Weekend reads: Shoddy commentaries flood journals; key hydroxychloroquine paper retracted; a researcher confesses

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Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 450.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 50,000 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: Shoddy commentaries flood journals; key hydroxychloroquine paper retracted; a researcher confesses

EcoHealth Alliance retracts and replaces paper on potential origin of COVID-19 in bats

The authors of an influential but controversial 2020 paper on the activity of bat coronaviruses in China which proposed the animals as a “likely origin” for the virus that causes COVID-19 have retracted their work and republished a revised version of the analysis. They say their results and conclusions did not change.

The paper, “Origin and cross-species transmission of bat coronaviruses in China,” appeared Aug. 25, 2020, in Nature Communications. It has been cited 154 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, and by at least two international policy documents. 

The authors are affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the New York City-based nonprofit organization EcoHealth Alliance, which has come under intense scrutiny by members of the U.S. Congress and others. The U.S. government in May suspended funding for EcoHealth amid concerns the COVID-19 pandemic virus may have developed from research on which the nonprofit and Wuhan lab collaborated – a so-called “lab leak.” EcoHealth has denied the pandemic virus could have emerged from its work. 

Continue reading EcoHealth Alliance retracts and replaces paper on potential origin of COVID-19 in bats

Journal won’t retract paper that involved human organ transplants in China

The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation (JHLT) has decided against retracting a November 2024 paper that  violated the ethics policy of the publication. 

After publishing the paper, which describes a new mechanical circulatory support device used to treat heart failure that was developed in China, staff at the journal realised two of the patients in the study had received organ transplants in that country. 

Dozens of research articles have been retracted or flagged for appearing to have used organs procured from executed prisoners in China, and many journals around the world have introduced policies to avoid such research. JHLT’s ethics statement, published in 2022, bans data on human organ transplants from journals or scientific sessions when they originate from countries, particularly China, where organ procurement from prisoners has been observed.

Continue reading Journal won’t retract paper that involved human organ transplants in China

Journal that published viral study on black plastic removed from major index

Chemosphere, the Elsevier title which in September published an article on “unexpected exposure to toxic flame retardants in household items” such as black plastic cooking utensils, has been removed from Clarivate’s Web of Science index in its December update. 

The article, “From e-waste to living space: Flame retardants contaminating household items add to concern about plastic recycling,” received heavy international media coverage questioning whether we should all throw out our black plastic spatulas. 

The authors corrected their calculations in a December 15 corrigendum, as reported by Ars Technica. The exposure was an order of magnitude lower than the safe daily reference dose, not approaching it, as they had initially reported, but “this calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper,” the authors wrote in the notice. 

Continue reading Journal that published viral study on black plastic removed from major index

Researcher linked to paper mill activity mysteriously reappeared on list of journal’s editorial board

Masoud Afrand

An engineer accused of being involved in paper mill activities mysteriously reappeared on a list of editorial board members at Springer Nature’s Scientific Reports earlier this year, Retraction Watch has learned.

The journal had “parted ways” with the engineer, Masoud Afrand of the Islamic Azad University in Iran, in March 2022 after an internal audit found “irregularities” in how he handled papers, editor-in-chief Rafal Marszalek told us last year. 

Because of “an oversight,” however, Afrand remained on the publication’s website until a story by Retraction Watch and Undark raised concerns about his work last year. 

Continue reading Researcher linked to paper mill activity mysteriously reappeared on list of journal’s editorial board

Weekend reads: ‘Race science’ under review; researcher blames critiques on anti-LGBTQ discrimination; the politics of the politics of smell

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 50,000 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: ‘Race science’ under review; researcher blames critiques on anti-LGBTQ discrimination; the politics of the politics of smell

Exclusive: Researcher who received settlement to leave University of Iowa won’t be starting new job

Kaikobad Irani

A cardiology researcher who left the University of Iowa with a six-figure settlement earlier this year won’t be starting the new job he’d lined up at the Providence VA Medical Center, Retraction Watch has learned. 

Justyn Charon, a spokesperson for the Providence VA, previously told us the researcher, Kaikobad Irani, would begin his new position “around November.” When we followed up, Charon confirmed, “there is currently no plan for Dr. Irani to be employed by VA Providence.” 

In the meantime, the University of Iowa in Iowa City has launched an investigation about the leak of a report regarding Irani to Retraction Watch that appears to be an attempt to identify the source of the document.

Continue reading Exclusive: Researcher who received settlement to leave University of Iowa won’t be starting new job

Bribery offers from China rattle journal editors. Are they being scammed?

Richard Addante

On November 12, Richard Addante, an associate editor at the journal Frontiers in Psychology, received an alarming email from someone purporting to be a faculty member at a university in China. 

“I have a lot of papers to publish, papers on computers, medicine, materials, and so on,” the email, signed by a “Wei Yang” of Zhengzhou College of Business and Industry, stated. “If you can help me publish my paper, I’ll pay you $1500 as a referral fee.” 

To Addante, a psychologist at Florida Institute of Technology, in Melbourne, the message suggested the field of scientific publishing needed a thorough clean-up.

Continue reading Bribery offers from China rattle journal editors. Are they being scammed?

19 months and counting: Former Hindawi journal still hasn’t marked paper

A journal formerly published by Hindawi has yet to publish any sort of notice on a paper sleuths reported for containing duplicated images 1.5 years ago. 

According to Kevin Patrick, the sleuth who contacted the publisher in mid-2023, the episode “might be a useful case study” of the issues facing Wiley, which acquired Hindawi in 2021 and stopped using the brand name earlier this year after retracting thousands of papers and closing journals overrun by paper mills.   

The article, “Resveratrol Derivative, Trans-3, 5, 4 ′-Trimethoxystilbene Sensitizes Osteosarcoma Cells to Apoptosis via ROS-Induced Caspases Activation,” appeared in Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity in 2021. Clarivate removed the journal from its Web of Science index in March 2023 for failing to meet quality criteria. 

In April 2023, Elisabeth Bik left a comment on PubPeer, noting “several figures in this paper look identical to figures in a 2019 paper by some of the same authors,” which had been retracted. “I could not find wording about e.g. a republication of part of that study, and the 2019 paper is not included in the references,” she wrote.

 

Continue reading 19 months and counting: Former Hindawi journal still hasn’t marked paper

Dean in Bulgaria accused of plagiarism

Milen Zamfirov

Earlier this year, Milen Zamfirov, dean of the faculty of educational sciences at Sofia University in Bulgaria, was named an exceptional scientist in the social sciences and humanities. As part of the accolades at the prestigious Pythagoras Science Awards from the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science, Zamfirov received a commemorative plaque, diploma, and a cash prize of 8,000 BGN (US $4,300). 

Now, he is accused of plagiarising past research in a paper he co-authored with Margarita Bakracheva, who received a certificate of excellence from the Union of the Bulgarian Scientists earlier this year. 

Their study, titled, “In Search of Integrativity of Sciences: the Principle of Supplementarity in the Story of Pauli and Jung,” was published in Bulgarian in 2021. 

But the paper seems to have significant overlap with other sources, according to Irene Glendinning, a researcher and consultant based in Leicester, UK.

Continue reading Dean in Bulgaria accused of plagiarism