‘I have zero complaints about the process’: Post-publication analysis earns perception paper a flag

Aaron Charlton

A journal has issued an expression of concern for a nine year old paper, which purported to find that people associate morality with brightness (that’s light, not smarts), after a data sleuth found problems with the results. 

The article, “Is It Light or Dark? Recalling Moral Behavior Changes Perception of Brightness,” appeared in Psychological Science in 2012 and was written by a group of marketing researchers at the Winston-Salem State University, in North Carolina, the University of Kansas and the University of Arizona. 

Aaron Charlton, a marketing researcher at Illinois State University who’s involved in replication efforts in his field, told us that he decided to take a closer look at the data in the paper, which he noted had been the subject of two previous attempts to replicate the key findings, after seeing this post on PubPeer. 

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PNAS retracts paper that contributed to lung cancer trial

National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center

A paper that was the subject of a four-page correction in 2018, and which helped inform a now-halted clinical trial of a drug for lung cancer, has been retracted following an institutional investigation concluded that one of the researchers had falsified the data in that article and at least four others. 

And we have learned that Springer Nature should be acting on a different article by the researcher shortly, and has just begun an investigation of yet another.

The PNAS article, which appeared in 2015, was written by Takashi Nojiri, formerly of Osaka University and the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Research Institute, in Japan. As we reported in June, an August 2020 report from National University Corporation Osaka University and National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Hospital concluded that Nojiri committed: 

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Publisher retracts nearly 80 articles over three days

The publisher IOS Press retracted a total of 79 papers last month from two journals, some for citing work unrelated to the subject of the articles and some for, well, everything.

The retraction notice in one of the titles, the Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems reads:

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Weekend reads, double edition: Scamming journals to publish gibberish; a whole issue with nothing but retractions; ‘the unbearable lightness of scientometric indices’

Welcome to another edition of Weekend Reads. Because our site was down for several days starting last Saturday morning, there was no Weekend Reads last week, and this is a double edition.

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 last two weeks at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 190. There are now more than 31,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately?

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, double edition: Scamming journals to publish gibberish; a whole issue with nothing but retractions; ‘the unbearable lightness of scientometric indices’

IEEE retracts plagiarized paper after Retraction Watch inquiries

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers  (IEEE) has retracted a paper it published in 2006 that was identical to another paper it published that same year.

We learned of the two identical papers — both titled “Delay-dependent robust stability of uncertain discrete singular time-delay systems,” one published in the Proceedings of the 2006 American Control Conference, the other in the Proceedings of the 6th World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation (WCICA) — from a reader in early October.

We alerted IEEE to the identical papers on October 7. The next day, a spokesperson said she was initiating an inquiry. And on November 10, the spokesperson sent us this statement:

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Exclusive: University of Glasgow seeking retraction of multiple papers after findings of image manipulation

Miles Houslay

The University of Glasgow is requesting the retraction of multiple papers by a pharmacology researcher who held various positions there for more than a quarter century.

The story begins in December 2016, when biostatistician Steven McKinney posted on PubPeer about a paper by the researcher, Miles Houslay, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. That paper was eventually retracted in August 2020, but not before McKinney posted a comment on Retraction Watch that caught the eye of the pseudonymous Clare Francis.

Francis pointed us to comments about a total of eight of Houslay’s papers at that time. And in August 2020, when the JBC retraction appeared, Francis forwarded those to the King’s College, London, where Houslay is listed as having a faculty position, and the University of Glasgow, which he left in 2011.

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Behavioral ecologist Jonathan Pruitt’s PhD dissertation withdrawn

Jonathan Pruitt

Jonathan Pruitt, a behavioral ecologist and Canada 150 Research Chair who has had a dozen papers retracted following allegations of data fraud, now appears to have had his doctoral dissertation withdrawn. 

The news, which was first noted by Nick DiRienzo, who co-authored papers with Pruitt but has been one of the scientists trying to cleanse the scientific record of Pruitt’s problematic work, suggests that Priutt now lacks a PhD, generally considered a requirement for professorships.

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Science journal retracts paper after university investigation finds ‘carelessness and lack of attention to detail’

Science Signaling has retracted a 2017 paper marred by nearly a dozen instances of problematic figures which an institutional investigation concluded were the result of shoddy work on the federally-funded study — but not deliberate misconduct.

The article, “The receptor tyrosine kinase AXL mediates nuclear translocation of the epidermal growth factor receptor,” came from a group led by Toni Brand, then of the Department of Human Oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, in Madison, where most of the co-authors were based as well. 

The paper has been cited 28 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. The researchers presented an abstract of the study at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, although that does not appear to have been cited.

According to the retraction notice: 

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‘Clear evidence of theft’ brings down meningitis paper with dodgy images

A group of neurosurgery researchers in Tunisia have lost a 2021 case study on childhood meningitis after the editors discovered evidence of plagiarism and image manipulation. 

The article, “A case of meningitis due to Achromobacter xylosoxidans in a child with a polymalformative syndrome: a case report,” appeared in the Pan African Medical Journal and was written by a team lead by Mehdi Borni, of the Department of Neurosurgery at University Hospital Center Habib Bourguiba, in Sfax.

According to the notice: 

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Bad MATH+? Covid treatment paper by Pierre Kory retracted for flawed results

Pierre Kory

A Wisconsin physician who has been pushing unproven treatments for Covid-19 has lost a paper on a hospital protocol his group says radically reduced deaths from the infection after one of the facilities cited in the study said the data were incorrect.  

Pierre Kory, whose titles have included medical director of the Trauma and Life Support Center Critical Care Service and chief associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, in Madison, has become a key figure in the controversy over the use of ivermectin — the deworming agent that proponents insist can treat Covid-19 despite a lack of evidence that it does.

In late December 2020, Kory — who rails on Twitter about unfair and incompetent journals — and another ivermectin advocate, Paul Marik, of Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, and several other authors published a paper in the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine on a group they’d created called the Front-Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. Per the article: 

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