Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: COVID-19 issue pulled; an author announces a retraction; FDA sanctions a company for not publishing results

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Editor declines to correct paper with duplicated image after earlier study disappears
Elsevier journal to retract widely debunked masks study whose author claimed a Stanford affiliation
Journal retracts paper by ‘miracle doctor’ claiming life force kills cancer cells
On the perils of scientific collaboration from thousands of miles away
Mask study was “misleading” and misquotes citations, says Elsevier
Paper partly funded by controversial stem cell company retracted

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 122.

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

Paper partly funded by controversial stem cell company retracted

The timestamps always get you in the end.

A widely touted 2017 paper linked to a controversial company promoting regenerative medicine has been retracted after the journal came to doubt the validity of the data thanks to some strange anachronisms and a digital breadcrumb.

“Intra-articular injection in the knee of adipose derived stromal cells (stromal vascular fraction) and platelet rich plasma for osteoarthritis,” appeared in the Journal of Translational Medicine to no small notice.

Mask study was “misleading” and misquotes citations, says Elsevier

Three days after we reported that Elsevier would be retracting a paper about COVID-19 and masks whose author claimed a false affiliation with Stanford, the publisher tells us that the “paper is misleading,” “misquotes and selectively cites published papers,” and that the data in one table is “unverified.”

As we noted earlier this week:

The 2020 paper, “Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis,” was written by Baruch Vainshelboim, who listed his affiliation as Stanford University and the VA Palo Alto Health System. But the study gained wide circulation earlier this month, thanks in part to some conservative politicians, and became the subject of fact-checks by the Associated Press and Snopes…

Here is Elsevier’s statement in full:

On the perils of scientific collaboration from thousands of miles away

Collaborations can be fraught. Ask David Ojcius.

Ojcius, an emeritus professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Merced, and a department chair at the University of the Pacific, is up to four retractions, five corrections and an expression of concern in papers he wrote with collaborators in China and elsewhere.

Ojcius is the editor-in-chief of Microbes and Infection, which has retracted one of his papers and corrected another.

Journal retracts paper by ‘miracle doctor’ claiming life force kills cancer cells

A “miracle doctor” in China and his colleagues have lost a 2007 paper on the ability of the martial art qigong to treat cancer after the journal that published the work said it failed to properly vet the findings.

Well, the first part of that is true. The second part is implied. We’ll explain.

The paper, “External Qi of Yan Xin Qigong induces G2/M arrest and apoptosis of androgen-independent prostate cancer cells by inhibiting Akt and NF-B pathways,” appeared in December 2007 in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, a Springer Nature journal. It has been cited 20 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

The first author on the study was Yan Xin, whose biography states that he is a “miracle doctor” and one of the world’s experts in the healing properties of qi — the universal life force in traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy. His co-authors include researchers at Harvard, McMaster University in Canada, and the New Medical Science Research Institute in New York City.

Elsevier journal to retract widely debunked masks study whose author claimed a Stanford affiliation

A study that warned of the perils of using face masks as a precaution against contracting Covid-19 appears slated for retraction, Retraction Watch has learned.

[Please see an update on this post.]

The 2020 paper, “Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis,” was written by Baruch Vainshelboim, who listed his affiliation as Stanford University and the VA Palo Alto Health System. But the study gained wide circulation earlier this month, thanks in part to some conservative politicians, and became the subject of fact-checks by the Associated Press and Snopes, which pointed out that

The paper was published by an exercise physiologist with no academic connection to Stanford University or the NIH in a journal that accepts “radical, speculative and non-mainstream scientific ideas.”

Among the claims in the article are that:

Editor declines to correct paper with duplicated image after earlier study disappears

*Figure 6b in a* *2015 paper* *(left) in Construction and Building Materials, showing a material with copper oxide nanoparticles. Figure 6 (right) is from a* *separate study, published in the Journal of American Science, showing a material with titanium dioxide nanoparticles.*

Possession is nine-tenths of the law — at least, it seems, for one journal editor, who is refusing to retract a study despite learning that one of its images previously appeared in another journal. The reason? The other study has been removed from the web.

The paper is among 40 articles in Construction and Building Materials flagged by a whistleblower who goes by the pseudonym Artemisia Stricta. The whistleblower says that most of the issues are serious, and are:

Weekend reads: Prof resigns as student’s suicide is investigated; the ‘Stanford’ mask study that Stanford disowned; indictments and a prison sentence

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

“[N]o intention to make any scientific fraud” as researchers lose four papers
‘Unfair and unsubstantiated’: Journal retracts paper suggesting smoking is linked to lower COVID-19 risk
Two retractions spotlight the ethical challenges of consent for case reports

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 122.

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

Two retractions spotlight the ethical challenges of consent for case reports

Cureus has retracted a pair of case studies after the authors revealed that the informed consent they’d received from the patients had been revoked.

The fate of articles — both by authors in the United Kingdom — highlight the precariousness of papers that rely on consent from patients or, in one instance, their proxies.

One paper, “Failure of an Ancient Breast Implant Can Lead to Significant Morbidity,” described the case of a 90-year-old woman who ruptured a 60-year-old breast implant. (The first silicone breast implants arrived in 1962, so the 60-year-old prosthesis would have been among the earliest to be inserted.)

According to the retraction notice:

‘Unfair and unsubstantiated’: Journal retracts paper suggesting smoking is linked to lower COVID-19 risk

A paper suggesting that smokers were significantly less likely than nonsmokers to contract Covid-19 has been retracted because the authors failed to disclose financial ties to … the tobacco industry.

The article, which appeared as a preprint and then as an “early view” in the European Respiratory Journal last July, came from a group at the University of Piraeus, in Greece, and the University of Utah. The first author was Theodoros Giannouchos, currently a post-doc at the University of Utah, and the senior author was Konstantinos Farsalinos, a fairly prominent name in the world of vaping research.

Some vaping advocates have pointed to a protective effect of nicotine against Covid-19. According to the preprint of the now-retracted paper:

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