A retraction and a retraction request as Twitter users call out sexism, fat-shaming, and racism

Overweight people are more dishonest, women with endometriosis are more attractive, and affirmative action needs to stop: Papers with these three conclusions have come under intense scrutiny on social media in recent days, with at least one retracted. 

First up, a study — widely criticized for being sexist — which claimed to find that

Women with rectovaginal endometriosis were judged to be more attractive than those in the two control groups. Moreover, they had a leaner silhouette, larger breasts, and an earlier coitarche.

The study, called “Attractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis: a case-control study” was published in 2013 in Fertility and Sterility, an Elsevier publication. It received sharp criticism on PubPeer beginning a year ago when one commenter, “Ovine Mastadenovirus,” wrote:

Continue reading A retraction and a retraction request as Twitter users call out sexism, fat-shaming, and racism

Study of China’s ethnic minorities retracted as dozens of papers come under scrutiny for ethical violations

A legal journal has retracted a 2019 article on the facial genetics of ethnic minorities in China for ethics violations, and the publisher, Springer Nature, is investigating more than two dozen other articles for similar concerns. 

The article, “Y Chromosomal STR haplotypes in Chinese Uyghur, Kazakh and Hui ethnic groups and genetic features of DYS448 null allele and DYS19 duplicated allele,” appeared in the International Journal of Legal Medicine.

Three of the authors were affiliated with the notorious Karamay Municipal Public Security Bureau, which the U.S. government hit with sanctions in October 2019 for being: 

Continue reading Study of China’s ethnic minorities retracted as dozens of papers come under scrutiny for ethical violations

Cancer surgery group in China may lose second paper

After whistleblowers in China prompted the retraction of a 2018 paper that overstated the number of patients treated in a study, another journal says it’s investigating a second article by the same group.

Last month, as we reported, the Journal of Surgical Oncology retracted “Long‐term outcomes of 530 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients with minimally invasive Ivor Lewis esophagectomy.” The move was prompted by whistleblowers who notified the journal that the 530 cases could not have been performed at the authors’ institution, Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou. 

After our post, a Twitter user pointed us to a second article by the group, in BMC Cancer, which claimed to report data on 697 subjects over just one additional year — a highly improbable figure. 

Continue reading Cancer surgery group in China may lose second paper

Journal editor breaks protocol to thank an anonymous whistleblower

As Retraction Watch readers may recall, we’ve been highlighting — and championing — the work of anonymous whistleblowers throughout the 10-year history of the blog. Our support for such anonymity, however, is not universally shared. 

In 2011, for example, in our column at Lab Times (unfortunately no longer online), we wrote:

Continue reading Journal editor breaks protocol to thank an anonymous whistleblower

A bitter aftertaste: Legal threats, alleged poisoning muddy the waters for a trial of a tea to treat malaria

Artemisia afra, via Wikimedia

Xavier Argemi first heard the claim that tea made from artemisia herbs could be useful in the treatment of malaria from a TV documentary in 2017.

The documentary, featuring Lucile Cornet-Vernet, the director of the La Maison de l’Artemisia, a non-profit organization that grows artemisia and promotes its use in centers across Africa, focused on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The film claimed that for decades major pharmaceutical companies have been profiting from expensive malaria drugs based on artemisinin — the antimalarial for which Tu Youyou won a Nobel Prize in 2015, after distilling it from the Artemisia annua plant — while the tea itself, an ancient Chinese herbal remedy, was just as effective at treating the disease.

His interest piqued, Argemi reached out to Cornet-Vernet, an orthodontist at Paris’ Descartes University. She shared with him the unpublished manuscript of a study — their first large-scale clinical trial — which she said showed that artemisia outperformed a go-to treatment for schistosomiasis, a different parasite-induced disease.

Argemi immediately saw red flags. “I am not a specialist of malaria or schistosomiasis, but when I read the study I was simply totally surprised by the number of inconsistencies at the very first read,” Argemi, of the Clinique Axium in Strasbourg, France, told Retraction Watch by email. 

Continue reading A bitter aftertaste: Legal threats, alleged poisoning muddy the waters for a trial of a tea to treat malaria

Fallout over Fukushima fallout papers continues as two are retracted

Ryuga Hayano

A radiology journal has retracted two papers about the fallout from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan over concerns that the researchers used “ethically inappropriate data” from the people they studied. 

The articles, which appeared in the Journal of Radiological Protection in 2017, were written by  Makoto Miyazaki, of the Department of Radiation Health Management at Fukushima Medical University, and Ryugo Hayano, a professor of physics emeritus at the University of Tokyo. As we reported, both papers were initially subject to expressions of concern last year.

The papers have been cited a total of 26 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

The retraction notice for “Individual external dose monitoring of all citizens of Date City by passive dosimeter 5 to 51 months after the Fukushima NPP accident (series): 1. Comparison of individual dose with ambient dose rate monitored by aircraft surveys” reads: 

Continue reading Fallout over Fukushima fallout papers continues as two are retracted

Ten takeaways from ten years at Retraction Watch

As we celebrate our tenth birthday and look forward to our second decade, we thought it would be a good time to take stock and reflect on some lessons we — and others — have learned.

  1. Retractions are more common than we — or anyone else — thought they were. Two decades ago, journals were retracting roughly 40 papers per year. Although we were pretty sure they needed to be doing more to police the literature, we had no idea how much more. We also assumed the number was somewhat similar in 2010, but we were off by at least an order of magnitude, depending how you count. Journals now retract about 1,500 articles annually — a nearly 40-fold increase over 2000, and a dramatic change even if you account for the roughly doubling or tripling of papers published per year  — and even that’s too few. 
Continue reading Ten takeaways from ten years at Retraction Watch

Retraction Watch turns 10: A look back, and a look forward

Adam and Ivan, circa 2012

Ten years.

On Aug. 3, 2010, we published our first post on Retraction Watch. Titled, “Why write a blog about retractions?”, the welcome letter to readers outlined our hopes for the new blog. Retractions, we felt then, offered “a window into the scientific process,” as well as a source of good stories for journalists. In both regards, we have not been disappointed. 

Continue reading Retraction Watch turns 10: A look back, and a look forward

Weekend reads: ‘Self-promotion journals;’ co-authorship for money, flattening the COVID-19 publication curve

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.

We turn 10 years old on Monday. Can you help us celebrate?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 30.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Self-promotion journals;’ co-authorship for money, flattening the COVID-19 publication curve

Springer Nature retracts paper that hundreds called “overtly racist”

Lawrence Mead

Less than two weeks after publication, an essay on poverty and race which critics decried as “unscholarly” and “overtly racist” has been retracted.

The essay, by Lawrence Mead, of New York University, appeared in the journal Society on July 21. It immediately drew the ire of hundreds of academics and advocates who, in a pair of petitions, demanded among other things that the journal retract the paper. 

Earlier this week, Springer Nature, which publishes Society, flagged Mead’s essay with an editor’s note stating that it was investigating the matter. Now the publisher has decided to remove the article. The retraction notice reads:

Continue reading Springer Nature retracts paper that hundreds called “overtly racist”