Retraction Watch

US federal watchdog loses director to another government role

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity, which oversees investigations into allegations of misconduct in grants from the NIH, is once again without a permanent director.

Elisabeth (Lis) Handley, who became director in 2019, has taken on a new role in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), of which ORI is a part. Wanda Jones, who has served as interim and deputy director of the agency, will serve as acting director, according to an HHS spokesperson.

Handley has become principal deputy assistant secretary for health. In a memo to staff, assistant secretary for health Rachel Levine wrote:

Weekend reads: JAMA editor resigns after review of podcast on racism and medicine; ‘Please Commit More Blatant Academic Fraud’; machine learning’s health credibility crisis

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:

Two transcendental meditation papers retracted for failures to report primary outcomes.
The peer reviewers and editor wanted to publish my paper. The legal team rejected it.
Exclusive: Six years after a misconduct investigation, more than half of suspect papers remain unflagged.
First, this paper was corrected. Now it has an expression of concern. And maybe, just maybe, it will be retracted.
Medical journal retracts article on “tribalism” after readers call it offensive

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 128.

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

Medical journal retracts article on “tribalism” after readers call it offensive

*Journal of Hospital Medicine* editor Samir Shah

A journal has retracted — and replaced — an article on “tribalism” in medicine and deleted a tweet about it, too, after readers complained that the language in the piece was offensive to Indigenous peoples.

The article, which appeared in the Journal of Hospital Medicine in April, was titled “Tribalism: The Good, The Bad, and The Future.” The authors were Zahir Kanjee and Leslie Bilello, of Harvard Medical School.

The journal used social media to promote the article — which prompted a flood of criticism about the use of the word “tribalism” and its permutations.

On May 21, Samir Shah, the editor-in-chief of JHM, and four other editors issued a statement apologizing for publishing the article:

First, this paper was corrected. Now it has an expression of concern. And maybe, just maybe, it will be retracted.

Never let it be said that journals are not deliberative when it comes to correcting the record.

Of course, “deliberative” also means “slow.”

Take a 2018 article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases (JID) by a group of authors in India.

Exclusive: Six years after a misconduct investigation, more than half of suspect papers remain unflagged

When the University of Colorado at Denver completed an investigation in 2015 into the work of a former faculty member, the school recommended that nine papers be corrected or retracted.

But six years after the close of that investigation, the researcher, urologist Hari Koul, has had just two papers retracted and one corrected.

Multiple journal editors told Retraction Watch they had not been informed that papers published in their journals were recommended for retraction or correction, according to documents obtained by Retraction Watch via a public records request. And emails show Koul was still negotiating the retraction of at least one of the papers last year.

The peer reviewers and editor wanted to publish my paper. The legal team rejected it.

Move over, Reviewer 2: The legal reviewer wants your job.

Last month, I was relieved when the journal Research Ethics published my article, “The Use of Confidentiality and Anonymity Protections as a Cover for Fraudulent Fieldwork Data.” One unexpected hurdle had almost thwarted publication. The problem wasn’t with the proverbial hard-to-please peer reviewer called Reviewer 2. Rather, the problem was with a behind-the-scenes reviewer of a different sort, Legal Reviewer 1.

I suspect that many authors have never heard of a legal reviewer. Yet depending on your research topics, you may have had your manuscripts delayed—or even rejected—without ever knowing of the powerful influence of persons in that role. In my case, the journal editor was candid in telling me that my manuscript would be sent to a “legal team” after clearing peer review.

Two meditation papers retracted for failures to report primary outcomes

A pair of psychology journals have retracted two related papers on the health benefits of a popular form of meditation after a reader pointed out that the authors failed to report the primary outcome of the study underpinning the articles.

The now-retracted articles describe the putatively salubrious effects of sahaj samadhi meditation, a form of meditation developed by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and promoted by the Art of Living Foundation, which describes itself thusly:

Weekend reads: Gibberish papers persist; the academic who faked Cherokee heritage; ‘organised fraud hits scientific journals’

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

‘Regrettably it took too long to investigate and retract this paper.’
Congratulations! Your already-published article has just been rejected
Antiviral: ‘TikTok Doc’ loses paper on faculty development over concerns about harassment suit
How hijacked journals keep fooling one of the world’s leading databases
Two Japanese universities revoke PhDs, one for plagiarism and one because of cell line contamination
Reporter prompts corrections in Nature, New York Times after researcher fails to disclose ties to Cargill
Elsevier retracts entire book that plagiarized heavily from Wikipedia
Anesthesiology researcher guilty of misconduct in more than 140 papers: Investigation
Imperial College London researcher fired for research misconduct

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 126.

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

Imperial College London researcher fired for research misconduct

Eric Lam, a highly-published cancer specialist, has been fired from his post at Imperial College London following a university investigation that found misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned.

Lam’s work has been the subject of scrutiny on PubPeer for some three years, dating back to a 2018 post pointing out suspicious images in a 2003 paper by him and his colleagues in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. In 2019, his group corrected a 2011 paper in Oncogene, a Springer Nature title, for image problems.

However, the new retraction marks the first such retraction for the researcher, whose LinkedIn page states that he is now affiliated with Sun Yat-Sen University, in China. According to an Imperial College London spokesperson:

Anesthesiology researcher guilty of misconduct in more than 140 papers: Investigation

Showa University Hospital, via Wikimedia

A Japanese anesthesiologist has been found guilty of fabricating data and other misconduct in 142 articles, leading to his termination and the sanction of several of his co-authors.

Showa University says its investigation into Hironobu Ueshima, the existence of which we first reported on last June, found that the prolific researcher had doctored his results, falsified his findings and tinkered with authorship.

The university’s report on the case is available here, in Japanese, and a similar report from the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists is available here in English. The JSA report cites 142 papers — including 120 letters to the editor, 12 original papers, and 9 case reports — with evidence of misconduct including fabricated data and improper authorship. The investigation also found evidence of misconduct in several unpublished studies by Ueshima. By our count, he has six retractions to date.

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