Sage journal retracts another 400 papers

Sage has retracted 416 articles from the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems (JIFS), which had a mass retraction of over 450 papers last August. 

Before the mass retraction last year, which we covered, Sage paused publication of new articles from the journal, which it acquired when it bought IOS Press in 2023. The journal is now accepting new submissions, according to a Sage spokesperson. 

The retraction notice mentions citation and referencing “anomalies,” “incoherent, extraneous text and tortured phrases” and “unverifiable authors and reviewers,” among other signs of misconduct. “These indicators raise concerns about the authenticity of the research and the peer review process underlying the following articles. The Publisher regrets that these were not flagged during the journal’s editorial and peer review processes,” the notice reads.

Most of the researchers are from universities in India and China. 

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Former student was running a paper mill, says University of Manchester

Sameer Quazi

An English university has issued a finding of research misconduct against a former graduate student and is requesting 10 retractions of his published work, which they say bears the marks of being papermilled. 

The former student, Sameer Quazi, was enrolled at the University of Manchester in 2021 in the school’s “PGCert” program in clinical bioinformatics, according to his LinkedIn profile. The certificate program sits between undergraduate and masters training. Quazi’s profile states he is currently enrolled in a master’s program in biomedical sciences at Anglia Ruskin University, in Cambridge. (Update, 2/7/25: As of 2/3/25, his LinkedIn profile says he left there this month, and Ruskin tells us his course there ended in March 2023.)

According to a January 30 statement from the university: 

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Anatomy of a retraction: When cleaning up the literature takes six years

Dario Alessi

In 2018, a biochemist in Scotland became aware of image irregularities in two of his papers through comments on PubPeer, each in a different journal. The researcher, Dario Alessi, a professor at the University of Dundee, said he alerted his home institution immediately.

In July and October 2024, the papers were retracted.

Emails obtained by Retraction Watch through a public records request show what happened in the intervening six years: Consecutive investigations by Dundee and a funder, then delays as the journals juggled conflicting narratives. In the meantime, the papers continued racking up citations.

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Journal updates retraction notice to include plagiarism following Retraction Watch report

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.

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Weekend reads: ‘The Temporal Crisis’; researcher sues university that fired him; ‘Devastating Legacy of Lies’

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 450. There are more than 55,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

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: ‘The Temporal Crisis’; researcher sues university that fired him; ‘Devastating Legacy of Lies’

Paper retracted after author told journal study was ‘not actually performed’

Nearly 20 years after the publication of a paper on phytoestrogens in postmenopausal women, one of the authors said the study had never been performed, according to a recently published retraction notice.

The retraction is the second for two of the authors. It comes after sleuth Ben Mol and his colleagues initially discovered data similarities between the recently-retracted study and another by the same group, as we reported last year. 

The two papers that seem to share data appeared in Fertility and Sterility, an Elsevier publication, in 2004 and 2006. 

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Thousands demand withdrawal of review article recommending exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome

The decision to abandon a process to re-evaluate a review recommending exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) has reignited calls for the article to be withdrawn. 

The 2019 version of the Cochrane Library review, “Exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome,” has accumulated 67 citations, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

The review recommends exercise therapy to treat ME/CFS, a treatment approach that drew widespread criticism from the patient community and researchers, who say physical activity isn’t an adequate remedy for the condition. According to the petition, Cochrane’s former editor-in-chief admitted the review in question wasn’t “fit for purpose,” although the editor-in-chief’s statement did not use that phrase.

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Researcher alleges group stole thesis data presented at conference

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. 

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‘Foolish mistake’: Guest editor loses three articles published in his own special issues

An Elsevier journal has pulled three articles after the publisher determined an author had been “involved in the peer review and decision making” as managing guest editor of the special issues in which they appeared. 

The author, botany researcher Vijay Kumar of Lovely Professional University in Punjab, India, told Retraction Watch his apparent involvement in assigning reviewers was “purely unintentional” and a “foolish mistake.” 

Two of the articles appeared in a special issue section of the South African Journal of Botany in 2022. They were:

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More than three decades after misconduct ruling, researcher’s IQ test paper is retracted

A psychology journal has retracted an article on IQ tests nearly 50 years after publication — and more than 35 years after an investigation found the lead author had fabricated data in several other studies. 

Stephen Breuning, a former assistant professor of child psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, gained notoriety after a 1987 National Institute of Mental Health report found that he “knowingly, willfully, and repeatedly engaged in misleading and deceptive practices in reporting results of research.” The report concluded Breuning had “engaged in serious scientific misconduct” by fabricating results in 10 articles funded by NIMH grants. 

Five of Breuning’s articles published in the 1980s have been retracted; three in the 1980s, one in 2022, and another in 2023. Retraction Watch reported on one of them, “Effects of methylphenidate on the fixed-ratio performance of mentally retarded children,” published in 1983 in Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior (now published by Elsevier) and retracted in 2022. 

The newly retracted article predates those papers. Published in 1978 in the Journal of School Psychology,  “Effects of individualized incentives on norm-referenced IQ test performance of high school students in special education classes,” found record albums, sporting event tickets, portable radios, and other incentives boosted scores on IQ tests. 

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