flagstad submitted it to Cogent Business & Management, a Taylor & Francis title.

And then, on December 25, as perhaps the worst Christmas present ever, they saw the paper published – by someone else.

Science issues expression of concern nine months after one of its reporters uncovers potential misconduct

Science has issued an expression of concern for a 2014 paper on the harmful effects of ocean acidification on fish and coral after the first author of the article was accused of fabricating data in the study and other research.

The article, “Chemically mediated behavior of recruiting corals and fishes: A tipping point that may limit reef recovery,” was written by a group at Georgia Institute of Technology led by Danielle Dixson, then a post-doc at the university. Dixson has since moved to the University of Delaware, Lewes, where she runs her own lab studying corals.

The work – cited 171 times so far, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science – received immediate challenge from other researchers, who questioned the validity of the findings.

Publisher cancels special issue honoring plagiarizing dean following Retraction Watch inquiries

MDPI was about to publish a special issue in one of its journals to fete the career of a retired dean. But after Retraction Watch informed the co-editors of the issue that the researcher, Kishor Wasan, had abruptly retired after being found to have plagiarized a 2019 book review for The Lancet, the publisher evidently decided to cancel the planned celebration.

The special issue of Pharmaceutics – here’s a Wayback Machine link – was to be “in honour of Professor Kishor M Wasan’s remarkable contributions to the pharmaceutics field.”

But now it is gone, and prompts a 404 error rather than any explanation.

Preprint on discrimination against women reinstated by Elsevier server after removal for legal threats

A leading repository of social science which is owned by Elsevier has reposted an article it removed on New Year’s Day after the author was accused of defamation and the site was threatened with legal action if it didn’t remove the paper.

The article in question was written by Ann Lipton, the associate dean for faculty research at Tulane University Law School and appeared on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).

Titled “Capital Discrimination,” the paper – which has been accepted by the Houston Law Review – explores:

Journal retracts a paper, then publishes it in an issue 11 months later

The article as it appears at the time of this writing

Yes, you read that headline right.

In January 2021, we reported that The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (JSCR) would soon be retracting two papers because a graduate student had committed misconduct in the work.

The journal – the official research publication of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NCSA) – did retract the papers, according to a notice posted to PubMed and on the title’s site, both dated March 2021.

But that didn’t stop one of the articles – which had first gone online in December 2019 – from appearing in the February 2022 issue of the journal, without any indication it had been retracted, as Universidad Autónoma de Madrid professor Carlos Balsalobre noticed yesterday:

Weekend reads: Weaponizing doubt; pharma’s lawsuit against journal dismissed; ‘misconstrued misinformation’

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Ivermectin papers slapped with expressions of concern
More than 100 of an anesthesiologist’s papers retracted
KCL investigation finds misconduct in Lancet Neurology paper
Philadelphia-area lung researcher up to six retractions
Biotech’s ‘cell squeezing’ technology paper earns expression of concern

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

Ivermectin papers slapped with expressions of concern

A journal has issued expressions of concern for a pair of 2021 meta-analyses purporting to find that ivermectin is an effective treatment for Covid-19 after data sleuths raised questions about some of the research in the studies.

As we reported last fall, one of the two papers – “Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Trial Sequential Analysis to Inform Clinical Guidelines” – began to wobble when data central to its conclusion were retracted from the journal Viruses. That article has been cited 37 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, making it a highly-cited, “hot” paper.

The other article was titled “Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19” and was written by a group led by Pierre Kory. Kory is a controversial Wisconsin physician whose ideas about how to treat the infection, and particularly ivermectin, have made him a darling of ivermectin proponents like Joe Rogan.

Kory’s group lost a different Covid-19 paper last November over problems with the data, and a paper similar to the one now subject to an expression of concern was removed from a Frontiers journal last year.

The two meta-analyses were the subject of an editorial in the November/December 2021 issue of the journal by its editor, Peter Manu, who cautioned that:

More than 100 of an anesthesiologist’s papers retracted

There’s a new entry on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard. And this one is also the fourth member of the Retraction Watch Century Club.

An anesthesiology researcher in Japan is now up to 117 retractions – putting him third on our list of most-retracted authors.

Hironobu Ueshima, formerly of Showa University Hospital in Tokyo, was found to have committed misconduct in 142 papers, according to a pair of investigations, one by his erstwhile institution and another by the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists (JSA). We first reported on the existence of the investigation in June 2020, some three months after Australian anesthesiologist and journal editor John Loadsman raised concerns with journals involved in the case.

KCL investigation finds misconduct in Lancet Neurology paper

A Lancet journal has issued an expression of concern for a 2019 paper by a group in the United Kingdom whose work was found to have included fabricated data and other misconduct.

The article, “Serotonergic pathology and disease burden in the premotor and motor phase of A53T α-synuclein parkinsonism: a cross-sectional study,” came from a team at King’s College London led by researchers at the school’s Neurodegeneration Imaging Group. The senior author on the paper, which appeared in Lancet Neurology, was Marios Politis, who has since left KCL for the University of Exeter.

The study earned press coverage in The Guardian – “Parkinson’s disease ‘could be detected early on by brain changes‘” – and the BBC: “Early brain ‘signs of Parkinson’s’ found.”

Here’s the expression of concern:

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