Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: JAMA editor placed on leave pending investigation; Harvard prof sanctioned for Epstein ties; when bad science goes uncorrected

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

“Riddled with errors”: Study of cell phones and breast cancer retracted
Dismissive reviews: A cancer on the body of knowledge
A journal retracts a paper called “transparently ridiculous” — and an author says thank you
Paper claiming presence of SARS-CoV-2 in Italy in 2019 earns expression of concern
Editor who opined on author excuses has paper subjected to an expression of concern
Journal of the paranormal has its first retraction

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 90.

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

Journal of the paranormal has its first retraction

We should have seen this one coming. Or, maybe, they should have.

A journal dedicated to the study of psychics, the paranormal and related fringe research has its first retraction, according to the editor.

The Journal of Scientific Exploration says it detected plagiarism in a 2017 paper by Alejandro Parra, a well-known figure in the world of parapsychology — marking the first retraction from its pages.

The JSE publishes:

Editor who opined on author excuses has paper subjected to an expression of concern

A study co-authored by an editor who has previously opined on common excuses by authors about research misconduct has received an expression of concern.

The paper’s first author defended the work, explaining that the experiments in question were repeated multiple times, and that the results are “valid and reproducible.”

The study, titled, “CK1δ modulates the transcriptional activity of ERα via AIB1 in an estrogen-dependent manner and regulates ERα–AIB1 interactions,” was published in Nucleic Acids Research in April 2009. It has been cited 20 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

Paper claiming presence of SARS-CoV-2 in Italy in 2019 earns expression of concern

When researchers in Italy published a paper last November claiming to have found evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in that country as early as September 2019 — four months before the first official case of Covid-19 — the World Health Organization took immediate notice.

According to Reuters, the WHO asked the group — with ties to Italy’s National Cancer Institute (INT) — for more information and a chance

“to discuss and arrange for further analyses of available samples and verification of the neutralization results”.

As WebMD reported then:

If the initial history of the pandemic shifts, public health officials may need to consider new screening tools to test people who don’t have COVID-19 symptoms. Better screening could contain future waves of the pandemic and asymptomatic spread, the authors wrote.

Now, Tumori Journal, which published the study, has expressed concern about the findings. More precisely, the journal says it has doubts about the peer review process that vetted the paper.

A journal retracts a paper called “transparently ridiculous” — and an author says thank you

An Elsevier journal has retracted a 2020 paper on the heritability of temperament that a prominent critic derided as “transparently ridiculous,” after concluding that the peer review process — which it initially defended — was not up to snuff.

The journal, Meta Gene, says it has changed that way it considers manuscripts to “ensure that this” — read, accept bullshit papers — won’t happen again. And, in a further and rather endearing admission of culpability, it apologized to the authors for accepting their manuscript despite a complete lack of “scientific data.”

Meanwhile, one of the authors of the paper tells Retraction Watch that he “would like to thank you and also Elsevier that all these discussions” have helped popularize the work.

The article, “Temperament gene inheritance,” by the husband-wife team of Azer Israfil, of Mikhwa General Hospital, in Saudi Arabia, and Natiga Israfil, of OsmanGazi University, in Turkey, appeared in September.

As we reported back then, the authors claimed that:

Dismissive reviews: A cancer on the body of knowledge

Observers describe the quantity of research information now produced variously as “torrent,” “overload,” “proliferation,” or the like. Technological advances in computing and telecommunication have helped us keep up, to an extent. But, I would argue, scholarly and journalistic ethics have not kept pace.

As a case in point, consider the journal article literature review. Its function is twofold: to specify where new information fits within the context of what is already known; and to avoid unknowingly duplicating research projects the public has already paid for. Paradoxically, however, information proliferation may discourage honest and accurate literature reviews. Research information accumulates, which increases the time required for conducting a thorough literature review, which increases the incentive to avoid it.

Most dismissive reviews that I have encountered are raw declarations. A scholar, pundit, or journalist simply declares that no research on a topic exists (or couldn’t be any good if it did exist). No mention is made of how or where (or, even if) they searched. Certain themes appear over and over, such as:

“Riddled with errors”: Study of cell phones and breast cancer retracted

A journal has retracted a study that said exposure to radiofrequency radiation increased the risk of breast cancer after an epidemiologist found that some of the papers it relied upon did not measure radiofrequency radiation at all, in a decision that the lead author has called “unfair.”

The study, titled “Exposure to radiofrequency radiation increases the risk of breast cancer: A systematic review and meta‑analysis,” was published in Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine on November 9th. The paper analyzed eight prior studies — four case‑control and four cohort studies — concluding “that radiofrequency radiation exposure significantly increased the risk of breast cancer, especially in women aged ≥50 years and in individuals who used electric appliances, such as mobile phones and computers.”

In early December, Frank de Vocht, an epidemiologist at the University of Bristol, decided to investigate the study. He explained in an email to Retraction Watch:

Weekend reads: The fake author with more than 200 papers; accusations of ‘heinous plagiarism’; PETA requests a retraction

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Meet the medical resident who had his wife peer review five of his papers
University clears scientist of logging industry’s misconduct allegations
Irony alert: stolen voices, relative rip-off
After grad student suicide, misconduct findings, university suspends professor
“Falsifying elements” prompt retraction of three more papers by former “Peorian of the Year”
Bad blood at a lab leads to retraction after postdoc publishes study without supervisor’s permission

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 89.

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

Meet the medical resident who had his wife peer review five of his papers

The pantheon of husband-wife teams in science includes Marie and Pierre Curie, Gerty and Carl Cori, even Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, the founders of BioNTech, which collaborated with Pfizer on a Covid-19 vaccine.

To that list we hesitatingly add Ahmed Elkhouly and his spouse.

Elkhouly, a medical resident at St. Francis Medical Center, in Trenton, N.J., has lost five papers from the journal Cureus over a rather curious (ahem) domestic arrangement. According to the journal, Elkhouly used his unnamed wife as a peer reviewer on the articles, whose topics ranged from a case study on appendicitis to the neurological manifestations of COVID-19 infection.

Here’s the retraction notice for the COVID paper — which, by the way, raises our tally of retracted papers on the pandemic to 89:

University clears scientist of logging industry’s misconduct allegations

The University of Tasmania has cleared one of its scientists of wrongdoing after she was accused by the Australian logging industry of publishing flawed research linking logging to increased forest flammability and of having a conflict of interest with an environmental group.

The university then implemented mandatory research integrity training for its school of geography, which Jennifer Sanger, the researcher who worked in that school, suggests is due to the university’s “very strong ties with the forestry industry.”

In May 2020, Sanger published a study titled, “Propensities of Old Growth, Mature and Regrowth Wet Eucalypt Forest, and Eucalyptus Nitens Plantation, to Burn during Wildfire and Suffer Fire-Induced Crown Death,” in the journal Fire. The study found that logged forests were generally more flammable than those left unlogged, a finding that has been upheld in recent research.

On August 13, Sanger requested that Fire pull the study, according to Alistair Smith, the journal’s editor-in-chief. Sanger asked for a retraction after a reader went through the study’s dataset and found issues with its analysis, she explained in an email:

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