Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: A prominent journal goes wrong; medical journals and politics; a journal with an editorial board full of dead people

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

A retraction — and a lawsuit — for the “Prince of Panspermia“
A disavowal — but not a retraction — of a paper on intelligent design
A retraction from Science after authors blame the pandemic for image problems
The retraction of a 30-year-old paper in a physics journal decrying feminism
A demand letter sent to Retraction Watch

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 35.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Heard about the study claiming men who carry guitar cases are more attractive? It’s been retracted.

A controversial psychologist has lost a bizarre paper which claimed that men who carry guitar cases do better with the ladies.

The article, which had appeared in the journal The Psychology of Music in 2014, was one of many papers by Nicholas Guéguen that have raised eyebrows among his peers and some data sleuths — notably James Heathers and Nick Brown — who believe the results don’t withstand scrutiny.

Guéguen, of the Université Bretagne-Sud, in France, was the subject of a misconduct investigation that in 2019 cleared him of wrongdoing. That finding came shortly after, as we reported nearly a year ago to the day, he lost a 2014 paper in the Archives of Sexual Behavior on how high heels really do make women sexier:

Lawyer for researcher deposed in $112.5 million Duke case asks us to remove a post

We receive occasional demand letters from attorneys here at Retraction Watch. Perhaps the most memorable was one in 2013 from an attorney claiming to represent Bharat Aggarwal. That prompted Popehat’s Ken White to enlarge our vocabulary by using the word “bumptious” in a post about the letter.

To that library of letters we can now add one from Martin Weinstein, of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, on behalf of his client Monica Kraft, now of the University of Arizona and late of Duke University. Willkie Farr & Gallagher is “an elite international law firm of approximately 750 lawyers located in 12 offices in six countries.”

Duke, as Retraction Watch readers may recall, settled a False Claims Act case last year for $112.5 million following allegations about how various members of its Department of Medicine’s Pulmonary Division responded to alleged misconduct in the department beginning in 2013. As Duke acknowledged in a court filing, “Kraft was a Principal Investigator for some research projects conducted within the Pulmonary Division and was Division Chief from January 1, 2013 through September 30, 2014.”

The facts in the previous two paragraphs are, as best we can tell, all uncontested. That is also true of all of the facts in the Dec. 20, 2019 post that Weinstein requested we remove.

We cannot, unfortunately, say the same for Weinstein’s letter.

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30 years later, physics journal retracts paper that blamed feminism for many of society’s ills

For those of you who think that critiques of feminism have no place in journals about physics, the Canadian Journal of Physics agrees. But it took them 30 years to get there.

The journal has retracted a 1990 article by a notorious male chauvinist who claimed, among other things, that feminism was responsible for an increase in cheating in school, psychological damage in young children and an overall decay in society.

The case has echoes of the controversy over Thomas Hudlicky, another Canadian chemist who recently lost a ~~30-year-old~~ paper for sexism and anti-diversity views.

This time, the author was Gordon Freeman, a now-emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Alberta, in Canada. Its title is one of those science-y-sounding strings of words that say both very little and, on reflection, quite a lot: “Kinetics of nonhomogeneous processes in human society: Unethical behaviour and societal chaos.”

Science retracts paper as authors blame pandemic for image issues

Science has retracted a paper it published in July by a group of authors in China over concerns about two images in the article — problems the researchers have attributed to chaos in their group due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper, “Proton transport enabled by a field-induced metallic state in a semiconductor heterostructure,” was a collaboration by researchers from various institutions in the country, as well as one in the United Kingdom. The senior author was H.B. Song, of the University of Geosciences in Wuhan.

Shortly after publication, Fang Zhouz, a science sleuth in China, posted concerns about the article on his blog — which drew the attention of Elisabeth Bik. Bik eventually amplified those concerns on PubPeer, where she noted that:

Journal retracts plant paper because authors plagiarized from a garden site — and several papers

A Springer Nature journal has retracted a paper it published in July after learning that the authors manipulated and plagiarized images galore.

The paper, “Novel green synthesis and antioxidant, cytotoxicity, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, anticholinergics, and wound healing properties of cobalt nanoparticles containing Ziziphora clinopodioides Lam leaves extract,” appeared in Scientific Reports. Its authors were affiliated with institutions in China, Iran and Turkey.

According to the retraction notice:

Elsevier journal disavows, but does not retract, paper on intelligent design

An Elsevier journal has disavowed, but not yet retracted, a paper creationists are calling a “a big deal for the mainstreaming” of intelligent design.

The article, “Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems,” appeared in the September issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, but has been online since June. Authors Steinar Thorvaldsen, of the University of Tromsø, Norway, and Ola Hössjer, a mathematician at Stockholm University in Sweden, write:

‘Prince of panspermia’ has a paper retracted, and sues Springer Nature

A neuroscientist once dubbed the “prince of panspermia” has lost a 2019 paper claiming that Venus may hold life seeded from Earth.

The paper, titled “Life on Venus and the interplanetary transfer of biota from Earth,” was written by Rhawn Gabriel Joseph, whose affiliations have included outfits called Astrobiology Associates of Northern California San Francisco and the Brain Research Neuroscience Laboratory.

A once-avid YouTuber, Joseph also has a consulting business, charging $500 for a 30-minute phone call, $500 an hour to review documents and $250 per page for his writing services. He’ll also sit with you face-to-face (six feet away and fully masked, we trust) for three hours if you have $5,000 for the privilege.

That’s high-priced lawyer money. Speaking of which, according to Vice, Joseph in 2014 tried to use the courts to force NASA to investigate what he believed was evidence of life on Mars.

Almond, no joy: Plant geneticist in Iran up to at least six retractions

A plant geneticist in Iran is up to at least six retractions for misuse of figures and other material from previously published papers.

The newest retraction involves a 2017 paper in Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature publication, titled “Comparison of traditional and new generation DNA markers declares high genetic diversity and differentiated population structure of wild almond species.” PubPeer commenters have been discussing it for some seven months.

According to the notice:

Weekend reads: ‘Unicorn poo’ and other fraudulent COVID-19 treatments; disgraced researchers and drug company payouts; a fictional account of real fraud

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Two retractions of an Oxford lab’s papers from a major heart journal
An excerpt from Brian Deer’s new book about Andrew Wakefield
The retraction of a bizarre paper about a black hole in the center of the Earth
A court battle for a duo with a history of legal threats against researchers who use a tool one of them developed

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 33.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

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