A big Nature study on a tiny dinosaur is being retracted

A paper on a pocket-sized winged “dinosaur” is being retracted after new unpublished findings cast doubt on the authors’ characterizations of their discovery.

The study, “Hummingbird-sized dinosaur from the Cretaceous period of Myanmar,” was published in Nature on March 11, 2020. Many news outlets, including the New York Times, Newsweek and National Geographic, picked up on the findings. 

Then on March 18, Zhiheng Li of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with co-authors, posted a comment on bioRxiv about the study, casting doubt on whether the amber-encased specimen was in fact a dinosaur or avian species.

Nature updated the study with an expression of concern on May 29, which said:

Continue reading A big Nature study on a tiny dinosaur is being retracted

Retraction of paper on romantic crushes marks second for psychology researcher

via Wikimedia

A psychology researcher who left her tenure track position at Northwestern University in 2018 amid concerns about the integrity of her data has lost a second paper.

Here’s the abstract of the 2018 paper, titled “Romantic crushes increase consumers’ preferences for strong sensory stimuli:” 

Continue reading Retraction of paper on romantic crushes marks second for psychology researcher

Infectious disease researcher “recklessly” faked data in grants worth millions, says federal watchdog

A pediatric infectious disease specialist in California “recklessly” fabricated his data in a 2009 published study and four grant submissions, worth millions of dollars, to the National Institutes of Health, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

The federal watchdog said in a settlement agreement published today that Prasadarao Nemani, of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) “engaged in research misconduct by recklessly including falsified and/or fabricated data” in a 2009 paper — retracted in 2018 — and four NIH grant applications.

Specifically, Nemani (who has published under the name Nemani V Prasadarao):

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Calling exercise data “atypical, improbable, and to put it bluntly, pretty weird,” sleuths call for seven retractions

Sleuth James Steele

A group of data sleuths is calling for the retraction of seven articles by an exercise physiologist in Brazil whose data they believe to be “highly unlikely” to have occurred experimentally.

In a preprint posted to the server SportRxiv, the group — led by Andrew Vigotsky, a biomedical engineer at Northwestern University — details their concerns about the work of Matheus Barbalho, a PhD student at the Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, part of the  Universidade da Amazônia, in Belém. Barbalho’s mentor is Paulo Gentil.  

In addition to the preprint, titled “Improbable data patterns in the work of Barbalho et al,” Greg Nuckols, one of the coauthors, has posted a lengthy “explainer” about the analysis. 

The Brazilian group already has one retraction, for a study in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance titled “Evidence of a ceiling effect for training volume in muscle hypertrophy and strength in trained men—less is more?” According to the notice: 

Continue reading Calling exercise data “atypical, improbable, and to put it bluntly, pretty weird,” sleuths call for seven retractions

“[H]ow gullible reviewers and editors…can be”: An excerpt from Science Fictions

We’re pleased to present an excerpt from Stuart Ritchie’s new book, Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth.

One of the best-known, and most absurd, scientific fraud cases of the twentieth century also concerned transplants – in this case, skin grafts. While working at the prestigious Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in New York City in 1974, the dermatologist William Summerlin presaged Paolo Macchiarini—an Italian surgeon who in 2008 published a (fraudulent) blockbuster paper in the top medical journal the Lancet on his successful transplant of a trachea—by claiming to have solved the transplant-rejection problem that Macchiarini encountered. Using a disarmingly straightforward new technique in which the donor skin was incubated and marinated in special nutrients prior to the operation, Summerlin had apparently
grafted a section of the skin of a black mouse onto a white one, with no immune rejection. Except he hadn’t. On the way to show the head of his lab his exciting new findings, he’d coloured in a patch of the white mouse’s fur with a black felt-tip pen, a deception later revealed by a lab technician who, smelling a rat (or perhaps, in this case, a mouse), proceeded to use alcohol to rub off the ink. There never were any successful grafts on the mice, and Summerlin was quickly fired.

Continue reading “[H]ow gullible reviewers and editors…can be”: An excerpt from Science Fictions

A physics paper claimed the Koran had predicted the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Now it has an expression of concern.

Large Hadron Collider, via Flickr

A paper on how the Koran anticipated the discovery of the Higgs Boson — aka the “God particle” — has been hit with an expression of concern.

The article, “God particles in the perspective of The AlQuran Surah Yunus: 61 and modern science,” appeared in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series, which in 2017 published submissions to the 2016 International Conference on Science and Applied Science (Engineering and Educational Science), held in Indonesia. It was authored by Sri Jumini, of the Physics Department Program of Sains AlQuran University in Java.

Being neither particle physicists nor scholars of world religions, we’re not well-equipped to summarize Jumini’s theory, so here’s how he describes the work in the abstract: 

Continue reading A physics paper claimed the Koran had predicted the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Now it has an expression of concern.

French hydroxychloroquine study has “major methodological shortcomings” and is “fully irresponsible,” says review, but is not being retracted

Frits Rosendaal

A March 2020 paper that set off months of angry debates about whether hydroxychloroquine is effective in treating COVID-19 has “gross methodological shortcomings” that “do not justify the far-reaching conclusions about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in Covid-19,” according to a review commissioned by the journal that published the original work.

The comments, by Frits Rosendaal, of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, came as part of a review commissioned by International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC), which publishes the journal along with Elsiever. ISAC had issued a statement about the paper in April, saying it “does not meet the [International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy’s] expected standard.”

The study, Rosendaal writes,

Continue reading French hydroxychloroquine study has “major methodological shortcomings” and is “fully irresponsible,” says review, but is not being retracted

Weekend reads: Why science needs red teams; when clinical trial participants lie; kids cheating in science fairs?

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 25.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Why science needs red teams; when clinical trial participants lie; kids cheating in science fairs?

Fowl play? Poultry researcher has two more papers retracted for “grave mistakes”

via Flickr

The journal Poultry Science has retracted two papers for authorship issues. 

The first author on both articles was Sajid Umar, of the Arid Agriculture University, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, who now has lost at least four papers for similar reasons. 

One article, from 2016, was titled “Synergistic effects of thymoquinone and curcumin on immune response and anti-viral activity against avian influenza virus (H9N2) in turkeys.” According to the retraction notice: 

Continue reading Fowl play? Poultry researcher has two more papers retracted for “grave mistakes”

Painfully awkward: Duplicate anesthesiology study retracted

Sugammadex, via Wikimedia

A study that compared drugs used to reverse the effects of relaxants for surgery has been retracted because the majority of the results were already published.

The study, “Comparison of sugammadex and pyridostigmine bromide for reversal of rocuronium-induced neuromuscular blockade in short-term pediatric surgery,” appeared in the journal Medicine in February 2020.

The work found that the drug sugammadex worked faster than pyridostigmine in children undergoing surgery, and doesn’t appear to have anything wrong with it. But a study with the same authors and same name (barring a single uncapitalized letter) had already been published in the journal Anesthesia and Pain Medicine on July 31, 2019.

Continue reading Painfully awkward: Duplicate anesthesiology study retracted