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

ecigarettereviewed.com via Wikimedia

A paper suggesting that smokers were significantly less likely than nonsmokers to contract Covid-19 has been retracted because the authors failed to disclose financial ties to … the tobacco industry.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

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

“[N]o intention to make any scientific fraud” as researchers lose four papers

Researchers in India have lost four papers in journals belonging to the Royal Society of Chemistry over concerns that the images in the articles appear to have been doctored. 

The senior author on the articles is  Pralay Maiti, of the School of Material Science & Technology at Banaras Hindu University, in Varanasi. 

“Polycaprolactone composites with TiO2 for potential nanobiomaterials: tunable properties using different phases” was published in 2012 in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, and has been cited 65 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. According to the retraction notice:

Continue reading “[N]o intention to make any scientific fraud” as researchers lose four papers

Weekend reads: ‘The Damage Campaign;’ timber industry retracts comments, apologizes; COVID-19 vaccine study conflicts disclosure

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Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 121.

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: ‘The Damage Campaign;’ timber industry retracts comments, apologizes; COVID-19 vaccine study conflicts disclosure

Palmitoleic acid paper pulled for data concerns

A journal has retracted the 2014 report of a clinical trial of a supplement touted as a way to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease after beginning to suspect that the data were not reliable. 

The study, “Purified palmitoleic acid for the reduction of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and serum lipids: A double-blinded, randomized, placebo controlled study,” was published in the Journal of Clinical Lipidology, an Elsevier title. It has been cited 42 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

The authors were Adam Bernstein and Michael Roizen, of the Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic, and Luis Martinez, who at the time was the president of the Xyrion Medical Institute, in Puerto Rico. 

Roizen, an anesthesiologist and the founding chair of the Wellness Institute, is the co-creator of the RealAge test, which he developed along with Mehmet Oz.

Roizen and Oz have been hawking palmitoleic acid — an omega-7 fatty acid that is the subject of the now-retracted study — for some time. In this 2019 article, for example, the pair wrote: 

Continue reading Palmitoleic acid paper pulled for data concerns

Pharma company demands retraction, damages in lawsuit against journal

A drug company that manufactures a painkiller used for surgery patients has sued an anesthesiology journal along with its editor and publisher and the authors of articles that it says denigrated its product unfairly.

In a complaint filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, Pacira Biosciences claims that “In the February 2021 issue of Anesthesiology, the ASA, reflecting a bias against EXPAREL amongst the editorial staff at Anesthesiology, published three articles, and other related content, that seriously disparage Pacira’s product EXPAREL,” an FDA-approved drug which they say is “a non-opioid pain medication proven to prolong post-surgery pain relief.” 

In seeking retractions, compensatory and punitive damages exceeding $75,000 — the threshold for U.S. federal court — and lawyers’ fees, the company’s attorneys at Latham & Watkins write:

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You want to do what? Paper on anal swabs for COVID-19 retracted for ethical issues

An article claiming that anal swabs can be used to detect SARS-CoV-2 in patients cured of Covid-19 has been retracted after the journal found that the authors failed to get permission from the patients to conduct the study. 

To be clear: We’re not sure if the researchers — from Weihai Municipal Hospital, in Shandong, China — didn’t tell the patients they were taking anal swabs (which seems, well, unlikely) or that they didn’t tell them they would be using the results of the swabs in a study (the more reasonable interpretation). But the notice is vague on that point. 

You may recall that in January the Chinese government in January launched a program to implement widespread anal swabbing to look for SARS-CoV-2 — a plan that, as the Washington Post reported, did not meet with cheers from the local population.  

The article, “Anal swab as the potentially optimal specimen for SARS-CoV-2 detection to evaluate the hospital discharge of COVID-19 patients,” appeared in July in Future Microbiology. According to the abstract: 

Continue reading You want to do what? Paper on anal swabs for COVID-19 retracted for ethical issues

University in Japan revokes doctorate for plagiarism of text, image

A researcher in Japan has been stripped of his doctorate after a university investigation found that his thesis contained seven lines of plagiarized text and an image pulled from the internet without attribution.

Takuma Hara received his PhD in medical sciences from Tsukuba University in March 2019, writing a thesis about a genetic mutation’s role in certain brain tumors. Allegations of misconduct against Hara first emerged on April 6, 2020, according to a report released by the school. 

The university launched an investigation, interviewed Hara and found that the thesis contained two plagiarized snippets: a microscopy image was pulled from the web without attribution and, on page 6, Hara took seven lines of text from a 2016 paper, titled  “Clinicopathological features of craniopharyngioma and the endoscopic endonasal surgery,” published in a Japanese journal called Progress in Neuro-Oncology. The university revoked Hara’s degree last month.

Continue reading University in Japan revokes doctorate for plagiarism of text, image

One in six of the papers you cite in a review has been retracted. What do you do?

The author of a 2014 review article about the role of vitamin D in Parkinson’s disease has alerted readers to the fact that roughly one-sixth of her references have since been retracted. But she and the journal are not retracting the review itself. 

The paper, “A review of vitamin D and Parkinson’s disease,” appeared in Elsevier’s Maturitas, which is the official journal of the European Menopause and Andropause Society. The author is Amie Hiller, a neurologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and the work has been cited 26 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. 

According to Hiller, she recently became aware that 10 of the 63 references in her article were to papers by Yoshihiro Sato, a bone researcher in Japan whose 103 retractions put him in the third position on the Retraction Watch leaderboard. Sato’s misdeeds run from lack of IRB approval to fabrication of data, in articles dating back to the mid-1990s. 

Hiller’s letter on the subject, recently published in Maturitas but not linked from the original review, states that: 

Continue reading One in six of the papers you cite in a review has been retracted. What do you do?

The rector who resigned after plagiarizing a student’s PhD thesis

Jerzy Gwizdała

Lots of good stories are hiding behind retraction notices, and with the flood of retractions — 2,200 just in 2020 — we can’t always keep up. Here’s a story about one 2020 retraction that turns out to involve a rector in Poland who resigned after plagiarizing a student’s PhD thesis.

In 2014, Błażej Kochański defended his PhD thesis at Gdańsk University of Technology, where he is now an assistant professor. To pass the exam, two external reviewers — one of whom was Jerzy Gwizdała, an economist at the University of Gdańsk — evaluated his work.

The following year, Gwizdała published a study titled, “Wpływ systemowego ryzyka płynności na stabilność gospodarki polskiej,” or “The Impact of Systemic Liquidity Risk on Stability of the Polish Economy,” in Problemy Zarządzania (Management Issues). Entire sections of that paper, according to a note Kochański sent us through our database Google form, were “copy-and-paste” plagiarized from his PhD thesis. 

Gwizdała also translated sections of Kochański’s PhD thesis to English in 2018, sent it to the University of Gdańsk Publishing House, and had it published as a book chapter. 

Continue reading The rector who resigned after plagiarizing a student’s PhD thesis

Weekend reads: Faked data in psychology; publishing in predatory journals = misconduct?; how scientists take criticism

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 117.

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: Faked data in psychology; publishing in predatory journals = misconduct?; how scientists take criticism