Ten months after a misconduct investigation into the work of a researcher in Japan four of his papers found to have serious issues have yet to be retracted.
According to an August 2020 report from National University Corporation Osaka University and National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Hospital about its investigation of Takashi Nojiri:
Continue reading Most of problematic articles flagged in Japanese university’s investigation remain unflagged nearly a year later
The misconduct case of an endodontics researcher in Japan who already has lost at least 24 papers for data problems has claimed two more casualties: the PhD theses of a pair of scientists he once helped train.
As we reported last year, Nobuaki Ozeki, who retired from Aichi Gakuin University in 2018, was found to have misused images, fabricated data and recycled text in 22 papers, 21 of which by our count have now been retracted. Ozeki’s total retraction count is 24, as three papers not identified in the investigation have also been retracted.
Now, we’ve learned that the university has revoked the doctoral degrees of two of Ozeki’s co-authors, Hideyuki Yamaguchi and Rie (Satoe) Kawai. Both researchers received their degrees in March 2016.
Continue reading Pulp fiction: Japanese university revokes two dentistry PhDs in case involving two dozen retractions
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:
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 128.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):
Continue reading Weekend reads: Biotech CEO on leave after allegations on PubPeer; a researcher disavows his own paper; plagiarism here, there, and everywhere
It just keeps happening.
For at least the fourth time in two years, a journal has been scammed by someone impersonating a guest editor. The latest: Behaviour & Information Technology, a Taylor & Francis title, has retracted an entire special issue — at least 10 articles published between 2019 and 2020 — because the guest editor “was impersonated by a fraudulent entity.”
As the retraction notices for the 10 papers report:
Continue reading ‘Galling’: Journal scammed by guest editor impersonator
A timing glitch prompted the temporary removal of a letter to the editor calling out a previously published study for “perpetuating historical harms” through its framing of race and ethnicity.
The letter, “Race is not a risk factor: Reframing discourse on racial health inequities in CVD prevention,” appeared online in April in the American Journal of Preventive Cardiology, an Elseiver property. It came in response to a review article, published the month before, titled “Ten things to know about ten cardiovascular disease risk factors.”
As the abstract of the review stated:
Continue reading Elsevier glitch prompts temporary removal of critique of review on race and heart disease
Mahin Khatami, a former researcher with the U.S. National Institutes of Health who has argued in print that cancer results from ‘dark energy’ and that the government and the pharmaceutical industry are collaborating in ‘scientific/medical Ponzi schemes’ to keep people sick, has lost a paper to retraction.
As we reported last fall, Robert Speth, a pharmacy science researcher at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., has been urging Clinical & Translational Medicine (CTM) to retract Khatami’s articles — and one in particular — for what is now more than two years.
In mid-October a spokesperson for Wiley, which publishes the journal, told us that she was trying to get more information from the editors about why Khatami’s bizarre paper was acceptable material.
Continue reading Paper by former NIH researcher alleging ‘Ponzi schemes’ by government, pharma retracted
A paper linking the use of a wildly popular drug for heartburn to cancer has been retracted after the authors concluded that their widely touted finding appears to have resulted from a hiccup in the way they conducted their testing.
The 2016 article, in Carcinogenesis, has played a minor role in an ongoing class action lawsuit against the makers of ranitidine (sold as Zantac, among other brand names) claiming that use of the medication has caused cancer in more than 100,000 plaintiffs. And it was a key citation in a 2019 petition to the FDA urging that such drugs be recalled.
The FDA has been investigating contamination of ranitidine and a related drug with NDMA, a known human carcinogen at high doses. On April 1, 2020, the agency announced that, although its tests did not find concerning levels of NDMA in “many” of the samples it tested, it was recalling all products that contain ranitidine:
Continue reading Widely covered paper on ranitidine-cancer link retracted
A “costly mistake” has led to the retraction of a paper by a team of dermatology researchers in West Virginia who failed to obtain permission to use the data in their study for the specific purpose for which it was used.
The article, “Association Between Alopecia Areata and Natural Hair Color Among White Individuals,” which appeared in March 2021 in JAMA Dermatology, was a case-control study based on data from the UK Biobank — a large repository of medical and genetic data from people in the United Kingdom. The senior author on the article was Michael Kolodney, the chair of the department of dermatology at West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown.
In fact, Kolodney and his colleagues had produced two articles using data from the biobank: one on alopecia areata — an autoimmune condition that causes relatively early-onset hair loss — and another that linked baldness to an increased risk of Covid-19 in men. The Covid research was published in November 2020 as a letter to the editor in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
The Covid paper remains intact. But as the retraction notice indicates, the folks at UK Biobank hadn’t granted Kolodney’s group permission to publish the alopecia findings:
Continue reading ‘A costly mistake’ prompts retraction of paper on hair lossBefore 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:
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):
Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Lab leak’ and journals; a murder rocks Chinese academia; NIH removes lab heads from grants after harassment claims
A former endowed professor at the University of Kentucky has resigned from the faculty days before a committee at the institution was scheduled to vote on whether to fire him for misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned.
In 2018, the university began investigating Xianglin Shi, a toxicologist and cancer biologist who that year, as we reported then, lost three papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry for image manipulation. At the time, Shi was the principal investigator of a 5-year, $7.4 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to establish the UK Center for Appalachian Research in Environmental Sciences (UK-CARES).
In the wake of the retractions, Shi was stripped of his title as the William A. Marquard Chair in Cancer Research and his role as associate dean for research integration in the UK College of Medicine.
Continue reading Kentucky professor resigns ahead of vote that could have stripped him of tenure