Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: Steak-umm in the scientific literature; hushed-up COVID-19 data; major award cancelled for 2020

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

An exclusive about a case of misconduct at the University of Arizona
The retraction of a paper on HPV vaccines and preterm birth
A group of stem cell researchers up to nine retractions
A retracted retraction, and an apology from the publisher

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 33.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

23 becomes 22: Publisher retracts retraction, apologizes for the error

A publisher that retracted nearly two dozen papers earlier this month for plagiarism and other problems has retracted one of the retractions, apologizing to the authors for its error.

All of the 23 — now 22 — retracted papers had either Jesus Silva or Amelec Viloria as one of the authors, but Silva and Viloria turn out to be the same person, according to the publisher, IOP Publishing. Viloria is last author of the now unretracted paper, “Energy potential of vinasse derived from rum manufacturing,” from IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering.

The first author of that paper, Carmen Vásquez, of Universidad Nacional Experimental Politécnica Antonio José de Sucre in Venezuela, told Retraction Watch by email (we used Google Translate to translate from Spanish to English) that she had contacted the publisher when the retractions appeared to let them know that her paper did not plagiarize:

“No original data”: Stem cell researchers in Japan up to nine retractions

A group of researchers in Japan who study oral stem cells has lost at least nine papers for fabricated data.

We reported on this group, from Aichi Gakuin University in Nagoya, last year after they lost two papers in PLOS ONE for image manipulation. The new retraction notice appears in the Journal of Oral Biosciences, an Elsevier journal, and refers to several other papers that the editors say are to be retracted.

Here’s the notice for “New findings for dentin sialophosphoprotein studies: Applications of purified odontoblast-like cells derived from stem cells,” which was published in 2016:

Years later, researcher at center of highly publicized case has another paper retracted

Milena Penkowa speaking at a Scientology-funded exhibit in 2013

A neuroscientist who was stripped of her PhD by Danish officials as part of a case going back a decade has notched her ninth retraction — but it took a while.

In 2010, following questions about her work, Milena Penkowa received a three month suspended sentence for embezzlement, document forgery, and “fabrication of evidence.” A back-and-forth legal case against the researcher followed, with Penkowa initially found guilty of fabricating results in her thesis but winning a partial reprieve on appeal in 2016. As we reported in 2017, the University of Cophenhagen retracted Milena Penkowa’s doctoral degree after concluding that she had falsified documents to support claims that she’d conducted animal experiments that didn’t occur.

At the time, Penkowa had lost six papers to retraction. The latest one involves an article published at the end of 2016, “Bismuth adjuvant ameliorates adverse effects of high-dose chemotherapy in patients with multiple myeloma and malignant lymphoma undergoing autologous stem cell transplantation: a randomised, double-blind, prospective pilot study,” which appeared in Supportive Care in Cancer, a Springer Nature title.

“A wholly frustrating and embarrassing process”: Authors retract paper on HPV vaccine and preterm birth

The authors of a 2018 paper purporting to find that the HPV vaccine guards against preterm birth have retracted the article after discovering they made a statistical error which could have masked the opposite effect.

The researchers, from New Zealand, also failed to appropriately disclose their financial ties to a company, CSL Limited, which owns the rights to the HPV vaccine in Australia and New Zealand.

The paper, “Association of prior HPV vaccination with reduced preterm birth: A population based study,” was published in Vaccine, an Elsevier journal. According to the abstract:

Exclusive: University of Arizona says former researcher committed misconduct by plagiarizing figure

A former researcher in the University of Arizona’s optics school engaged in “a serious case of research misconduct,” Retraction Watch has learned.

Palash Gangopadhyay, who until 2019 was a research scientist at Arizona, used a figure from a 2003 paper by other authors when he co-authored a 2018 paper in Optics Letters titled “High sensitivity magnetometer using nanocomposite polymers with large magneto-optic response,” Wyant College of Optical Sciences dean Thomas Koch wrote to colleagues in an email obtained by Retraction Watch. The 2003 paper appeared in an obstetrics journal.

The 2018 paper has been cited nine times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

Koch wrote:

Weekend reads: Retracting racist and sexist work; The Lancet learns from a retraction; Trump administration interferes with publications

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

The retraction of 23 papers, and block of 35 more, for a fake alias and plagiarism
A Springer Nature journal that took eight months to retract a paper after a government misconduct finding
The retraction of a paper claiming women with endometriosis were more attractive

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

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Journal retracts paper claiming smarter people are more likely to use a condom to avoid HIV

A psychology journal has retracted a 2020 paper purporting to find that smarter people are more likely to use a condom during sex to avoid HIV.

The new study, by researchers from Singapore and the United States led by Sean Lee of the Singapore Management University School of Social Sciences, appeared in Personality and Individual Differences.

The paper claimed to find that:

Publisher retracts nearly two dozen articles, blocks nearly three dozen more, from alias-employing author who plagiarized

IOP Publishing has retracted nearly two dozen conference proceedings which had been cribbed from other articles, translated into English and festooned with citations to the authors’ own work.

According to the publisher, 12 of the 29 authors on the papers come from the same institution, Universidad de la Costa, in Barranquilla, Colombia. IOP says the institution is investigating.

The first author on most of the papers is Jesus Silva, who appears to be affiliated with the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, in Lima, Peru — and has now joined our leaderboard with 23 retractions. For some, the first author is Amelec Viloria, of Universidad de la Costa.

Except, according to IOP Publishing, Silva and Viloria are the same person, using an alias on some of the articles.

The list of retracted COVID-19 papers is up to 33

To the list of COVID-19 papers that have been retracted so far, add this:

The Korean Journal of Anesthesiology has retracted an article it published last month on ventilating COVID patients because it was nearly identical to one that had appeared in a different journal three months earlier.

The offending article, “Noninvasive versus invasive ventilation: one modality cannot fit all during COVID-19 outbreak,” was written by Abhishek Singh, an anesthesiologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

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